I recognize that by blogging on this, I'm goig to open up a can of worms the size of the Grand Canyon. Let me just beg y'all to please be civil on the discussion thread.
I've assumed that the fact no link between mercury in vaccines and the increase in autism has been established meant that there's nothing to worry about from vaccinating children. But this morning, Julie had a long conversation with a friend who is both a mother and a psychologist. They got to talking about autism in children. The shrink is not the sort to go for fad theories, so Julie was startled when the shrink said that she thinks there definitely could be a connection between vaccines and autism. N. said that she doesn't believe it has anything to do with mercury, but that if there is a connection, it likely has to do with the vaccination schedule. That is, we force too many vaccines too quickly into children's bodies, and it might be affecting them adversely. She said a neighbor of hers is an M.D., and he advised his grown children not to subject their children to the compressed vaccination schedule that's now standard.
The shrink told Julie that the rate of autism diagnosis is skyrocketing, and that she (the shrink) has been fascinated, but not in a good way, by the language the federal health authorities have been using in the past couple of years to talk about autism and vaccinations ("Lots of C.Y.A. there," she told Julie).
Julie and N. talked about possible links between diet and autism, as well as the theory that an excess of heavy metals in one's system causes, or at least exacerbates, symptoms that place a kid along the autism spectrum (which, of course, doesn't have to mean full scale autism, but can include conditions along the autism spectrum, like Asperger's syndrome, sensory processing disorder, and the like).
As an aside, I'm interested in this in part because I realized this year that I have a mild case of SPD, which is manageable but not curable. And for me, it's actually beneficial in one way: because of it, I have an extraordinarily acute sense of smell and taste, and can enjoy food and drink to an unusual degree. On the other hand, when there's an unpleasant odor, I have to get out of its way quickly, or I'll get quickly overwhelmed and sick. For me, SPD is mostly just an inconvenience -- though it was helpful to learn that a variety of seemingly unconnected phenomena that I've been living with for a long time have a common neurological basis.
Anyway, the psychologist, who has small children and is about to have a baby, indicated to Julie that she's starting to take all this stuff a lot more seriously than she used to. Her message was basically, "Something's going on, and nobody knows for sure what it is, but you shouldn't believe the reassurance." A friend of mine who has two sons with Aspergers said that both of the boys were discovered not long ago to have high concentrations of heavy metals in their blood, and are now undergoing therapy to get rid of them (if memory serves, my friend said he and his wife have noticed a big difference in their kids' behavior after therapy -- he reads this blog, so maybe he'd like to chime in).
Again, I know that this is an extremely controversial subject, but the fact that Julie's very level-headed friend the psychologist told her these things today, and admitted to having new concerns over the whole issue, concerns she'd shunted aside previously ... well, it made me wonder what you all had to say about it. A word to partisans: if you disagree with someone, do so civilly and respectfully.
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Mick, are you talking about Campy Quinn of the famous Quinns of Long Island? Are you one of those Quinns? If so, surely we must have met that time Jake had us out to your mom and dad's house in Rockville Centre...
I favor the theory of assortive mating as one cause in the rise of autism: geeky men working with and marrying geeky women. In the past, many of these people (of both sexes) would not have married and reproduced.
That would fit with the fact (at least according to Temple Grandin -- I'm too lazy to look it up right now) that the sharpest increase in autism over the past several years has been in Silicon Valley and Redmond.
"that the sharpest increase in autism over the past several years has been in Silicon Valley and Redmond."
Just the crowd that will pay for the expensive diagnostic tests and treatment, which raises the question of whether were are seeing "affluent influenza" effect. Why are fibromylagia and Epstein Barre diagnosed primarily in middle- and upper-middle class white women? Why are learning disorders more often diagnosed in middle- and upper-class boys?
Wired Magazine in 2001 ran an interesting article called The Geek Syndrome. It's still worth a look, this many years later.
I think we are a culture obsessed with "normalcy." Everyone "has" to be of "normal" intelligence, weight, hair-style, occupation, income, you name it. But there are people who are not "neurotypical," as some say. We feel they have to be 'fixed,' even when there *is* no fix available.
What makes the most sense to me is that these so-called "spectrum disorders" represent genetic diversity in how people think, in how their brains work. On an individual level, some find their creativity and "quirkiness" to be highly productive. Others find it a great trial and source of difficulty.
If these conditions like Aspergers *are* genetically based, why would the genes persist in the population, if they're supposedly so deleterious? To me, the simplest and most logical answer is that when some people have some of these genes, their fitness (i.e. # of kids per generation; the Darwinian definition) is increased. This happens for other genetic conditions - sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, etc.
In other words, there may well be some adaptive value in what we're bemoaning, on a population level.
One little question, too: what's wrong with wearing muu-muus when you're 30? I wore them all through my 30s (they made wonderful maternity dresses.)
The question of incidence should not be confused with the question of diagnosis. Back when most people were not expected to be literate, nobody got diagnosed with dyslexia (although I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that Billy Budd was dyslexic--read the story again!) And there are definite social class biases to diagnoses nowadays--probably a lot of blue-collar folks who have been diagnosed with arthritis would be labelled with fibromyalgia if they had graduate degrees. And maybe the cleaning lady who can't afford to take the time to see a doctor hasn't had her joint and muscle pain diagnosed at all. But probably there is approximately the same amount of muscle and joint pain per person as there has always been.
But some other diagnoses really are creatures of our age, most notably ADD. I think we are being deliberately infected with ADD--certainly commercial television does everything possible to discourage paying serious long-term attention to anything.
Autism I'm not sure about. We don't even know what it is, much less how people get it. We do seem to be extending the range of diagnosis, but not to the point that would account for the increased number of people diagnosed. The mercury/vaccination hypothesis doesn't overwhelm me, but there are certainly enough other relatively new pollutants in our environment these days that any one of them, or any combination or permutation of them, could be one of the culprits.
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