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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI gave my child autism, by Juniper Russo.
http://www.backfromnature.org/2015/03/i-gave-my-child-autism.html"It wasnt because of vaccines. It wasnt because of tuna. It wasnt because of formula. It wasnt because of Tylenol, ultrasounds, antidepressants, Pitocin, tobacco, television, or pesticides.
How do I know? Because she wasnt exposed to any of these things when she was first diagnosed with developmental delays.
...
Maybe, she said, pursing her lips carefully and jotting something down in her notebook, You might want to consider getting yourself an evaluation. Most autistic people of your generation werent diagnosed, especially if they were verbal.
...
But it wasnt because of something I did wrong. It wasnt because of her shots, or her environment, or my parenting. It was because of the little chains of carbon inside all of our bloodstreams, the chromosomes my kids inherited from me and only me. It was because we have a very special family, and its full of brain problems and love.
..."
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A beautifully written, and very powerful piece.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)world combined. As are many other for profit entities who wish to maximize profits by producing and hawking toxic substances, and engage in practices which clearly damage the environment.
Care to share a pint of cold, refreshing Roundup?
Toxic environmental pollution is deadly. Corporations and their shills would have us believe it is just fine to spill and spread toxic substances all over the planet. They would have us believe that it is just fine to ingest toxins, chemicals, and untested hybridized biologically altered substances invented 30 years ago.
Why do they do this?
They do it for MONEY. People lie, spread information to deceive others, steal, and kill for MONEY every day single day, maybe hundreds of thousands of people do this every day, maybe tens of millions do it every day.
Am I going to believe you, or what I see?
Yes, autism may very well be, primarily, the result of inherited genes. It's very possible.
But we don't know if these genetic anomalies are the result of DNA damaged by environmental toxins 60 or 100, or 20 years ago, and then passed down as a mutation from parents to children.
I have a fair amount of experience with a very large number of people over the years who have massive developmental challenges. Some we know are the result of genetics. Some we don't know. Autism, we don't know. One thing that really pisses me of is people putting out information claiming they know what causes these disabilities, when, in fact, they don't know, and there is not nearly enough evidence to conclude that they do "know".
This goes for the purveryors of silly woo, "scientists" mostly concerned with furthering their careers and notoriety by pushing their studies or theories, and particularly internet propagandists who work for corporations, who get paid to lie, by, and for their corporate masters.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)But, you did.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)Autism spectrum disorder: interaction of air pollution with the MET receptor tyrosine kinase gene
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24240654
Environmental toxicants and autism spectrum disorders: a systematic review
http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n2/full/tp20144a.html
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)environmental toxins fucked up my body and thus to some extent my life.
Some pre-birth, a lot through earliest infancy, childhood and beyond.
Each person is utterly unique in causes, effects, sensitivities, and so on.
But there is no question that these toxins play a big role in autism.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)There's a hell of a lot of places that are much more polluted than the western world. Yet autism is virtually unknown in these places.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)Then you'd have to indicate said area has equal capacity to recognize and diagnose autism.
Even many western countries are having higher and higher rates of autism as ability to recognize the condition improves and stigma associated with it lessens.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)House Hearing, 112 Congress
From the U.S. Government Printing Office
[center]GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON AUTISM--A GROWING PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
AND HUMAN RIGHTS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 31, 2011[/center]
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, presiding.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.
Christopher H. Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to our
witnesses and those who are joining us for this first ever
congressional hearing examining the magnitude and the severity
of the global public health crisis of autism.
<>
I would note to my colleagues that on a trip to Lagos in
Nigeria in 2007, which was designed to look at an issue that I
also work very vigorously on--human trafficking--while there I
met with Mr. Chiti Azuwa, the parent of an autistic child. Mr.
Azuwa is the Executive Director of the
Public-Private Partnership Resource Centre in Abuja, and
his wife, Dr. Doris Azuwa, is the Executive Director of the OLG
Health Foundation and Autism Centre in Port Harcourt. They told
me of the large numbers of Nigeria, children suffering with
autism, and the lack of government or other supports.
