We legally allow immigration of 900,000 people a year, not to mention illegals. Disease seem to be more prevalent in countries that do not have clean water supplies and un-sanitary living conditions. Allowing people in from these countries you are bound to have more diseases.

My son is autistic and had a severe reaction (high fever and sick for several days) each time he was vaccinated. When I brought this up to his doctor, she said it had nothing to do with the vaccine, and I told her how could it not when he in not normally sick and he gets sick immediately after he gets vaccinated.

At the 2 year vaccination he once a again had a high fever and a seisure and he then lost all eye contact and social skills.

I thought my son had an allergic reation. I felt it may be heriditary, so I did not have my other son vaccinated. I was told by the doctor that it was impossible for my other son to be allergic. I do not agree with the doctor. My neighbors son is severly allergic to strawberrys. Another friend allergic to the sun. I was allergic to wool. You can have an allergic reaction to anything.

Keep campaigning against general anesthetics!

If you completely disagree on every point, then back it up. Don’t even worry about the whole list, just answer two of my five points. Give me a) and d). Tell me what is the phenotype for autism, and show me where the causes of autism have been identified.

There are standard clinical parameters used for testing autism. Now, they’re still being updated as we learn more about it, but once more you’re insisting on perfectly knowledge before we’re allowed to use it.

We don’t NEED to know why something works before we use it (although sure, it’s useful) – to this day, we do not have a clear picture, for example, of why general anesthetics work (!). There have been theories for over a century, but none of them currently can explain their action.

Moreover, there most certainly ARE effective treatments. As a disorder which appears to have a complex range of genetic and environmental triggers, the correct approach for treatment varies between individuals.

You’re challenging the entire basis of mental health diagnosis and treatment, your comment about “mildly retarded” comes up again…you want to throw away decades of evidence and go back to stereotypes!

You’ve got me wrong. Take alcoholism as an example.

I don’t “deny” that there are people who drink to excess and sometimes even ruin their lives doing it. I don’t deny that, whatever may be happening to such people, it seems to be something other than a question of ordinary willpower. If you want to call it a disease colloquially speaking, I wouldn’t deny you that usage.

But, I do deny that science has so far done anything of the following things:

a) clearly defined the phenotype
b) developed a detection test
c) developed an exclusion test
d) identified a cause or causes
e) developed an effective treatment

I’d say the exact same for what is called “autism”, without denying that there are children who suffer from a pattern of symptoms that deserve the fullest scientific attention.

Please try to put aside your past disagreement with me for a moment. Is there any point among those listed a) through e) where you would dispute me?

Genetics is merely one factor to consider.

I cannot stress this enough, but when a phenotype isn’t clearly defined, even the best researchers working with the best tools and technology will be unable to track a disease. If you can’t say what a disease is within fairly narrow limits of specificity, then you can’t say who has that disease and who does not. If you can’t say that, you can’t even do a simple pedigree.

These days, the only thing that defines autism is…the incredible elasticity of its definition. Every time the diagnostic net loosens, it becomes that much harder to search for or find real answers.

This isn’t rare in genetic diseases, of course. Schizophrenia is another.

In both cases, this is something under active study.

I’d also point out that there are often ways to avoid disease states without active treatment, for inherited disease – for example, programs which warn people, fairly early in dating, that they are both carriers of something like Tay-Sachs (a significant chance of a kid with an infant-onset, fatal disease).

(Incidentally, Tay-Sachs is also an issue among the Cajun and French Canadian community, both via founder effect again)

“I think you’re missing that some people here are defending free speech principles, not advocating an epistemological relativism. One can consistently say McCarthy has a right to her opinion (on grounds of free speech/freedom of conscience) and that her opinion is rubbish, harmful, and that she should be scorned or ostracized because of it.”

Supporting that people have a right to voice a (stupid, immoral, wrong, fact-free or recalcitrant in the face of facts) opinion is a different thing than saying that people have the right to an opinion.

The second one is almost exclusively used to give a free pass to someone who would otherwise be rightfully scorned and ostracized for disseminating bullshit, but very often continuing to disseminate bullshit on a Wednesday when they were proved to be completely wrong on the previous Monday.

In which case they are not only wrong but also either hell-bent on deceiving others, or just deceiving themselves.

I have no problem with people having a right to spout bullshit. However, the bullshit itself has no special epistemological status merely because it’s categorized as “an opinion”.

Especially when people tend not to keep their bullshit opinions to themselves, but also act on them in a way that may damage others.

That would be fine and good if there was a genetic test for autism. The phenotype for a disease like autism is poorly defined and the clinical definition of said phenotype has in fact changed substantially in recent years.

Leon is correct that diseases like Tay-Sachs can be tracked, and indeed a big part of genetic research is looking for insular populations like the Amish and Ashkenazi Jews to track such diseases. It just so happens that autism isn’t a disease that can be tracked that way.

There are family-based studies in these populations for other poorly defined disease phenotypes, such as schizophrenia, where scientists are attempting to identify the genetic factors that contribute to disease. I’m not sure if such studies exist specifically for autism. However, there is, as yet, neither a known causative genetic trait nor a diagnostic test that can detect the presence/absence of such conditions.

Besides, there is a world of difference between an insular population agreeing to give blood samples to a researcher and that same population consenting to treatment for members of its community.

It’s WELL documented.

You are, literally, denying cause and effect unless you can see it with your own eyes.

Your claim that the Amish are unwilling to avail themselves of modern medicine for mental illness, genetic or otherwise, is incorrect.

For example: http://www.clinicforspecialchildren.org/CSC/Home.html

Many of the genetic diseases treated by the Clinic for Special Children include neurological effects.

In the Amish community, everything that we would call a mental illness goes undiagnosed and unremarked.

The idea (pay attention here Leon) that one can compare rates of disease between a community of modernity refuseniks like the Amish and any other group is totally ridiculous.

I mean, no one would say: “among Christian Scientists, the incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome is zero.” Christian scientists are not allowed to go to a doctor and have the concept of “my hand hurts” translated into the language of “you have an orthopedic disorder known as carpal tunnel syndrome.” In that sense, Christian Scientists never have carpal tunnel syndrome.

And in exactly the same sense, the Amish never have mental illness. They just don’t go to the kind of doctor who would translate the concept “Elijah is spastic and a bit slow” into the concept “Elijah suffers from autism”.

Also, milder cases of autism are no impediment to living a normal Amish life, and so go undiagnosed and unremarked.

Far higher than usual rates of Cohen Syndrome, Ellis-van Creveld syndrome and so on, and far lower rates of other genetic diseases – including autism.

No more, no less. You’re chasing a chimera.

@70 – As usual…rot. There are other communities, such as the Jewish one, which also have very low levels of alcoholism and gambling abuse. Those are at least in part societal.

(I’d be willing to bet that the Amish have generally lower stress levels as well, which would go a long way to explaining lower depression rates!)

Autism is caused by pasteurized milk?

Exactly how much courage does it take for an independently wealthy celebrity to denounce unpopular pharmaceutical companies to a constituency of anxious and emotionally vulnerable parents?