As I pointed out to another commenter, testing this hypothesis more rigorously does not require putting anyone at elevated risk. You assume, incorrectly, that subjecting one group to a restriction would be necessary.
You do not prove something causes something unless you prove it causes something. Why do people who demand exactitude do this tapdance when it's pointed out it is the only way to prove it?
If you use your method, there are altogether too many variables, and all we get is more correlation, because non-causation != causation. You simply have to cause the problem to know exactly what what the cause is.
why is causation = causation such a difficult thing for people to grasp?
That being said, it is kind of a misnomer, it seems like there should be better ways of accurately speaking about genetic profiles that are tied to specific geographic origins.
Which is why I try to refer to it as skin pigmentation. Because you don't have to be African to have a lot of melanin.
After all I there are quite a few 3rd and 4th generation African's of European descent.
Race is an entirely made up construct , it just doesn't exist and the sooner everyone starts acting that way the better off we will all be.
But there are important issues of genetics involved, many people of African descent and some Mediterraneans have a genetic profilee that allowed them to be resistant to Malaria. Obviously a good evolutionary trait in an area where Malaria is common. However, it also leaves them susceptible to Sickle cell anemia. Now My ass is so lily white that no one owuld ever consider testing me for SSA. So I would disagree that race is an artificial construct.
You can't just say that race doesn't exist. Well you can, but you'd be throwing away a lot of genetic variations like Vitamin D shortages, sickle cell anemia, melanoma and other issues that have life and death implications. Knowledge and acknowledgement of these things does not equalte to racism.
This isn't to say that there aren't stupid preconceptions. I was listening to a woman being interviewed on NPR sometime this past year She was of Kenyan descent, but lived in Germany. The woman interviewing her asks her how she felt about some issue as an "African American" A couple second delay, then the woman answered " I'm not certain how to answer that, because I'm a German".
It was hilarious to listen to the interviewer stumble all over herself for a while.
You really shouldn't take pride in your idiocy and be short sighted. The most likely thing in your $700 phone that will break is a $15 battery. It will, with 100% certainty, stop working in a couple of years at best. Or it could be replaceable. Phones have really stopped advancing. A phone from 2 years ago is pretty much the same a phone today and the next gen phones are looking like even less of an upgrade. Planned obsolescence needs to be stopped and if you're too stupid to even understand what that means and why it's bad then just shut the fuck up and let the adults handle things.
I had an iPhone 5 shortly after they came out. the battery was fine up until the day I traded it on an iPhone 7. Your statement is obviously not the truth for all cases.
And there is nothing more amusing than to read your vitriolic post, your rather weird obsessions about electronic gadgets, , and then you declare yourself as the adult in this matter, I fear I had to chuckle a little, and I feel badly about that. Sorry, but you are not even remotely mature, and your choice to froth at the mouth about a Smartphone is akin to something that a junior high student with suchy low self esteem that he would try to declare his superiority based on his preference in a collection of electronic and chemical parts such as a smartphone. Funny? perhaps more sad.
Life is hard - its even harder when you choose stupid things to get worked up about. Chillaxe bro, if you like your replaceable battery, then like it. Take it out every once in a while and look at it, hold it in your hands, and think "This is a good thing."
Severe ethics and social problem there. Its just about impossible to have trials of medicine with pregnant women
Many pregnant women already take supplements which include vitamin D. It is approved, and any serious negative effects should already be visible.
For a trial, you exclude those women. Then give group A daily pill containing folate and iron, group B get folate, iron and vitamin D. randomised, double-blind. Then come back in a few years and see how they are doing.
The problem of course, is that you actually have to create the autism. Otherwise you have no exact causation. If there is one thing you won't find, it is a company or government that would ever sponsor such a test. That's why you don't see many drugs designed for pregnant women. One birth defect, not necessarily even caused by the drug test, and as they say "You are well and Truly fucked". Your ass would be hauled into court, and you'll be painted as the big conspiratorial Pharma, while the weeping mother and unfortunate infant will have the jury's sympathy.
It's a pity, and some people complain about the paucity of drug treatments for pregnant women, but that's just how things are - no one is going to take that liability exposure. You are 100 percent going to lose.
I don't think he means intentionally depriving them of vitamin D, rather I think he means simply creating a control group being given a placebo (pills of sugar, perhaps), and another group being given pills of vitamin D. The control group would have no worse outcomes than the average pregnant women would have, while the experimental group should show some improvement.
