And there is no "epidemic"

I am particularly interested in the high-functioning, comprehensive adult social skills but no primate social skills variations - people who function just fine in adult environments, but can't play drinky-poo very well, and master fields of study like ordinary people master books.

Just wondering . . .

What's the next boogeyman?

FYI - please forward this over to Age of Autism and NVIC to let them know they are wrong about vaccines. Thanks.

Diagnosis of autism has gone up, mainly due to changes in diagnostic criteria. 'The number of children ages 6 to 21 in the U.S. receiving special education services under the autism disability category increased 91 % between 2005 to 2010 despite fewer children receiving special education services overall during the same time period. I.e. the overall number of children with special educational needs has not increased, but the proportion of these diagnosed as autistic has increased. This is most likely explained by an autism diagnosis now being given to children who might have had a different diagnosis (intellectual impairment, emotional disturbance, language disorder, etc.) in the past.

A recent UK study assessed a large number of people of different ages, and found that about 1 per cent met current diagnosis for autism, and that there was no difference between the rates in children, younger adults, and older adults - contrary to what one would expect if there was indeed a rise in autism. A combination of greater autism awareness, and a change in diagnostic criteria, meant that the children were more likely than the older adults to have been previously diagnosed as autistic.

As regards the HFCS explanation, I think it is fairly unlikely as children generally show symptoms of autism before the age of 2, and will usually not have been exposed to much HFCS by then.

http://grist.org/food/why-that-corn-syrup-and-autism-study-leaves-such-a-sour-taste/

but this is not convincing at all. Lost me around the time it started going on about "mineral imbalances", plus all the handwaving language like "there is a potential for increasing" which means nothing at all.

I am over 50. 40 year old mother. Autistic-spectrum clearly visible by age 3. Severe allergic reaction to cow's milk, shortly after birth. No HFCS here. I was studied by shrinks in school, but never diagnosed autistic/aspergers (aspergers didn't exist in English) so I know I wasn't in their statistics. I played with mercury a bunch when I was a kid, but that was long afterwards. If I weren't autistic spectrum, I wouldn't have been INTERESTED in playing with mercury.

But.

By the paper's definition (autism is defined by a common set of behaviors, including, but not limited to, observed deficits in nonverbal and verbal communication, lack of social reciprocity, and failure to develop and maintain appropriate peer relationships) I wasn't autistic. Peer relationships didn't really fail until adolescence.

They don't have a cause, nor a definition except a list of symptoms. So the connection between this gene variant (D’Amelio et al. found paraoxonase-1 (PON1) gene variants associated with autism in subgroups of the U. S. population but not in Italy) is tenuous at best, in that subgroups in the US do not have it, and no one in Italy has it, yet they all have autistic symptoms.

There are lots of fascinating little random bits in the study. Taking vitamins before/during pregnancy reduces your chances of having a kid that has autism from this particular gene misexpression. It's easy and cheap. But we don't know if it helps for Italians, it's only tested against the growing autism in America.

But it also seems apparent that there's a handful of autism that isn't caused by this gene at all - that's why this contributes to a larger number in America whereas the number isn't rising in Italy.

Without better evidence either way, and given the weakness of the symptom method of definition, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that that autism caused by this gene and other forms of autism are completely different phenomena, which just happen to affect the same part of development. Because it certainly seems to be the case that all 'autistics' are NOT similar to each other.