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Half of all Children Will Have Autism by 2025 (?)

Randomperson said:
There is a rather significant correlation between autism and vaccinations, so given the fact so many things are vaccinated for now, it would make sense that autism rates are spiking. Unfortunately some forms of autism are terribly debilitating which makes me sad.
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Not sure if trolling or serious....
 
I don't think so. Kids who don't get vaccinated can also have autism, and the vast majority of people who do get vaccinated never have autism. Statistical significance starts at above five percent, and it is way less than that. You can't take a 1% correlation and pretend it hints at causation.
 
Before anyone can find a "cause" for autism, it must be defined as a condition that has specific characteristics across a group of people - right now it's a grab bag for any child that someone says has "odd, slow, offensive, defiant, distracted or disobedient behavior and / or an impairment in learning - "something." Not only is it NOT a coherent physical condition, diagnosis is subjective. It's a bunch of stuff lumped together which cover any child who is "disobedient" to the Laws of Psychology (which is not a science). see my blog Asperger: The HypoSocial Human | Investigating the Asperger brain as a legacy of ancestral humans for a critique of the nonsense that is being spread on the internet.
 
Yeah, sorry. We all forgot. Please don't close the thread.

It would be pretty cool to be a majority. It wouldn't even have to be half, twenty percent or so would be plenty.
 
I'll state this, but just for fun... I'll predict that every child born after 2027 will be "on the spectrum". I use quotation marks in the spirit that radasp suggests--that "causes" or even "definitions" are elusive and speculative at this point, and what the spectrum even looks like is very subjective and in flux and isn't even yet what it will be (especially when you consider that perception is an inseparable component of reality), so therefore is extremely difficult to pinpoint, "pinpoint" being nowhere near an appropriate metaphor to make sense of a "spectrum".

There's no evidence to support this, but, again, just for fun, in 2042, think back to this thread, look around at the crop of kids out there, and remember that I wrote this.

I like to think of life as one big longitudinal experiment!
 
Trying to remember Darwins Theory and the process of natural selection from old college days... I cannot help but think there may be some merit in the thoughts of Aspergers, viewing the gamut of humanity, indeed being an evolutionary development.

Consider the development of technology during the 19th century... inventions and such were significant, but did not require a great deal of mental focus. During the 20th century, technology required much more focus and specialization. Today, technology requires an enormous amount of concentration and highly specialized, highly focused brains to improve upon what we have accomplished.

Seems to me, the human animal has progressed to the point of needing such 'on the spectrum' thought processes to further advance our species technologically.... Who knows... perhaps it really is evolution....:-)
 
Well, in my own opinion, the idea is that evolution doesn't necessarily "progress," so much as "branch." I think there is still a place, even a need, for NT's in this world, as there is for folks such as us who may not fit in well socially but nonetheless have our own gifts to offer the world. My only hope is that that world can become more accepting of our quirkiness and become more receptive to what we can offer.
 
Lukas said:
Trying to remember Darwins Theory and the process of natural selection from old college days... I cannot help but think there may be some merit in the thoughts of Aspergers, viewing the gamut of humanity, indeed being an evolutionary development.

Consider the development of technology during the 19th century... inventions and such were significant, but did not require a great deal of mental focus. During the 20th century, technology required much more focus and specialization. Today, technology requires an enormous amount of concentration and highly specialized, highly focused brains to improve upon what we have accomplished.

Seems to me, the human animal has progressed to the point of needing such 'on the spectrum' thought processes to further advance our species technologically.... Who knows... perhaps it really is evolution....:)
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Except evolution doesn't really care what's 'best' for us, it only cares what's best for our chances of survival and reproduction. In other words, the 'fittest' survive and pass on their genes, while less fit organisms fail to do so. This process is natural selection.

What you're suggesting is that because increased focus is better for us based on cultural and societal values, that therefore it is the next stage in evolution. But for that to be true, it would have to increase fitness; our ability to survive and reproduce. Last I checked, there are no clear advantages to being autistic over being NT in terms of fitness. NTs are no more likely to die than autistics, and due to better ability to socialise, may have an advantage in reproduction (although it's certainly not impossible for autistic people to have children of their own).

So ultimately I don't see any reason to believe autism will be the next stage of human evolution. I see nothing in our environment that discriminately kills NTs or makes them unable to reproduce, and until I do I'm going to continue to disagree with anyone who thinks autism is the future of evolution. Remember, it's not what's best for us, it's what's best for our chances of survival and reproduction.
 
That's a good point. If you have autism, the chances of dying of parental infanticide increase dramatically.
 
A better brain would increase your chance of survival if you want to go with that theory of evolution.
I think we are probably going through a prototype phase where the bugs aren't worked out and nature isn't finished yet
 
Nitro said:
Senoff is a computer scientist who works on artificial intelligence.
I would question her research as others have.
Samsel who co-wrote this is an independent scientist who attack industrial toxins freelance...he has an agenda.