That wouldn't be a proper experiment according to his wishes. You can't prove that a deficiencey causes something unless you create that deficiency. Because if you geive people extra Vitamin D, and less or no autistic children are born, he'll be screaming "Correlation!=Causation" because you have to prove lack of something causes something. And there is enough variation in human activity to cast doubt on the exactitude of any experiment. You have to specifically cause the problem to determine if a problem is caused by something. Human testing is a Helluva minefield.
However, your point still stands; you wouldn't be able to easily control for lifestyle choices, and those have much more of an impact on vitamin D levels than a pill would.
There are intriguing issues here. I wouldn't presume to declare Vitamin D as the smoking gun. But with a rise in autism rates since many people avoid the sun is interesting. People of dark skin pigmentation having increases in Autism rates appearing at the same time as they live in areas where they get less insolation. Not causation, but extremely interesting.
Grid kWh costs are on a sliding scale since there is a base cost for the grid connection. If you use just a few kWh a month they will cost hundreds of cents each, easily more than locally generated power plus storage. And if you can't live without those kWh add in the cost for the backup generator.
Bill the grid infrastructure separately, then generation costs can compete on a fair basis at each particular time of the day. Local storage or backup generation is an unrelated issue.
As well, try getting them to instal a power line to your house if the place isn't already on a grid. Suddenly solar isn't just cheaper, it's mid bogglingly cheaper.
Now that's great. That's like saying you're now finally running faster than the kid in the wheelchair.
Wake me when it gets cheaper than fossil fuel.
No, I think you are doing just fine asleep because I can see it works well for ya.
I'm curious - is fossil fuel going to last forever? Are you a disciple of the abiotic oil concept, where it is just created continuously so we'll never ever run out? Is this fuel something that politics creates?
That's the thing that is a little hard to understand where people strut around beating their chests and brag about how awesome fossil fuel is compared to all the other energy generating methods. It isn't going to last forever, and I'd rather use them to do other things with, like make lubricants and plastics, and for the lightweight energy dense applications like military use. Especially hard to achieve air dominance without them.
You might not like it, but the solar and wind power projects in the rear view mirror are much closer than they appear.
People in sunny locations tend to evolve darker skin because melanoma was more of a threat than vitamin D deficiency. People in dim locations tended to evolve lighter skin because vitamin D deficiency was more of a threat (high latitudes strike doubly, as people wear more clothes to stay warm).
Yup, the people who aren't adapted propely tend to die a lot sooner.
Ok, lets be clear this is a retrospective cohort study. That means that no experimental treatments were applied, so cause and effect cannot be determined on the basis of this trial.
Welcome to the ethics of dealing with humans, and especially with children.
This is a clear example of what is wrong with most people's understanding of "BIG DATA".
Hardly clear. Perhaps you are having a little difficulty dealing with trying to apply rigorous scientific experimentation to woarking with humans and medical issues. Would you take responsibility for assigning test subjects a protocol that might kill them and you know it might kill them? Good luck getting subjects willing to have you assign death or disability to their children.
So we are left with the data. There are certainly proper scientific experiments to analyze correlation effects to see if there could be causation, but the dream of a widespread experiment involving pregnant women and babies isn't going to happen, because when you finally get to the final experiment, you are deliberately harming people.
Even if the association is real, there is nothing in this data to say whether
A) low Vitamin D causes increased autism risk
B) Increased autism risk causes low Vitamin D
C) Or whether both are in turn caused by something else with improvements in one having no effect on the other..
But we do know for a fact that vitamin D deficiency is not good. So it is pretty unethical and immoral to demand that females be purposely restricted in order to produce offspring that are likely to have problems. I doubt there is specific ground truth that folic acid deficiency is the cause of spinal bifida in human children, but it would take Mengele level amorality to demand the proper double blind experiments because there is a link, we just don't know the entirety of it.
The authors should never have made recommendations based on this data, other than that more trials are needed to determine whether or not this association is causal, or if it could be used as an indirect indicator of autism risk.
We don't have some of the tools we would like to have, given the ethics of dealing with living beings. So we are left with analysis of things as they are. The effects of improper levels of nutriments are pretty well known, so advisement to get enough of a nutriment is hardly irresponsible.
