Genetic or Environmental? The Autism Debate Continues

A recent headline from USA News states Genes - Not Vaccines - Linked to Autism and follows it up with New studies reveal a genetic cause and find no connection to shots containing thimerosal. It's a step in the right direction that scientists have found that chromosome 16 contains abnormalities that are found in one percent of autism. One percent. That means that out of the approximate 8000 new cases of autism that will be reported this year in the United States alone, only 80 of those cases will have this genetic abnormality. Up until now only ten percent of autism cases could be explained by a condition known as Fragile X Syndrome. That means there is an explanation now for eleven percent of all autism cases. What about the other 89%?

Headlines such as this one from USA News are misleading and just another example of how the media doesn't report things fairly without bias. I am not saying that vaccines are to blame for autism. I haven't taken a stance one way or the other on the causes of autism, even though I am a parent with two autistic children. Doctors determined years ago that in our family autism is probably genetic. My son was determined to be autistic before vaccine causation became an issue. The same thing probably would have been said about my daughter had someone actually listened to me in the beginning instead of calling me an over-reactive parent. None of that is either here nor there though. I don't really care what caused my children's autism, what I care about is helping them learn to compensate for their disability and making sure that they have a chance in life.

Something else that I care about is the way that the government and the media present things to us. The Associated Press reported in the Boston Channel a much better look at this recent study, stating right out that this chromosome 16 abnormality is a rare genetic glitch and explained it. A segment of chromosome 16 related to brain development was either missing or duplicated more often in autistic people. In the study that was done of 1,441 children it was found that a 25-gene segment was missing in five children and seemed to be a random accident and that in six children they found a duplication of chromosome 16 that was also found in the parents. This study confirms what has been found in previous studies done in Canada and Iceland. It is still only one percent. That isn't a big number. That means we still haven't taken a big step in tracking down what has caused tsunami of autism cases and we are still no closer to finding out.

During the beginning of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings last year, a hearing in Federal Vaccine Court to prove causation of the vaccine-thimersol connection in autism that will not be concluded until September of this year, I spoke with journalist David Kirby and author of Evidence of Harm. I asked him the same question that I previously asked Scott Bono of the National Autism Association. How many cases of mercury poisoning are being called autism? That question could easily be changed to heavy metal poisoning and just not limited to mercury. Both Mr. Bono and Mr. Kirby told me basically the same thing. "That is a good question. We don't know. Those studies have not been done."

Misdiagnosis is nothing new in medicine. So many diseases and conditions have the same symptoms. It makes sense that there are children with heavy metal poisoning that has been classified as autism because it would explain why chelating works with some children and not others. Medical science still wants to call results from chelating anecdotal because no studies have been done. It's just what some parents have learned on their own. It's the same with diet changes. Many parents have reported the development of speech in previously non-verbal children who were diagnosed as autistic after removing gluten from the diet. I can report the same development in speech in one of my children after removing gluten, but she doesn't have autism, she has celiac disease, a condition that is more often than not misdiagnosed or missed all together.

The argument over vaccines or genetics has divided the autism community for years. Research has taken on a competitive nature, with proponents on each side trying to prove the other side wrong, instead of looking at all the possibilities. One percent of all autism cases being caused by a rare genetic abnormality does not vindicate vaccines, heavy metal poisoning or any other theory. A visit to internet support groups already shows the debate is continuing to wage. What causes that random variation in some of the children where their parents don't have the same markers? All that scientists have done is prove that some children have a genetic susceptibility. The want to know what triggers it.