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Causes of Autism
Mayo Clinic ^ | NA | Mayo Clinic Staff

Posted on 12/17/2017 4:39:27 AM PST by Neoliberalnot

Autism spectrum disorder has no single known cause. Given the complexity of the disorder, and the fact that symptoms and severity vary, there are probably many causes. Both genetics and environment may play a role.

Genetics. Several different genes appear to be involved in autism spectrum disorder. For some children, autism spectrum disorder can be associated with a genetic disorder, such as Rett syndrome or fragile X syndrome. For other children, genetic changes (mutations) may increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder. Still other genes may affect brain development or the way that brain cells communicate, or they may determine the severity of symptoms. Some genetic mutations seem to be inherited, while others occur spontaneously. Environmental factors. Researchers are currently exploring whether factors such as viral infections, medications or complications during pregnancy, or air pollutants play a role in triggering autism spectrum disorder.

(Excerpt) Read more at mayoclinic.org ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Science
KEYWORDS: autism; causes; deceptions; vaccinations
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To: floridavoter2
If it can be caused by environmental factors then why not vaccines as well?? Truly just wondering.

Chemicals in the environment affect hormone expression (that is, the amount of hormone in the blood) and can have direct neurological effects.

In order to understand why vaccines cannot possibly cause autism, you have to understand what vaccines are and how they work.

Vaccines consist of a killed or attenuated pathogen, or of proteins extracted from a pathogen. The immune system recognizes them as if they are the pathogen, and responds accordingly. The vaccines have no capacity to actually cause disease. This is important in the discussion of autism, because the *only* way that a vaccine could cause autism is if it had the same effect on the brain that a live pathogen has. Assuming that the disease being vaccinated against affects the brain (like meningitis), the proteins in the vaccine would have to actually enter the brain to be able to cause that effect. But they can't do that, because vaccines are not injected into the brain. In addition, the toxins from pathogens are detoxified when made into vaccines, so they do not and cannot have the same effect on the body that the actual pathogen has.

Since a vaccine would have to mimic a pathogen that affects the brain in order to cause brain damage, the obvious conclusion here is that vaccination against that pathogen would decrease brain damage, by preventing the illness that causes neurological damage.

Another consideration is that if the immune response to a vaccine were capable of causing autism, then the immune response to the disease being prevented would cause autism. Since the immune response to a disease is typically far more severe than the immune response to a vaccine, if this were the case, then we should have seen a massive drop in the number of autism cases corresponding to the roll-out of childhood vaccinations. We (meaning the scientific community, of which I am a member) have not seen this, so there probably is no connection between immune responses and autism.

There is some evidence that pregnant women who develop fevers during pregnancy have higher chances of giving birth to autistic children. So, vaccinating them against diseases that cause fevers would actually decrease the incidence of autism. I'm not sure how strong this link is, between fever and autism.

101 posted on 12/17/2017 6:35:10 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: Hammerhead

No doubt that is involved with all kinds of congenital problems too.


102 posted on 12/17/2017 6:36:18 AM PST by Neoliberalnot (MSM is our greatest threat. Disney, Comcast, Hollywood, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, NBC, CBS...)
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To: Morgana

Morgana , I am interested to see a link to an article that involves stem cells in vaccines. Please post it.


103 posted on 12/17/2017 6:38:38 AM PST by Neoliberalnot (MSM is our greatest threat. Disney, Comcast, Hollywood, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, NBC, CBS...)
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To: MD Expat in PA

I have an unusual ability that people’s consciousness and stored memories since conception are physical objects to my senses.

This ability is utilized to research how consciousness interfaces with the physical body, through the peripheral nervous system to the CNS.

LOL, I’ve demonstrated it to people like you in a university setting and they freaked out as it undermined their narrow closed mind belief system and rattled their self identity.

It’s all science...


104 posted on 12/17/2017 6:40:01 AM PST by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: DaveA37
I have strong opinions of what causes (or contributes) to autism as my grandson, now 21 was perfectly fine until he hit the age of 3 then all hell broke loose and he started getting his immunizations. Don’t get me started!

The symptoms of autism in very young babies are extremely subtle and most parents do not recognize them. For that matter, most physicians do not recognize them, either. The symptoms start becoming apparent when children start missing major milestones, such as saying their first words, etc.

What parents may interpret as just a quirk of their child may, in fact, be an early symptom of autism.