<>
There are a wide range of autism prevalence figures between
countries and individual studies. Here in the United States,
CDC estimates that close to 1 percent of the population is
affected by NASD. Autism Speaks, the Nation's largest autism
science and advocacy organization, describes a scientific
consensus that 1 percent of the world's population, or some 67
million people--I repeat, an estimated 67 million people--are
affected with some form of ASD. According to the World Health
Organization--and I will include their testimony and hopefully
at a later date they will testify as well--but in their
submission they note that ``tens of millions in Africa are
affected by autism.'' Tens of millions.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)That have absolutely nothing to do with the OP.
Please don't act like there is a justification for that post.
LadyHawkAZ
(6,199 posts)The genetic disorder.
They are perfectly capable of popping up without environmental interference, too. Because they're genetic.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)... the fact that people of similar personalities might find each other and then have kids has probably increased, making the genetic combination even more likely. I'm not saying that even plays a role, but the science isn't much better in regard to the assertions about other environmental factors.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Warpy
(110,913 posts)Please consider deleting this rant and posting it elsewhere.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)and the health and DNA expressed in our offspring.
So any mother saying she gave her child autism is not considering what environmental factors may have caused a particular gene to be expressed.
Orrex
(63,086 posts)Always a tragedy.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)attempting to stifle my initial and primal urge to tell you where to stick a cold, refreshing pint of Roundup.
Instead, I'm going to only wish that you delete your uninformed and inappropriate rant on an otherwise thoughtful thread.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)may indeed precipitate the expression of genetic disorders like Autism.
I posted two links above.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise, and it is ridiculous to pretend that that post is justified at all.
Lancero
(2,984 posts)But what specific factors those are have yet to be determined, and even then recent studies are showing that genetics - and not environmental factors - are by far the main reason for autism.
http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2015/03/17/autism-genetics-study/20139/
hughee99
(16,113 posts)Eh, what were we discussing again?
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)Response to awoke_in_2003 (Reply #16)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)agreement.
When you think about the fact that the eggs of human offspring
are produced inside the body of the maternal grandmother,
there's a long period of time during which environmental toxins
do their damage, imprint their information. How/if it translates into
genetics, I don't know -- but I do believe that our own DNA evolves
with our life experiences and environmental influences, so a bodily
flaw, for example the effects of mercury, or pcbs, over long time
-- a brain malfunction becomes a future genetic feature.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)and pick out a lot of people I knew who were likely on the spectrum. They were just labeled odd or clumsy or sometimes brilliant but a little over focused on one thing. There was no diagnosis of a full spectrum of autism, only the dreaded "mental retardation" for kids who were nonverbal and largely non functional.
Autistic people who were brilliant or just odd were usually my friends.
They're only now discovering that high functioning autism is expressed very differently in girls than it is in boys. I suppose now we'll see another spike in cases that will set off the alarmists.
hunter
(38,264 posts)... similar to your observations. Everything from obsessive, extremely focused math and engineering types to people who were not and are not fully functional in ordinary society. I used to wonder why my great aunt treated me a little differently than other kids. Now I realize it was because I was one of the odd clumsy obsessive kids. She knew, but she couldn't name it, and her generation didn't talk about it. My grandfather, her brother, passed as an eccentric and occasionally brilliant engineer, but she had two siblings who were not fully functional in ordinary society, supported and often protected by family. Even though they were still living when I was a kid, I was never introduced to them. Such family secrets were "kept in the closet," very similar to how homosexuality was hidden.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)I think it was a bit easier to be a brilliant oddball than it is to be a high functioning autistic. The bullying in school and even after it hasn't stopped. However, it's better than blaming Mom for the fact that her kid was a little weird and having social problems in junior high school.
