New Study Says Autism is Environmental

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

Peter Uvin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:48:53 GMT

great discussion about an important subject. KeriF, I must say I am surprised, though, that you think that the quote "it is time to study whether X causes Y" (from the press release) means the same as "X causes Y" (in your title). Wow! it sure does not encourage me to trust anything you write... regardless of your motives or prior knowledge: the two statements truly, really do NOT mean the same.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

KeriF — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:46:41 GMT

Thank you all for your comments. I do read them as they are posted, and while I respect your opinion that the title of the post should be changed, I stand by my title as written.

From the study: “It’s time to start looking for the environmental culprits responsible for the remarkable increase in the rate of autism in California,” said UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute researcher Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of environmental and occupational health and epidemiology and an internationally respected autism researcher.

While you may not agree with the study or its conclusions, I feel that the title accurately represents the results of this study.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

gpgirl — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:12:06 GMT

Oh, and I agree with BettyWu that I can't believe the title of this article has not been changed yet! Does the author not even read the comments??? (I just noticed that the author is the same one who stated that leashed for children were wrong, so I guess I should look for any kind of logic in these posts.)

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

gpgirl — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:10:19 GMT

I know I am way late on this, but I just read the same article in Science Based Medicine, and was coming back to post it, when I saw that Betty Wu did the same.

I guess I am hoping the author of the original post, or anyone at Babble, is still reading this. Science Based Medicine is an excellent website, which goes into detail about studies that are reported in the media. (Actual data, not just opinion!)

It is true that the original study did not include a lot of factors, which is extremely irresponsible.

Now that Obama is president, I am sincerely hoping this kind of pseudoscience goes away. If it wasn't for the Bush admin, I'm not sure this kind of junk science would have much room in society.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

BettyWu — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:12:02 GMT

Wow. It just gets worse. If you read the actual study article and not the press release, you will see that they didn't actually do any study on shifting diagnoses at all (eg kids who would have been diagnosed with generalized retardation now being called autistic), they only looked at more inclusive diagnoses of milder forms of autism and whether or not families were moving to CA for services.

Even more damning, the study itself did NOTHING on environmental causes. The only mention of environmental causes AT ALL is the already discussed above vague "we need to look at the environment" quote from the frickin' press release! The non-peer reviewed press release.

This is so irresponsible.

And how lovely that the Babble author and editors have not only not changed the title of the post, but haven't even bothered to respond to the facts.

www.sciencebasedmedicine.org

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

Cornelia Read — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:14:30 GMT

I'm the mother of fourteen-year-old fraternal twin girls. One has severe autism and will require lifetime care. She's non-verbal and cognitively about equivalent to a one-year-old child. The other has no social/emotional impairment and is tremendously gifted--just scored in the 99th percentile on all sections of the PSAT, which she took a year early.

Given that their environments were identical in utero and during infancy and toddlerhood (vaccines from the same lots, breastfed the same amount of time, environmental exposures the same, etc.), I have to think there's some sort of genetic component at work here. Whatever the precipitating event is that causes autism--and I don't rule *out* thimerosal in vaccines, but it could just as well be some miniscule new additive in, say, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches--one child was genetically vulnerable and one wasn't.

What's important about this study (and I believe it's at least the second one on this topic conducted by the MIND Institute, with similar results), is that it roundly discredits the hypothesis that the exponential growth in the number of children diagnosed with this devastating disorder cannot be blamed on any recent change in diagnostic criteria, or state-to-state shifts in the population of affected families (i.e. out-of-state families moving to California in order to access better services and support for their special-needs children).

Yes, autism has much higher visibility these days, and its prevalence has also shed light on those who fall on the milder end of the spectrum but who might not have been diagnosed as such in past decades. However, this attention is not merely because autism is having its fifteen minutes of fame as the journalistic or clinical "flavor of the month," but because its prevalence has legitimately increased at a shocking rate.