Autism has nothing to do with vaccines, but it really feeds into the anti-vaxxers' efforts to stop parents from vaccinating their children. Keep in mind that anti-vaxxer leaders are trying to stop population growth, and believe that causing more children to die of preventable diseases will achieve that goal. They won't tell you that they don't want you to vaccinate your kid because they want your kid to die--instead they use lies to try to fear you into refusing to vaccinate. They have much similarity to the global warmists who see "global warming" as a tool to impose socialist dictatorship on us, since we've rejected all of their attempts to get us to accept it at face value.

105 posted on 12/17/2017 6:42:52 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: Vaquero

In average years, flu kills about 36000 people in the US annually. Most of the victims are in the PIG categories, Pediatric, Immunocompromised, and Geriatric. The 1918 flu killed 675,00O in the US and somewhere between 50-100 million worldwide. No vaccine was available in 1918. What other modern technologies do you oppose? Electronics?


106 posted on 12/17/2017 6:44:34 AM PST by Neoliberalnot (MSM is our greatest threat. Disney, Comcast, Hollywood, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, NBC, CBS...)
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To: redangus

People get all manner of diseases throughout life.


107 posted on 12/17/2017 6:46:18 AM PST by Neoliberalnot (MSM is our greatest threat. Disney, Comcast, Hollywood, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, NBC, CBS...)
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To: Chainmail

Metal poisoning, same symptoms.

Mad hatters syndrome.


108 posted on 12/17/2017 6:48:27 AM PST by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: Neoliberalnot

Not wanting a child is perceived as rejection and knocks the person backward when I touch the stored memory. This does not mean that they were not a good caring and loving mother through the childs life. It is stored based upon the experience at that specific moment.

Lack of emotional availability is perceived by the child in the womb as abandonment and the person falls forward, toward me when I touch the stored memory.

They have different influences on personality development.


109 posted on 12/17/2017 6:50:20 AM PST by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: stanne
Multiple Vaccines taken together might not cause it but is a practice which is at least senseless and uneccessary

If you really are a registered nurse, as you claim, then you know that the quantity of antigens that a child receives in vaccinations, even if they get several together in one visit to the vaccine clinic, is nothing next to the quantity of antigens that they are exposed to on a daily basis.

A few dozen antigens from vaccines.

A few hundred thousand antigens from crawling around on the floor all day and then sticking those dirty little fingers into the mouth. Or from sticking anything that fits in the baby's hand into the mouth.

There is no evidence that immune responses cause autism. If they did, then the rates of autism would be several orders of magnitude higher than what we actually see.

110 posted on 12/17/2017 6:51:59 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: Morgana

Amazing that the U.S. has soooooooooooooooooooo much autisim and few other countries DO NOT. Don’t get me started.


111 posted on 12/17/2017 6:52:27 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: Tax-chick

Yes, for example it helps to be a bit anal as a tax preparer!

Before you take that comment personally, I am also a CPA. LOL...


112 posted on 12/17/2017 6:52:57 AM PST by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: momtothree

I had my first child at 24 and my 10th at 45. The two who are the most peculiar were born when I was 30 (Tom) and 35 (Pat).

I could say this proves that it’s having children in your THIRTIES (not 20s or 40s) that causes autism, but I know the different between an isolated data point and proof of causation.

For those (not you) to whom “It makes sense to me,” is all that is needed to “prove” something, here’s a theory of causation: Mothers in their 30s, in the aggregate, are better educated than mothers in their 20s, and they tend to have fewer children overall. Therefore, the mother in her 30s has more knowledge about the system of testing and diagnosis and has more money and time to spend on it than the younger mother. The younger mother is more likely just to say, “He’s a little different, but oh well”; therefore, her child is not diagnosed.

On the other hand, the mother in her 40s probably has a lot of children and/or is involved in caring for her elderly and infirm parents. Therefore she doesn’t have the time and resources to devote to getting a diagnosis for a child who’s a bit weird.

SCIENCE! Gotta love it.


113 posted on 12/17/2017 6:55:49 AM PST by Tax-chick ("The world is a dangerous place, and it's more dangerous if you have something worth stealing."~KW)
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To: tired&retired

I was great at my tax job because I could not be bored by detailed and repetitive work. I loved filling out the same forms, day after week after month after quarter after year, and having the totals all balance.

I also do counted cross-stitch for fun.


114 posted on 12/17/2017 6:58:01 AM PST by Tax-chick ("The world is a dangerous place, and it's more dangerous if you have something worth stealing."~KW)
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To: MissEdie
Regarding the belief of a correlation of vaccines and this disorder, I have worked with many parents who say prior to their child receiving a vaccine their child was completely normal.