But let's go back to your idea of trials. Let's say we have a hypothesis that too much Vitamin A causes problems. So we have a trial where vitamins are mailed out to OB/GYNs by the group doing an experiment. They don't know what is in them. But a third have recommended amounts of vitamin A, some have none, and some have a friggin whopping dose of Vitamin A.
So now after birth, the OB/GYN's are seeing babies with symptoms of hyper vitamin toxicity, and a few with symptoms of vitamin A deficiency, because most but not all pregnant women do get Vitamin A from their regular diet.
How long do you figure women are going to trust anything their OB/GYN's tell them after this shit gets out?
So we tell people they should get enough vitamins, doctors monitor pregnant women's vitamin D levels, and hopefully some results are seen.
It affects all mothers, but black mothers more. Scientific research supports that conclusion. I'll admit it was odd in this context to single out black mothers in the GP's comment (the schizophrenia link to vitamin d deficiency was the interesting part), but you'll have to provide an argument as to why it's racist.
Good grief! The issue is race based, but it surely isn't racist.
It all has to do with skin pigmentation. Groups who evolved in areas with a lot higher sun exposure were capable of generating enough vitamin D from insolation. When they move to an area with a lot less insolation, they tend to have trouble generating enough Vitamin D.
I caught a report on NPR that noted that people with dark pigmentation (note this can be either African or Indian) living in a northern city like Detroit, Michigan cannot create enough Vitamin D metabolically from solar exposure, and should always take supplements.
Conversely, people who are predominantly light skin will often have problems when living in tropical or sub tropical areas. In this case, their skin has difficulty handing the increased insolation.
What is your question exactly? Are you asking why this is being published on Slashdot? Because there exist people who believe that autism is caused by something else, and being able to point at something and say, "Hey look, real evidence showing that it might be this thing instead of that make-believe thing" is a useful bit of information to share with the public.
Exactly this! One of the arguments I used that always shut the vaccine assholes up, was pointing out how fixated they were on first that merthiolate was the cause, then something else was the cause after merthiolate was removed, then drug companies were in a conspiracy even after it was proven that the only conspiracy was between the asshole that started the whole thing and a lawyer who were going to capitalize on the sympathetic victim effect in the courts.
It always ended up with the statement "Your vaccine blame is really far behind as a cause of autism. It takes an extraordinary amount of conspiracy, and now some unknown mechanism for your idea to be true."
Then the question "Are you more concerned with finding what might cause autism, or is you main goal blaming vaccines."
Bullshit, with a large enough cohort, and without telling them it's vitamin D just a new drug, you would have baseline control probably close enough to the average rate of autism that you could discern any potential benefits from vitamin D. That assumes, of course, that this report itself doesn't spur a large amount of mothers to start taking large vitamin D supplements, thus changing the average prior to any trials if the link actually exists.
Its rather amusing that a person who calls bullshit is so full of it.
You weren't by any chance involved in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments were you?
And just how many experimental trials were you involved in?
This isn't the 1940's any more. Any medical experimentation is subject to ethical review, and before you get to even start the experiment. There is absolutely no way that a trial that involves purposefully causing a vitamin deficiency in a selected group will ever make it through an ethics review.
Sorry Dr Mengele, you can't do your twin vivisection experiments any more.
Where is the news?
This seems to just confirm previous data, which is important to researchers, but not that interesting to the public.
The vitamin-D hypothesis has been around for years. It would be interesting if a causal link, or treatment, could be demonstrated,
e.g. a randomised placebo controlled trial of supplements during pregnancy. But there seems to be none of that yet.
Severe ethics and social problem there. Its just about impossible to have trials of medicine with pregnant women or young children involved, as any birth defects or developmental problems and the people running the tests will be crucified.
You won't ever see any test like that, the closest thing they can do is do analysis after the fact, when they are not held responsible for any problems.
Because the amount of vitamin D available in food sources is piss poor in general. The effective natural way to get it is to go on the sun. This has orders of magnitude more effect than diet.
Pretty much this. I'm gonna go into a "when I was a kid" thing now.
When I was a kid, we all got a lot of outside time, including the adults.
Then the sun and outdoors became our enemy. Relentlessly we were taught that even one sunburn could kill us http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea...
Which of course is unmitigated bullshit.
