diablo77 wrote:
Even if this is true, couldn't it just be possible that there is a genetic link among ethnic Jews? Some disorders are more prevalent in specific ethnic communities. I'm not saying there IS a disproportionate number of autistic Jews (though I am one) but it's more plausible to me than any notion that circumcision, or any post-birth environmental factor, "causes" autism rather than it being something you are born with.
This sounds like a very plausible explanation. Here is a wiki on international circumscision rates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcisionQuote:
In 1986, 511 out of approximately 478,000 Danish boys aged 0–14 years were circumcised. This corresponds to a cumulative national circumcision rate of around 1.6% by the age of 15 years.[58]
Quote:
Statistics from different sources give widely varying estimates of infant circumcision rates in the United States.
In 2011, circumcision was one of the most common procedures performed during hospital stays in the U.S. There were approximately 1.1 million hospitalizations with a circumcision, a rate of 36 stays per 10,000 population. This was a decrease of 16% from 1997, when there was a rate of 43 stays per 10,000 population. It was the second-most common procedure performed on patients under one year of age.[27]
In 2005, about 56 percent of male newborns were circumcised prior to release from the hospital according to statistics from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.[28]
Data from a national survey conducted from 1999 to 2002 found that the overall prevalence of male circumcision in the United States was 79%.[29] 91% of boys born in the 1970s, and 83% of boys born in the 1980s were circumcised.[29] An earlier survey, conducted in 1992, found a circumcision prevalence of 77% in US-born men, born from 1932–1974, including 81% of non-Hispanic White men, 65% of Black men, and 54% of Hispanic men, vs. 42% of non U.S. born men who were circumcised.[30]
The circumscision rate in the U.S. is consistently pretty high, although it wanders around, possibly due to the ever-changing demographics of the U.S. But in any case, circumcision in the U.S. is uncoupled from religion. Boys from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds get circumcised.
In Denmark, circumscision is rare. I only have that one data point (since I didn't google in great depth) but I have no reason to believe it represents some sort of giant drop from an otherwise much higher rate. This means that in Denmark, unlike the U.S., circumscision will be tied tightly to religion and ethnicity. So the study could actually be showing what you say- that certain ethnic groups have a higher autism rate and are also more likely to circumcise. Some might think they have a higher autism rate
because they circumcise but there isn't any evidence of that (this study isn't evidence of that).
11 Jan 2015, 3:21 pm
