Comments on: Getting to the Bottom: The Imus Center and the Northvale autism “cluster”

By: What will the Trump Factor do for autism?

What will the Trump Factor do for autism? — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:35:28 +0000

[...] bus, or boat from anywhere in New Jersey). (Yes, the same New Jersey that is said to have an “autism cluster,” is said to be trampling on the rights of the parents of preschoolers for requiring [...]

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:31:57 +0000

Emily, Occam’s razor and Aristotle in the same comment! I think the profession of the parents and their probable greater sensitivity to the learning and other differences of their children may have played some part, as you noted:

the proximal influence on these children appears to be the profession of their parent. Why are they special ed teachers? Do these things occur in their family trees? What is the ratio of offspring with these disorders among special ed teachers in general and how does it compare to these very small numbers in New Jersey? Wouldn’t that rationally be the first place to look rather than rushing to environmental explanations to explain the “cluster”?

And, the numbers are very small. Dr. Rosen had a post about the “cluter” on The Whole Child blog but his post does not seem to be up anymore.

@ Daisy: One thing that stood out to me from reading Grinker’s book is that Charlie’s first 10 years—from 1997 to 2007—overlap with a huge upsurge of information and public awareness (such as it is) about autism. I feel, more and more, that things would have looked very different for Charlie had he been born even a few years earlier.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 03:46:00 +0000

I found Grinker’s book fascinating and understandable. I hadn’t realized (until I read his book) that my child was diagnosed with Asperger’s fairly early in the timeline of the new, updated diagnostic criteria. The difficulty convincing the school district of the need for a referral finally (almost) made sense.

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:12:22 +0000

There are so few phenotypes of disease or disorders that are 100 percent genetic that I’m surprised anyone’s even bothering to equivocate about it. The presence or absence of a given allele is, in most cases, just the beginning of the story. There are so many factors–promoter activity, epigenetic regulation, pre and post transcriptional/translational regulation, modification of the final protein product or its activity or some effect along that pathway–that I’m hard pressed to think of very many genes *at all* that are not subject to environmental influences.

Yes, identical twins who inherit the allele for achondroplasic dwarfism will have quite similar dwarfism phenotypes, but even that may exhibit some variation thanks to environmental modifications. There’s no promise even that two siblings who share the same X chromosome from their father will experience the same genetic influences from that chromosome or even experience them in the same tissues.

Our genes don’t operate in a vacuum. Of course there are environmental influences.

Not to go nuts invoking Occam’s razor here, but the proximal influence on these children appears to be the profession of their parent. Why are they special ed teachers? Do these things occur in their family trees? What is the ratio of offspring with these disorders among special ed teachers in general and how does it compare to these very small numbers in New Jersey? Wouldn’t that rationally be the first place to look rather than rushing to environmental explanations to explain the “cluster”? Are there no ways to rule out what most people think of as “environmental”–i.e., sick building, etc.–by looking at the children of others who taught there? Were these the only people working or who ever have worked in that building while reproducing? These are legitimate, rational questions that ought to be examined without reference to people’s pet ideas about etiologies.

So far, it just looks like anecdotal information without any real scientific investigation (i.e., the scientific method: observe and collect facts, ask question, formulate hypothesis to answer question, design experiments to prove/disprove hypothesis, collect data, draw conclusions). It would seem that here, there has been an Aristotelian leap from observation to conclusion, with little in the way of true experimentation/ruling out/data collection involved.

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:38:02 +0000

I heard Martha Herbert speak at the 2007 Eden Insitute-Princeton conference (one of her final comments was about dolphins and mercury exposure in the ocean, not about autism). She had much to say at the April IOM workshop on the environment not to mention her article in the ASA magazine, the Advocate. Like Deirdre Imus, she is starting from an environmental perspective and this colors her views.

By: Harold L Doherty

Harold L Doherty — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:53:09 +0000

“Because of this, it is all the more necessary for researchers at Ms. Imus’ Center to take into account the extent to which public and professional understanding and awareness of autism, and our tools for diagnosing autism, have evolved and grown over the past few years.”

Indeed. And the role of environment as a contributing factor in causing autism is part of that greater understanding of autism

1.
“Studies of twins have established that it is not 100 per cent genetic, since even among identical twins, when one has autism, the likelihood of both twins having autism is only about 60 per cent. This means there must also be an environmental component, but what it is remains unknown.”

Simon Baron-Cohen, Freedom of Expression, TIMESONLINE, December 14, 2007

2. Dr. Martha Herbert, a Harvard neuroscientist and Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, said a few years ago, autism researchers would be marginalized if they talked about environmental factors. But now, “any major article or proposal concerning the causes of autism is coming to be considered incomplete if it doesn’t talk about a potential role of environmental factors.”

There is little doubt that the 1994 expansion of the DSM autism characterizations and greater autism understanding has contributed significantly to the explosion of autism diagnoses. But the existence of those factors do not necessarily account for the incredible increases we have seen and there are no studies or data to prove that they account for the entire increase. Grinker’s assumptions do not end scientific inquiry with respect to autism and possible environmental factors. The examination of potential environmental contributors to the increases in autism continues.