But today, mothers, if they even allow their children to go outdoors, slather them in sunscreen because even if the child's skin turns pink, they are presumably killing the kid.
So now, we've raised a generation of people with Vitamin D deficiency.
Meanwhile, and considering how many people are alive who in earlier days spent a lot of time outdoors, and had a sunburn every year, you would think that Melanoma would have killed them all by now.
It isn't to ridicule melanoma, it sounds like a bad way do die. It's just that you don't take a creature like humans, who evolved in the outdoors, and turn them into cave critters and not have some repercussions.
Not everyone with autism is an 'antisocial nerd' that's living in the gutter, thank you very much. People with autism may be even more productive in some areas than neurotypical people.
And so many people don't get this. As the "autism epidemic" took hold - mainly by expanding the definition to include more people, they started including people who might have been just a little different than neurotypicals.
People with say, Asperger's syndrome are often wildly productive. I have a few friends with the syndrome, and they aren't remotely disabled. They are differently abled. Sometimes much better abled for what interests them.
Think of having an Apple device taken by the security services at an airport. The laptop is turned on behind a secure counter with an extra hidden device plugged in.
So armies of perps will be rolling around waiting for unattended laptops? so they can install this device and reboot? The likelyhood of anyone outside of an active Law enforcement investigation is pretty slim. In fact, I always liken these attacks that require actual physical access to the computer as mostly clickbait.
What kind of bumblefuck clickbait headline is that?
In other news, GM charges full price to replace your car if you lose it.
Jesus H. Christ on a motherfucking crutch, I didn't think slashdot, having reached the bottom of the hill, could keep rolling downwards.
Nope, there's still a few hundred feet further down to the bottom. I wonder if Androids give you free replacements forever if you lose parts for them?
Regardless, it's just another way to generate clicks over the spawn of Beelzabub iPhone 7's lack of the standard and inferior headphone jack. I bit, since I'm here, but I wouldnt be too surprised if one of these days, I decide that the clickbait to interesting article ratio isn't worth the effort to even look. That the troll isn't only some of the posters, but Slashdot itself.
Apple is and always has been expensive for what you get. They make healthy profits by doing this. They are not going to change the business model just because folks complain. Now if they don't sell, THEN expect them to change the price, but I have a feeling they will sell like hotcakes like most of what Apple introduces. They have a knack for that kind of thing.
So, if you want those new fangled ear pods and get rid of that pesky cord, be prepared to pay Apple what they ask. I mean that cell phone you got was nearly $1K anyway, so what's a few hundred more? If you cannot afford this, then may I suggest you stick with that 6S and the live with the cord...
Meh, it's really hard to plug a wired headset into the adapter. You know, plugging one thing in is perfectly fine, in fact, apparently the most superior method of ever connecting headsets is a 1/8th einch jack. but two? a deal breaker. Unforgivable.
Meanwhile, I either use a bluetooth headset, or if I am serious, I have a professional studio headset with a 1/4 inch plug that requires - get this - an adapter to plug into the phone. the same as it would a proper Andriod phone.
If such things are simply not acceptable, people have to consider that their hatred for Apple goes waaaay beyond the rational.
Every time I ask Apple users about the non-replaceable batteries, their reply is **always** -- (ie. without fail) "you just don't get it", without **ever** being able to articulate exactly what I don't "get". I don't see how not being able to replace a battery is an advantage. Yes, I "get" that you can make the device smaller (and thus lighter), but only marginally so, and at the expense of functionality and serviceability. The non-removable battery is not any type of advantage to me.
Apple and iPhone user here. I don't give a shit about non-replaceable batteries. I don't give a shit about airpods or headphone jacks either. And I really don't give a shit about the people who go insane about them, don't care. So if a replaceable battery in all of your stuff is mandatory for you, get that and be happy you have it, and happy you showed those hipster Apple users the error of their ways.
I can break any unsername and password on any computer. All it takes is this device called a camera - that if set up properly, will expose every single keystroke.
When the hell are computer makers going to fix this terrible oversight?
Slashdot Mirror
As I pointed out to another commenter, testing this hypothesis more rigorously does not require putting anyone at elevated risk. You assume, incorrectly, that subjecting one group to a restriction would be necessary.
You do not prove something causes something unless you prove it causes something. Why do people who demand exactitude do this tapdance when it's pointed out it is the only way to prove it?
