Welcome! This site can be easily viewed with a PDA or a mobile phone. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“Its autism, your child has autism!”.

This is one of those sentences that parents dread to hear. I know this from personal experience, because my first born child, my son was diagnosed autistic at one year old with complications of petit mal epilepsy. It seems we were keeping up with statistics because autism is more common in boys than girls.

Inevitably, when the shock has begun to wear off, the next question is invariably what causes autism? Truthfully, there are a number of answers to this question, not one definitive one.

One line of thought from doctors is that some people are predisposed towards autism. In other words some people are genetically susceptible to the condition. Current medical belief is that there are several genes that may cause autism, how ever they have not yet been identified.

More common is the belief that autism has been caused by faulty vaccinations. In my own case, my son had just been vaccinated when the condition appeared. Up to this point everything had appeared normal. Of course doctors were reluctant to blame vaccination, but over the years I have learned that several other people from the roughly the same area were affected by autism following vaccination in the same month. Before trying for a second child we took extensive counselling in this area, eventually deciding that our second child would not be vaccinated with the whooping cough vaccine. We had a girl, and thankfully she has been fine.

It is believed that Thimersal or Mercury in vaccines may be responsible for at the onset of autism, but to date there has been no hard and fast evidence to suggest that connection. Unfortunately Mercury can also be found in foods such as fish due to factory emissions, so researchers also think there could be a connection to pregnant woman being exposed to Mercury and their children developing autism.

Other studies show that there may be a connection between autism and environmental factors. These studies have shown that small towns with a source of high pollution, such as a factory that releases toxins into the air, have high incidences of autism. Other suggestions have included that high levels of Radon in local soil may also be responsible. Radom has been known to cause mutations in DNA, and also is known to be responsible for incidence of lung cancer in people who have received high exposure.

Other theories suggest that autism may be caused by a health issue as certain diseases can increase the chances of a child developing autism. Congenital rubella caught by a pregnant mother, or a young child may cause the child to develop the condition.

However most progress seems to have been made in the area of alcohol. There seems to be a definite connection between the consumption of alcohol by a woman who is pregnant, and their child later becoming artistic, particularly if alcohol is abused during pregnancy.

Years ago or many of these factors were not recognized, so actually trying to come to terms with what causes the condition has been difficult. One theory which has been proved to be false is that autism has been caused by an early emotional trauma. Doctors had at one point tried to blame mothers for not giving their children enough attention and love. Thankfully, at least that theory has been thrown out.

For the moment progress is being made in discovering the causes of autism, but it will be some time yet before all the causes of the condition are revealed.

To get ‘The Essential Guide to Autism’ go here

Tags: autism, causes of autism, autistic, what causes autism

Add to Onlywire