Anecdotally, when my daughter was first diagnosed, at age two-and-a-half, our HMO pediatrician had never had an autistic child as a patient in his practice. That was in 1997. By the time our family moved away four years later, he told me, over a dozen of the toddlers and young children among his (randomly assigned by the HMO) patients had been diagnosed with autism at least as severe as my daughter's--a growth rate he said was mirrored across the clientele of all other pediatricians in that office.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

gpgirl — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:15:01 GMT

BettyWu, thanks for mentioning this. I forget to include this in my previous post (that the study does not say that autism is environmental. Only that it is not completely due to increased screening/earlier screening/migration/etc.

I would also request that the title be changed.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

BettyWu — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:36:49 GMT

I should clarify. Keri, your headline reads "New Study Says Autism is Environmental" It says nothing of the sort. Your own pull-out quote says "We're looking at the possible effects..." At no time are they saying 'look! we found the answer!' Headlines like this are what I'm talking about. It's frustrating, but there aren't easy quick answers yet. We have to keep looking - but when people see this kind of headline they assume it's been solved and some will make potentially very dangerous lifestyle changes based on it. (yes. I'm still on the vaccine thing.)

I would ask that you change the headline to reflect the content of both the study and your post.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

BettyWu — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:32:30 GMT

It's anecdotal, but I remember hearing from an autism specialist that had been in practice for decades saying that until autism therapy and autism diagnoses were mainstream (she talked about being within 10 years so after 1990, certainly) she would routinely categorize kids that she knows were autistic as having CP or other developmental problems so they could get services. She said that this was routine among the doctors she worked with.

I don't mean to dismiss the study or the need to spend time and research on environmental triggers, I just think jumping on one study and saying "Ah HA! This is the answer!" is a bad idea. We love definitive answers as a culture and tend to be bad at processing new, evolving and/or grayscale results.

And Alice. As a scientist you should know better than anyone that coincidence does not equal causation. Absolutely we should be looking at the effects of petroleum and BPA et al., but unless your initials are GWB, most people would agree that basing policy on a hunch is not a good idea.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

KeriF — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:59:57 GMT

The link is above ("The Study, by the University of Davis M.I.N.D. Institute..."), but here it is again:

www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/.../newsdetail.html

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

Alice — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:32:23 GMT

This is what most scientists, myself included, have thought for many years. Most likely caused by exposure to petroeleum products such as plastics either in utero or as a baby. My money is on that or non-stick cookware which the effects of ingesting has never been tested on humans. Do you know what that stuff is made of? Every piece of bread you buy, cookie you buy, pizza in the freezer section is prepared on Teflon coated cookware. Scary. Then they are wrapped in petroleum derived plastic, also not tested on humans. We hand our toddlers those plastic sippy cups, feed them in plastic bottles with plastic spoons, they chew on plastic toys and they sleep on plastic wrapped matresses in fireproof (chemicals again) jammies. We had none of that stuff until the 80's. Proof enough for me.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

Knitty — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:39:32 GMT

Amy - That doesn't make any sense to me at all, but then the autistic kids I know aren't of the high-functioning variety but the sort who will require care for their entire lives. The odds of either of them getting married and reproducing are nil. It's not just a disorder of emotions, it's a devastating neurological condition.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

Angie — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:55:12 GMT

Amy, that is WEIRD, but it does kinda make sense! Fascinating!

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

gpgirl — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:53:52 GMT

Does anyone know how they defined "milder cases". It seems like this would be very difficult to define, and is a major part of this conclusion.

In any case, I always thought it was a combination (more screening/real increases). One problem is that we spend so much time looking at vaccines, which have been shown not to have a significant autism link, and not at other factors that kids may be exposed to every day.

Amy, I have to admit I have thought about that too. (Yes, I am also an engineer.) The only part that didn't make sense to me is the sudden increase in autism, as I would think we would evolve a bit slower than that..

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

Amy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:29:01 GMT

My husband, an engineer, thinks that Autism is the next logical evolutionary stage in human development. He says that people with less hang ups about feelings and more logical/spatial/mathematical/scientific abilities would be an improvement.

Having worked with some kids with Asperger's, I can't say that I totally disagree.

re: New Study Says Autism is Environmental

theresa — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:23:09 GMT

Do you have a link to this study?