If you use your method, there are altogether too many variables, and all we get is more correlation, because non-causation != causation. You simply have to cause the problem to know exactly what what the cause is.
why is causation = causation such a difficult thing for people to grasp?
That being said, it is kind of a misnomer, it seems like there should be better ways of accurately speaking about genetic profiles that are tied to specific geographic origins.
Which is why I try to refer to it as skin pigmentation. Because you don't have to be African to have a lot of melanin.
After all I there are quite a few 3rd and 4th generation African's of European descent.
Race is an entirely made up construct , it just doesn't exist and the sooner everyone starts acting that way the better off we will all be.
But there are important issues of genetics involved, many people of African descent and some Mediterraneans have a genetic profilee that allowed them to be resistant to Malaria. Obviously a good evolutionary trait in an area where Malaria is common. However, it also leaves them susceptible to Sickle cell anemia. Now My ass is so lily white that no one owuld ever consider testing me for SSA. So I would disagree that race is an artificial construct.
You can't just say that race doesn't exist. Well you can, but you'd be throwing away a lot of genetic variations like Vitamin D shortages, sickle cell anemia, melanoma and other issues that have life and death implications. Knowledge and acknowledgement of these things does not equalte to racism.
This isn't to say that there aren't stupid preconceptions. I was listening to a woman being interviewed on NPR sometime this past year She was of Kenyan descent, but lived in Germany. The woman interviewing her asks her how she felt about some issue as an "African American" A couple second delay, then the woman answered " I'm not certain how to answer that, because I'm a German".
It was hilarious to listen to the interviewer stumble all over herself for a while.
Yeah! You can't expect us to believe hard science when a Hollywood bimbo tells us it's not!
Some times. I think it would take Sophia Vergara level hottnitude to get me that dumb.
You really shouldn't take pride in your idiocy and be short sighted. The most likely thing in your $700 phone that will break is a $15 battery. It will, with 100% certainty, stop working in a couple of years at best. Or it could be replaceable. Phones have really stopped advancing. A phone from 2 years ago is pretty much the same a phone today and the next gen phones are looking like even less of an upgrade. Planned obsolescence needs to be stopped and if you're too stupid to even understand what that means and why it's bad then just shut the fuck up and let the adults handle things.
I had an iPhone 5 shortly after they came out. the battery was fine up until the day I traded it on an iPhone 7. Your statement is obviously not the truth for all cases.
And there is nothing more amusing than to read your vitriolic post, your rather weird obsessions about electronic gadgets, , and then you declare yourself as the adult in this matter, I fear I had to chuckle a little, and I feel badly about that. Sorry, but you are not even remotely mature, and your choice to froth at the mouth about a Smartphone is akin to something that a junior high student with suchy low self esteem that he would try to declare his superiority based on his preference in a collection of electronic and chemical parts such as a smartphone. Funny? perhaps more sad.
Life is hard - its even harder when you choose stupid things to get worked up about. Chillaxe bro, if you like your replaceable battery, then like it. Take it out every once in a while and look at it, hold it in your hands, and think "This is a good thing."
Isn't that like saying 2 is greater than 2+1 ?
For extremely large values of 2 it is.
That's not mathematically possible. This only works for values of 1 that are less than zero.
I started to read and thought "No one could take what I said seriously!" Then I continued, and thought "Well played sir, well played".
Severe ethics and social problem there. Its just about impossible to have trials of medicine with pregnant women
Many pregnant women already take supplements which include vitamin D. It is approved, and any serious negative effects should already be visible. For a trial, you exclude those women. Then give group A daily pill containing folate and iron, group B get folate, iron and vitamin D. randomised, double-blind. Then come back in a few years and see how they are doing.
The problem of course, is that you actually have to create the autism. Otherwise you have no exact causation. If there is one thing you won't find, it is a company or government that would ever sponsor such a test. That's why you don't see many drugs designed for pregnant women. One birth defect, not necessarily even caused by the drug test, and as they say "You are well and Truly fucked". Your ass would be hauled into court, and you'll be painted as the big conspiratorial Pharma, while the weeping mother and unfortunate infant will have the jury's sympathy.
It's a pity, and some people complain about the paucity of drug treatments for pregnant women, but that's just how things are - no one is going to take that liability exposure. You are 100 percent going to lose.