I would take this with a grain of salt
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In fairness, a person's day job and their passion can be two different things. Not everyone is singularly interested in only one type of thing. Additionally, there's a fair amount of crossover between artificial intelligence and human intelligence (after all, the former is modeled after the latter), what with artificial neural networks and learning algorithms.

That said, I'm not sure if this person in particular has such knowledge. I'm just simply pointing out that it's fallacious to judge the topic someone has written about based on their day job.

AGXStarseed said:
Been honest, I partly think the article is two things:

1. An attack on Monsanto - who have been in the news for negative reasons including their pesticides and weed killers (which are said to be responsible for the global bee die-off) and their Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMO's) which are said to be extremely harmful to your health.
An interesting twist in this is despite the negative news, the US Government has actually passed the "Monsanto Protection Act" - which has actually made it illegal to ban Monsanto from selling seeds that are known to be harmful to people, as well as several other, shall we say 'interesting,' provisions solely for the benefit of Monsanto.

2. It seems to be a fear-based article aimed at parents (especially since it started with the word Warning on the source article). As such, I think some will interpret it as a way of trying to get people to donate money towards Autism Speaks and other "charities/organisations" that claim to be able to 'fix' Autistic people.


I'm regretting putting this article up, so my apologies to you all.
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No need for regrets. It's a good thing to post such things, I think, so that we can have some discourse over them and are prepared to talk with others who bring it up. It's a lot easier to come up with logical arguments/points when there's a sort of agreement between everyone involved to try to remain objective and level-headed.

Your point 1 is alarming mostly because it illustrates the lobbying power Monsanto has (though I'm pretty firmly on the "Monsanto is evil" side of the fence -- even if their products were proven not detrimental to the environment and human health, their political and business behavior have been so shady and unethical that I'd want nothing to do with them).

Nitro said:
It is my honest belief that autism is caused by a body that was already predisposed genetically to have it...I think chemical approach is backwards thinking. Her markers used to identify her research have come into question that may not have any bearing on the end result. My research has shown that she has identified an abundance of her targeted chemical found in the cells of autistic children...how does she know that autistic bodies do not process these chemical the same way as a NT body...
How do we know she wasn't paid to write her papers the way another wanted her too.
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Re your last statement, the same could largely be said of any journalist, and even academic papers (though there's supposed to be more transparency on the latter, but studies follow the money, and there's a self-preservation incentive to either get results in favor of the funding entities, or downplay the results that are opposed).

As for your first point, there's a concept called epigenetics that I think you might be interested in. Basically, it says that our genes predispose us to certain things, but our environment largely determines what genes are switched "on" and what aren't. In other words, we may be predisposed to something, but by altering our environment (what we eat, the chemicals we do or don't expose ourselves to, etc), we can prevent, mitigate, or even reverse certain genetic dysfunctions (or at least things that conventional medicine shrugs off as "sorry, you just have bad genes" -- there is that possibility that medicine is just that ignorant about genetics and the extent of the effects of the chemicals we're exposed to every day).

I've seen a number of people (and have experienced it myself) who have done things like reverse their "inherited" Type 2 Diabetes, lowered their "genetically high" blood pressure, correct their "genetically bad" cholesterol levels, and fix a number of other noncommunicable disorders simply by changing their lifestyle to avoid particular toxins (both man-made and nature-made).
 
I guess I just don't want to fall into the "it's time to panic" mode about it
There has not been enough proof offered to me yet and she still has her sidekick...I actually trust no one in this study and smell a rat trying to get into another rat's bank vault...just my opinion
 
Just remember, consumption of ice cream causes drowning deaths. Ice cream consumption and drowning deaths are highly coorelated.

Or is it just plain hot outside, so people are cooling off by eating ice cream or swimming?

I inherited autism from my father. No amount of anything else had anything to do with it.
 
Nitro said:
It is my honest belief that autism is caused by a body that was already predisposed genetically to have it...I think chemical approach is backwards thinking. Her markers used to identify her research have come into question that may not have any bearing on the end result. My research has shown that she has identified an abundance of her targeted chemical found in the cells of autistic children...how does she know that autistic bodies do not process these chemical the same way as a NT body...
How do we know she wasn't paid to write her papers the way another wanted her too.
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Being paid to make the facts fit the theory is historically the act of an industrial manufacturer (think Philip Morris, aka Altera). That doesn't make her right, for other reasons, but I hesitate to question her motives just because she's looking afield. A lot of major discoveries aren't made by experts in the field, but by amateurs in the field and experts wandering in who get engrossed in a problem. Scare tactics about how awful autism is + new research saying it's grown makes me wonder who benefits? And then I remember the relationship isn't necessarily causal. Or even correlated.

EDIT: Or even a relationship :p
 
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