Still, for years, it was hidden, denied, glossed over, and simply taken for granted as a variation in human personality.
hunter
(38,264 posts)It certainly explained a lot of my childhood.
"Clumsy," oh God yes, I was banned on the swings and "monkey bars" because I was a danger to myself and others. I wasn't even allowed to climb on the awesome geodesic playground dome, one of the first in the nation. But as a consolation prize, I guess, I did get to shake hands and have a conversation with Buckminster Fuller a few years later.
I was hyperlexic too. I was reading well, probably better than many sixth graders, when I entered kindergarten. I don't remember not being able to read. But I do remember not talking. While the other kids were reading about "Dick and Jane" I was sent out to the speech therapist, up until the third grade. I also had a "posture and movement" class, as they called it. Some of the kids in that class with me were a lot more messed up then I was, with tremors and other involuntary movements and stuff, one I remember I can now identify as Tourette syndrome. But no matter how bad I'm fidgeting or rocking or whatever, it never feels involuntary to me.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)but I'll still take "oddball" over anything else. Early reading, check, freakish math ability and memorizing numbers, check, clumsy, check, late walker, check. Still, there are just some of us who prefer to spend our time alone with our noses in books rather than trying to play team sports we're ill suited for.
"Introvert" suits me fine.
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)... casting aspersions on HuckleB's piece is just mean-spirited and unwarranted.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)I'm working to have more constructive discussions, so that was a frustrating response to see.
Take care.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)my father gave me ADD. Of course, when he and I were kids, we had no idea what that was.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)It is probablistic.
What is epigenetics, and what does it have to do with autism?
https://www.autismspeaks.org/node/123021
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Epigenetic effects are largely caused by genetics. "Turning up" production of a protein in response to environmental factors is controlled by genetics. It isn't turned up by magic Monsanto demons.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)the expression of certain genetic traits.
I have provided several links to scientific studies already in this thread.
Edit- and NO, DNA is not deterministic. It's probability.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)You really don't understand what you're talking about. But your lack of understanding tells the tale you want to tell, so charge ahead, right?
Transcription is affected by environmental effects - you make more insulin when you have more glucose. That regulation is not done by magic. It's done by other genes. The whole of the organism is still deterministic. What's changed is we've discovered more feedback loops that are part of that.
To say "DNA is probability" is to say that if you expose a genetically identical clone to the exact same environment, you will get different results. That is not the case. It it were, we could not detect epigenetic effects. They'd look like random noise.
Varying environmental conditions can get you different results, but the same genes and same environment always produce the same results.
This fits perfectly with the studies you linked, btw.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)Environmental factors can play a role.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)To make this simpler, let's pretend there's an autism gene. It is normally turned off by the effects of another gene. But if you are exposed to enough Monsanto brand Satan Piss, it turns on in your eggs.
It's still deterministic - the same result happens from the same inputs. Same genes, same Monsanto Satan Piss, same result.
It's still genetic - it's just the regulation gene that is now important instead of the autism gene itself.
How could the mother's genes change that? Well, first she could not have this autism gene. Second, she could have a mutation of the regulation gene that makes a lower dose of Monsanto Satan Piss have this effect. Or she could have a mutation that makes her regulatory gene immune to Monsanto Satan Piss.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Autism Speaks is not considered to be the most science based organization either.
Lancero
(2,984 posts)You can argue probability all you like, though when the chances are this high then it is correct to say that it is determinate.
Hekate
(90,202 posts)Thank you so much for bringing it here.
MadrasT
(7,237 posts)I was diagnosed at age 47. And it is clear now that my mother is also on the spectrum, though at age 72 she is not likely to ever pursue a formal diagnosis. I suspectmy grandmother was, too.
When I was a child in the 60s and 70s, it just wasn't on the radar, especially for girls.
There are loads of undiagnosed adults around. I remain unconvinced that autism spectrum disorders are increasing, it seems just as likely that we are getting better at recognizing it.