I don't think he means intentionally depriving them of vitamin D, rather I think he means simply creating a control group being given a placebo (pills of sugar, perhaps), and another group being given pills of vitamin D. The control group would have no worse outcomes than the average pregnant women would have, while the experimental group should show some improvement.
That wouldn't be a proper experiment according to his wishes. You can't prove that a deficiencey causes something unless you create that deficiency. Because if you geive people extra Vitamin D, and less or no autistic children are born, he'll be screaming "Correlation!=Causation" because you have to prove lack of something causes something. And there is enough variation in human activity to cast doubt on the exactitude of any experiment. You have to specifically cause the problem to determine if a problem is caused by something. Human testing is a Helluva minefield.
However, your point still stands; you wouldn't be able to easily control for lifestyle choices, and those have much more of an impact on vitamin D levels than a pill would.
There are intriguing issues here. I wouldn't presume to declare Vitamin D as the smoking gun. But with a rise in autism rates since many people avoid the sun is interesting. People of dark skin pigmentation having increases in Autism rates appearing at the same time as they live in areas where they get less insolation. Not causation, but extremely interesting.
Grid kWh costs are on a sliding scale since there is a base cost for the grid connection. If you use just a few kWh a month they will cost hundreds of cents each, easily more than locally generated power plus storage. And if you can't live without those kWh add in the cost for the backup generator.
Bill the grid infrastructure separately, then generation costs can compete on a fair basis at each particular time of the day. Local storage or backup generation is an unrelated issue.
As well, try getting them to instal a power line to your house if the place isn't already on a grid. Suddenly solar isn't just cheaper, it's mid bogglingly cheaper.
Now that's great. That's like saying you're now finally running faster than the kid in the wheelchair.
Wake me when it gets cheaper than fossil fuel.
No, I think you are doing just fine asleep because I can see it works well for ya.
I'm curious - is fossil fuel going to last forever? Are you a disciple of the abiotic oil concept, where it is just created continuously so we'll never ever run out? Is this fuel something that politics creates?
That's the thing that is a little hard to understand where people strut around beating their chests and brag about how awesome fossil fuel is compared to all the other energy generating methods. It isn't going to last forever, and I'd rather use them to do other things with, like make lubricants and plastics, and for the lightweight energy dense applications like military use. Especially hard to achieve air dominance without them.
You might not like it, but the solar and wind power projects in the rear view mirror are much closer than they appear.
People in sunny locations tend to evolve darker skin because melanoma was more of a threat than vitamin D deficiency. People in dim locations tended to evolve lighter skin because vitamin D deficiency was more of a threat (high latitudes strike doubly, as people wear more clothes to stay warm).
Yup, the people who aren't adapted propely tend to die a lot sooner.
Ok, lets be clear this is a retrospective cohort study. That means that no experimental treatments were applied, so cause and effect cannot be determined on the basis of this trial.
Welcome to the ethics of dealing with humans, and especially with children.
This is a clear example of what is wrong with most people's understanding of "BIG DATA".
Hardly clear. Perhaps you are having a little difficulty dealing with trying to apply rigorous scientific experimentation to woarking with humans and medical issues. Would you take responsibility for assigning test subjects a protocol that might kill them and you know it might kill them? Good luck getting subjects willing to have you assign death or disability to their children.
So we are left with the data. There are certainly proper scientific experiments to analyze correlation effects to see if there could be causation, but the dream of a widespread experiment involving pregnant women and babies isn't going to happen, because when you finally get to the final experiment, you are deliberately harming people.
Even if the association is real, there is nothing in this data to say whether
A) low Vitamin D causes increased autism risk
B) Increased autism risk causes low Vitamin D
C) Or whether both are in turn caused by something else with improvements in one having no effect on the other..
But we do know for a fact that vitamin D deficiency is not good. So it is pretty unethical and immoral to demand that females be purposely restricted in order to produce offspring that are likely to have problems. I doubt there is specific ground truth that folic acid deficiency is the cause of spinal bifida in human children, but it would take Mengele level amorality to demand the proper double blind experiments because there is a link, we just don't know the entirety of it.
The authors should never have made recommendations based on this data, other than that more trials are needed to determine whether or not this association is causal, or if it could be used as an indirect indicator of autism risk.
