Saturday, May 5, 2018

Autism and the Environment: Defining Away Risks to Human Well Being


This morning in the Wall Street Journal I saw an article titled, "Shifting Standards Cloud Autism's Prognosis" addressing the statistical increase in autism diagnoses and the imminent move by the CDC to redefine autism more narrowly, with the expected effect of lower reported incidents:
Jo Craven McGinty (May 4, 2018). On Autism, Shifting U.S. standards cloud the number of cases. The Wall Street Journal. Available https://www.wsj.com/articles/on-autism-shifting-u-s-standards-cloud-the-number-of-cases-152544601
The latest report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses two sets. One shows a growing number of children with autism. The other, when strictly applied, identifies 18% fewer cases.  For now, the report, which was published last week, gives priority to the looser standard, but when the CDC issues its next report two years from now, the more stringent measure will take precedence
Although I don't deny that diagnostic practices play a role in constructing autism incidents, I also believe that there is a REAL increase in autism, Pervasive Development Disorder, and generalized anxiety among American children that is not simply a function of physicians' categorizations.


In 2005 I published a book titled,Constructing Autism: Unravelling the Truth and Understand the Socialhttp://www.amazon.com/Constructing-Autism-Unravelling-Understanding-Social/dp/0415321816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309889747&sr=8-1

In this book I examine the research on autism and conclude that autism is primarily an environmental disease. Here are some of my conclusions forwarded in that book and my subsequent work on autism:

1. Autism is heterogeneous, meaning not all people who have the label autism have the same underlying biological condition. The good news about autism is that people change over their lifespan and early intervention and accommodations can make very important differences in quality of life and independence levels for people with autism.

The bad news is more and more kids are being diagnosed with autism and environmental factors are probably largely responsible.

2. The human brain is very complicated and many environmental factors may cause disruptions in neurological development in utero, including viruses and a wide array of environmental pollutants including a range of chemicals and, I now believe, ionizing radiation.

Genes play a role but the catalyst for genetic disruptions (including de novo mutations and harmful epigenetic changes), I believe, are primarily environmental.

3. Exclusively genetic explanations (devoid of environmental mediations) for autism were pursued scientifically because there exist a range of economic and political reinforcers for genetic explanations, while environmental research is difficult to fund because it is unpopular with industry. Bio-medical researchers who don't get grants typically don't get tenure.

4. Research on autism has failed to find a clear autism genotype, although several replicable findings in the literature point to environmental exposures that produce DE NOVO mutations found in higher frequency in people with autism compared to their parents and unaffected sibilings.

I argue that ionizing radiation may produce de novo mutations that have been strongly correlated with autism.

5. I have also suggested that certain genes may be more susceptible to environmental hazards. For example, research indicates that NK CD 56 cells are very radiosensitive and they have also been implicated as dysfunctional in children with autism. Maybe there is a connection here? (See my post here: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/autism-and-environment.html).

6. Additionally, certain bodily systems are more radiosensitive, such as the thyroid gland. Autism rates in California and thyroid issues in infants both increased after Fukushima's fallout rained out over that state: See my discussion here: Majia's Blog: Sharp Increase in Autism Rate Among Californi
a ...

7. Changing diagnostic practices by narrowing the criteria for autism will simply shift incidents to other categorizations, such as Pervasive Development Disorder, which will likely become the new catch all for describing children with disturbed and/or delayed development.

8. Neurological diseases are growing in incidents in children and adults. We may define them away diagnostically but the impacts will still be felt socially.

RELATED POSTS

Majia's Blog: De Novo Mutations, Autism, and Congenital Heart ...
majiasblog.blogspot.com/.../de-novo-mutations-autism-and-congenital.ht...‎

Majia's Blog: Mutations: Germ Line Mosaicism
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/mutations-germ-line-mosaicism.html‎May 23, 2012 – [excerpted] 

Majia's Blog: Genetic Reductionism in Autism: Deliberate ...
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/genetic-reductionism-in-autism.html‎

burdening the species with genetic mutations: we are ... - Majia's Blog
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/burdening-species-with-genetic.html‎

Majia's Blog: Ionizing Radiation and Germ Cell Damage: Link to ...
majiasblog.blogspot.com/.../ionizing-radiation-and-germ-cell-damage.ht...‎

Majia's Blog: Autism and Radiation
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/autism-and-radiation.html‎

Majia's Blog: Autism and the Environment
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/autism-and-environment.html‎

Majia's Blog: Autism and Exposure to Excess Ionizing Radiation: Is ...
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/autism-and-exposure-to-excess-ionizing.html?...

