Comments on: Autism and…maternal obesity?

By: visit

visit — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 01:04:19 +0000

seeming Did this look alright to you? my hobby

By: IGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States

IGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 02:35:25 +0000

BTW, Michael Fumento has written knowledgeably and sensibly on Autism and the Vaccine Idea.

By: Henry Bowman

Henry Bowman — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:55:41 +0000

There is absolutely no science whatsoever in claims that autism is dramatically higher now than in the past. Beliefs of such are based on the voodoo "science" of epidemiology and are beliefs based on something other than scientific methodology. That said, it is possible that the incidence of autism is higher now than in the past. One of the few things that we actually know, however, is that the method of diagnosing autism has changed substantially over the past 50-60 years, in ways that cannot easily be quantified.

By: Tina Laczko

Tina Laczko — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:02:32 +0000

The article about the study was vague. Was it 1000 autistic children or just 1000 children? If it was 1000 children and we use the 1 in 10 figure for autism, that is 100 autistic kids.

Sample-size wise, this is not a very good study to determine any risk factors. What is the normal distribution of 100 mothers’s weights? Are 67 pct obese in the general populace?

Too many questions and sketchy data.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:26:47 +0000

Autism is a version of the idiot savant abilities. Deficiencies in what we consider normal, but higher than normal abilities in the things that we used to use for survival: combat abilities, fighting, visual perception, etc.

I attribute the rising rates to more accurate diagnosis (or more inaccurate false positives), combined with the fact that the talents of autistic individuals don’t really have a survival factor in modern life at least.

used to be nobody cared if you could read or write or do anything like that, but only whether you could work or whether you could outfight 10 normal soldiers.

By: Surellin

Surellin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:23:08 +0000

I think a conceptual problem here for many people is regarding autism as a disease rather than a symptom. There may be quite a number of causes for autistic behavior, and looking for the One Big Cause so that we can make a vaccine for it or whatever is probably futile.

By: Nolanimrod

Nolanimrod — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:36:34 +0000

James Watson, in his book Avoid Boring People suggested aging sperm cells as a culprit, said the Y chromosome was a particularly fragile fellow (are there more male autistics?), and recommended men in their teens and twenties have some sperm frozen for later use.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:20:57 +0000

Said it before: when I got out of OCS at 6’2″, 205, I was underfed, overworked and could whip a tiger, except if a tiger had looked me in the eye, he’d have slunk away. If he was smart.
According to current tables, I was overweight. My father, supposedly the fastest end in the league UConn was in before WW II, would have been overweight at 6’1 1/2″, 185.
Yeah. It’s bullshit, prepping the battle space for a new restriction on our freedom–for our own good, natch.
Anybody recall kids being taken off to ER by the busload when somebody’s lunch included a PB&J? Me either. That’s new.
But when you take into account more scrupulous, or unscrupulous, diagnostic efforts, the number of diagnoses is bound to rise. Whether that reflects reality is another question. Recent history shows us that if activists need numbers, activists will get numbers.
It’s been said that in the old days, whatever that means, there were peculiar kids. Now they’re part of a DRG. Great.
Have a friend whose son has Charge Syndrome, autism plus numerous physical challenges. She was greatly relieved when, after years of guilt, she found that the drug she’d taken for whatever–cold, I think–during pregnancy didn’t have any connection to her son’s affliction.
If you don’t have iron-clad proof on steroids, you’re a miserable bastard blaming mothers, or parents in general for their kids’ catastrophic problems.

By: LisaM

LisaM — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 02:01:22 +0000

There might be something to it. But then again it might just be another salvo by leftists trying to convince us that what what we weigh is society’s business, and so they get to tell us what we can and can’t eat.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:46:05 +0000

Thanks for the link to your previous article – that was interesting too; especially where you said:

” . . . And yes, just as one might expect, as autism diagnoses have risen, mental retardation diagnoses have declined.”

I worked with a woman a few years back whose young son had recently been diagnosed as having autism. She wasn’t too sure the diagnosis was correct; but it allowed for her son to get all sorts of extras at his school that he would not have gotten without that diagnosis.

As with so many things one has to follow the money to see what the real motives are.