We don't have some of the tools we would like to have, given the ethics of dealing with living beings. So we are left with analysis of things as they are. The effects of improper levels of nutriments are pretty well known, so advisement to get enough of a nutriment is hardly irresponsible.
But let's go back to your idea of trials. Let's say we have a hypothesis that too much Vitamin A causes problems. So we have a trial where vitamins are mailed out to OB/GYNs by the group doing an experiment. They don't know what is in them. But a third have recommended amounts of vitamin A, some have none, and some have a friggin whopping dose of Vitamin A.
So now after birth, the OB/GYN's are seeing babies with symptoms of hyper vitamin toxicity, and a few with symptoms of vitamin A deficiency, because most but not all pregnant women do get Vitamin A from their regular diet.
How long do you figure women are going to trust anything their OB/GYN's tell them after this shit gets out?
So we tell people they should get enough vitamins, doctors monitor pregnant women's vitamin D levels, and hopefully some results are seen.
It affects all mothers, but black mothers more. Scientific research supports that conclusion. I'll admit it was odd in this context to single out black mothers in the GP's comment (the schizophrenia link to vitamin d deficiency was the interesting part), but you'll have to provide an argument as to why it's racist.
Good grief! The issue is race based, but it surely isn't racist.
It all has to do with skin pigmentation. Groups who evolved in areas with a lot higher sun exposure were capable of generating enough vitamin D from insolation. When they move to an area with a lot less insolation, they tend to have trouble generating enough Vitamin D.
I caught a report on NPR that noted that people with dark pigmentation (note this can be either African or Indian) living in a northern city like Detroit, Michigan cannot create enough Vitamin D metabolically from solar exposure, and should always take supplements.
Conversely, people who are predominantly light skin will often have problems when living in tropical or sub tropical areas. In this case, their skin has difficulty handing the increased insolation.
What is your question exactly? Are you asking why this is being published on Slashdot? Because there exist people who believe that autism is caused by something else, and being able to point at something and say, "Hey look, real evidence showing that it might be this thing instead of that make-believe thing" is a useful bit of information to share with the public.
Exactly this! One of the arguments I used that always shut the vaccine assholes up, was pointing out how fixated they were on first that merthiolate was the cause, then something else was the cause after merthiolate was removed, then drug companies were in a conspiracy even after it was proven that the only conspiracy was between the asshole that started the whole thing and a lawyer who were going to capitalize on the sympathetic victim effect in the courts.
It always ended up with the statement "Your vaccine blame is really far behind as a cause of autism. It takes an extraordinary amount of conspiracy, and now some unknown mechanism for your idea to be true."
Then the question "Are you more concerned with finding what might cause autism, or is you main goal blaming vaccines."
That's when they tend to get a little quiet.
Bullshit, with a large enough cohort, and without telling them it's vitamin D just a new drug, you would have baseline control probably close enough to the average rate of autism that you could discern any potential benefits from vitamin D. That assumes, of course, that this report itself doesn't spur a large amount of mothers to start taking large vitamin D supplements, thus changing the average prior to any trials if the link actually exists.
Its rather amusing that a person who calls bullshit is so full of it.
You weren't by any chance involved in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments were you?
And just how many experimental trials were you involved in?
This isn't the 1940's any more. Any medical experimentation is subject to ethical review, and before you get to even start the experiment. There is absolutely no way that a trial that involves purposefully causing a vitamin deficiency in a selected group will ever make it through an ethics review.
Sorry Dr Mengele, you can't do your twin vivisection experiments any more.
Where is the news? This seems to just confirm previous data, which is important to researchers, but not that interesting to the public.
The vitamin-D hypothesis has been around for years. It would be interesting if a causal link, or treatment, could be demonstrated, e.g. a randomised placebo controlled trial of supplements during pregnancy. But there seems to be none of that yet.
Severe ethics and social problem there. Its just about impossible to have trials of medicine with pregnant women or young children involved, as any birth defects or developmental problems and the people running the tests will be crucified.
You won't ever see any test like that, the closest thing they can do is do analysis after the fact, when they are not held responsible for any problems.
Can't they just get some vitamin shots for this?
A Vitamin D vaccine? Hell no! Vaccines cause autisim! Jenny McCarthy told me so.
Because the amount of vitamin D available in food sources is piss poor in general. The effective natural way to get it is to go on the sun. This has orders of magnitude more effect than diet.