Majia's Blog: Autism, Neoliberalism and the Environment
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/autism-neoliberalism-and-environment.html

Majia's Blog: Autism and the Environment: Let's Study Radiation
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/autism-and-environment-lets-study.html
Majia's Blog: Neurological Diseases in Adults Growing
majiasblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/neurological-diseases-in-adults-growing.html
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11 comments:

  1. Partial pressure co2 in the atmosphere is now 400ppm. We burn 5 quadrillion barrels of oil a year. Some fool may say co2 was 7000 in the cambrian but humans did not live then. We hac unique physiological tolerences. We are all going insane. I think when co2 is 425 everybody on earth will be so demented they will not be able to think right, function, or be rational any more. Most are insane pack animals that follow more insane alpha monkeys that tell everyone to murder and massacre each other anyway. When u add up the heavy metal, the chemicals, the radionuclides, the methane, carbon monoxide that we breath eat and drink, it is well beyond what all humans can tolerate and stay healthy and sane. It is so far out of any normal range of functioning. IT is into the range of poisoning, lethality, cognitive dysfunction, massive morbidity, we think therefore we are, and soon we will not think and therefore we will not be.

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  2. My grandad was half kiowa. His father married a native american lady, to expand his spread. She was his last wife. The other two died in child-birth. All, so he could have more slave kids to work his spread. May grandad ran away from home at age 12.

    I am a westerner. I used to think the west was so grand! My family is from the west. Places like Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and yes parts of California.

    Later, i realized, our frikin government, used the west as a sacrifice zone for open air nuclear bomb testing, biological and chemical warfare testing, uranium mining and processing, nuclear bomb testing.

    I have been to every native nation in the west and, most in Alaska as a professional. No sane person thinks the anglos did the west any favors!

    People ask me if natives or, even anglos are better off from the europeans coming in and taking america. The anglos used their rascist-Monroe Doctrine, as an excuse for the environmental destruction and genocides of the once pristine, western United States!

    In the end, is the west better off? Hell no! They ruined turtle island, and the whole northern hemisphere with their insanity!

    Shockley was the dumnest, white rascist ever! He might have helped invent transisters, but the genetics of Europeans and Americans are forever ruined, by the white evil-war-monkey obession, with the magic rocks.

    There are very few radionuclide toxicologists in the world because, of the nuclear cosa nostra. Radionuclides are a billion times more genotoxic, teratogenic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, than the most dangerous manmade-mutagenic, chemicals, like agent orange.

    Anything factual about radionuclides is verboten! Environmental health professionals, are pariahs in the war-monging, capitalist-paradigm. Health physics is nuclearist propaganda. Superior Northern-European culture and technology, is a sick-cosmic-joke.

    The northern europeans culture, with it’s insane blood-lust and psychopathy, has made Europeans genetically inferior and, That’s a Fact Jack! That is the cruel irony.

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    1. Have you tried living in the Middle East? Or Valenzuela or China? Flawed though America is it still is probably the best place to live in terms of freedoms. However, it is in style now to condemn the USA and the persons who do this persist in continuing to live here despite occasional threats of leaving. I doubt the genetics of Europeans are forever ruined. Where did you get such an idea?

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  3. People have been saying for years, that wikileaks is prbly a cia or nsa sock puppet. They did not disclose anything that has done anything to stop the butchering in the middle east.

    https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/the-evil-trio-from-mccarthy-to-trump-via-watergate-reagan-bush-cohn-stone-manafort-2/
    "Stone tried to get Trump to run as early as 1999. Stone was first an official and then a shadow advisor to Trump in the last Presidential campaign. Stone reportedly has a friend in London who was in contact with Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Thus, the timing of the latest Wikileaks dump, in conjunction with Trump’s counterattack tweet, should truly come as no surprise"

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    1. Willy rides this train. So does donny trump, the repukes and that bus of
      Clowns
      Rank and File the conduductor wore black https://youtu.be/w5qAL5TygW8




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  4. "Pervasive Developmental Disorder" is the language of satire but in the wide world of psychology and psychiatry there are no Jonathan Swifts. The family living next door to me have a autistic or Asperger's son who is in his early teens? A very restless fellow who jogs around the home and avoids contact with strangers like me--though he has seen me now for over three years. I know his parents and the oldest son and the youngest, a daughter, are fine. They used to live in Florida. I suspect vaccinations more than anything else. We would already know were it not for the financial problems the truth would bring. The gap between the conventional doctor and nutritionist and the alternative is getting increasingly large.

    I suspect that at least half of the mysteries in the medical world are such for reasons having to do with various industries. I am sure a few know the causes and have been silenced by threats.

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  6. Please be civil in disagreeing. Thank you

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  7. Saw a couple yesterday who took their autistic child to an Oriental Medicine doctor who did chelation on the child. They mentioned that it was to remove mercury from vaccines. The child's autism symptoms went away.

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    1. Chelation may be helpful in some cases, particularly when lead poisoning is involved, but is also very DANGEROUS and should only be performed by MEDICAL EXPERTS.

      Chelation gone wrong can kill!

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