I believe that you are seeing a classic example of confirmation bias. They probably saw the behaviors prior to the vaccinations and dismissed them as quirks, or maybe did not even recognize them as abnormal. But they started noticing the behaviors after the vaccinations--maybe because they had to get their children vaccinated prior to school or preschool, and now they observe other children whose behavior is normal. They see that their child is not normal, and they've heard the (very discredited) claims of a vaccine-autism link. So they conclude (wrongly) that the vaccines caused their child's problems when, in reality, the problems were there all along. It's classic confirmation bias.

115 posted on 12/17/2017 6:59:07 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: Tax-chick

“nerds mating syndrome.”

That may be very real. Remember, economists have a no better than chance success at predicting the future, but are excellent at knowing the real reason why something did happen.

Autism came on strongly when women started attending graduate school. Before then, women would graduate from undergraduate programs in more general disciplines, such as ‘history’ or ‘English’. They would then marry men with more STEM degrees.

There was no better than a chance possibility of a man who majored in a ‘hard science’, marring a woman in the same field, and since there were so few women in the ‘hard as opposed to ‘soft’ disciplines, such marriages were rare.

Then, as the graduate schools opened up to women, couples who were both studying high levels of Chemistry, Law, Math or some other hard science, to the exclusion of other subjects, would date each other, marry and have children.

They are then producing children, such as the Rain Man, who are spectacularly skilled in one area, but bereft in all others, i.e. Autism

Two lawyer friends have 3 Autistic children. A couple who both have masters in math have two such children as well.

There may be something very real to this “nerds mating syndrome.”


116 posted on 12/17/2017 7:03:09 AM PST by Strac6 ("Mrs. Strac, Pilatus, and Sig Sauer: All the fun things in my life are Swiss!")
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To: momtothree
It's a matter of statistics. The article itself points out that older women run a higher risk of bearing an autistic child. If the risk is greater and more women are taking the risk, logically and mathematically one would be justified in anticipating a larger number of autistic children.
117 posted on 12/17/2017 7:04:09 AM PST by monocle
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To: Neoliberalnot

They’re testing for the efficacy of the drugs on the virus. They are apparently not testing for the effects of their new toys, screwing up ones immune system to the point of making them sicker than the virus would.

You are smug and happy with vaccines as they haven’t affected you. I would not wish my chronic form of Guillain–Barré on anyone. But it’s often a struggle not to, for people with blinders on.


118 posted on 12/17/2017 7:08:09 AM PST by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: MD Expat in PA
I told my nice that I thought it was a sign that Lili was actually quite smart, and I was right, she is. Now 9 years old, she is not at all Autistic but she does march to her own beat, she’s a bit of a tomboy and seems to have inherited her father’s love of all things mechanical, and there is nothing wrong with that.

That's an awesome story, and shows up some limitations in the screening for early childhood learning disabilities. Sometimes, a genius child comes across as disabled because their behaviors are so different from those of other children.

I was a "different" child. I did not speak until the age of four. I spent a lot of time by myself. I was very mechanically minded, and I amused myself by playing with mathematics. By the age of eleven, I had figured out elements of calculus on my own, and only recognized that when I took calculus in college. My notation was different, but the functions were the same.

In today's world, I would likely have been diagnosed with some sort of learning disability and pumped up with drugs. Thank God, the doctor my mother took me to (when I wasn't speaking) recommended that she read to me more and left it at that. Plus, we were too poor to do anything fancy. I pretty much was free to develop naturally. So I eventually got the PhD and now oversee several medical research studies...

119 posted on 12/17/2017 7:08:42 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: Justa
It all went normal, nothing of note, perfect vitals, no known conditions, etc. At the end of the interview I asked the nurse if she thought the vaccine had anything to do with the baby’s death. She became anxious, then in a low voice, almost in a whisper said “we’re not supposed to talk about that”.

Correlation is not causation. The fact is that a certain number of babies die from SIDS, and that, statistically, a proportion of those deaths are going to occur within a short time frame from a vaccination.

If the parents have kept to the recommended vaccination schedule, then any child who dies of SIDS before they are six months old has had a vaccine within the last two months. But that means nothing--SIDS has been around since long before vaccines. The research into causes is still on-going, but we aren't at the point of understanding it yet.

120 posted on 12/17/2017 7:16:28 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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