Pretty much this. I'm gonna go into a "when I was a kid" thing now.
When I was a kid, we all got a lot of outside time, including the adults.
Then the sun and outdoors became our enemy. Relentlessly we were taught that even one sunburn could kill us http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea...
Which of course is unmitigated bullshit.
But today, mothers, if they even allow their children to go outdoors, slather them in sunscreen because even if the child's skin turns pink, they are presumably killing the kid.
So now, we've raised a generation of people with Vitamin D deficiency.
Meanwhile, and considering how many people are alive who in earlier days spent a lot of time outdoors, and had a sunburn every year, you would think that Melanoma would have killed them all by now.
It isn't to ridicule melanoma, it sounds like a bad way do die. It's just that you don't take a creature like humans, who evolved in the outdoors, and turn them into cave critters and not have some repercussions.
Not everyone with autism is an 'antisocial nerd' that's living in the gutter, thank you very much. People with autism may be even more productive in some areas than neurotypical people.
And so many people don't get this. As the "autism epidemic" took hold - mainly by expanding the definition to include more people, they started including people who might have been just a little different than neurotypicals.
People with say, Asperger's syndrome are often wildly productive. I have a few friends with the syndrome, and they aren't remotely disabled. They are differently abled. Sometimes much better abled for what interests them.
Think of having an Apple device taken by the security services at an airport. The laptop is turned on behind a secure counter with an extra hidden device plugged in.
Think of doing the system update.
Isn't that like saying 2 is greater than 2+1 ?
For extremely large values of 2 it is.
So armies of perps will be rolling around waiting for unattended laptops? so they can install this device and reboot? The likelyhood of anyone outside of an active Law enforcement investigation is pretty slim. In fact, I always liken these attacks that require actual physical access to the computer as mostly clickbait.
What kind of bumblefuck clickbait headline is that?
In other news, GM charges full price to replace your car if you lose it.
Jesus H. Christ on a motherfucking crutch, I didn't think slashdot, having reached the bottom of the hill, could keep rolling downwards.
Nope, there's still a few hundred feet further down to the bottom. I wonder if Androids give you free replacements forever if you lose parts for them?
Regardless, it's just another way to generate clicks over the spawn of Beelzabub iPhone 7's lack of the standard and inferior headphone jack. I bit, since I'm here, but I wouldnt be too surprised if one of these days, I decide that the clickbait to interesting article ratio isn't worth the effort to even look. That the troll isn't only some of the posters, but Slashdot itself.
Apple is and always has been expensive for what you get. They make healthy profits by doing this. They are not going to change the business model just because folks complain. Now if they don't sell, THEN expect them to change the price, but I have a feeling they will sell like hotcakes like most of what Apple introduces. They have a knack for that kind of thing.
So, if you want those new fangled ear pods and get rid of that pesky cord, be prepared to pay Apple what they ask. I mean that cell phone you got was nearly $1K anyway, so what's a few hundred more? If you cannot afford this, then may I suggest you stick with that 6S and the live with the cord...
Meh, it's really hard to plug a wired headset into the adapter. You know, plugging one thing in is perfectly fine, in fact, apparently the most superior method of ever connecting headsets is a 1/8th einch jack. but two? a deal breaker. Unforgivable.
Meanwhile, I either use a bluetooth headset, or if I am serious, I have a professional studio headset with a 1/4 inch plug that requires - get this - an adapter to plug into the phone. the same as it would a proper Andriod phone.
If such things are simply not acceptable, people have to consider that their hatred for Apple goes waaaay beyond the rational.
Every time I ask Apple users about the non-replaceable batteries, their reply is **always** -- (ie. without fail) "you just don't get it", without **ever** being able to articulate exactly what I don't "get". I don't see how not being able to replace a battery is an advantage. Yes, I "get" that you can make the device smaller (and thus lighter), but only marginally so, and at the expense of functionality and serviceability. The non-removable battery is not any type of advantage to me.
Apple and iPhone user here. I don't give a shit about non-replaceable batteries. I don't give a shit about airpods or headphone jacks either. And I really don't give a shit about the people who go insane about them, don't care. So if a replaceable battery in all of your stuff is mandatory for you, get that and be happy you have it, and happy you showed those hipster Apple users the error of their ways.
When the hell are computer makers going to fix this terrible oversight?