can AS be genetic?

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I think that mildly autistic females could hide their autism better because the two sides of their brains communicate faster than men's do. Maybe when one side of the brain does a social screw up, the other side quickly comes to the rescue to smooth it over.

As for oppressive NT narrow mindedness, I've been amazed at how often educators and consultants are blind to the idea that there are people out there who process input differently than they do and it doesn't mean there's anything that needs to be fixed, except for the NT's own closed minds and prejudices.

With both my kids, we are mostly on our own, trying to make our way through this NT culture. My son is succeeding though. He likes himself and is progressing well.

Jenny McCarthy said that autism steals a child's soul. That's as creepy as saying that your kid is a vampire or demon possessed. It gives parents permission to hate whatever is holding their real child hostage and that's what they see when their child stims, a soulless monster. How can Oprah, who speaks loudly against child abuse have given a platform to this person?

Yes I think it is genetic and I have heard experts saying this as well. I am the only diagnosed aspie in my family but my dad, grandad and cousin on dads side all show signs of AS.

I have it... my son has it... my daughter has it... and my mom might have it.

Jenny McCarthy made "Dirty Love" and Oprah promoted The Secret. What do they know? But lots of people listen to them (well Oprah at least) so I can see where the danger would be.

As an Aspie I was embarrassed and hurt by the whole thing, and did write and to ask Oprah to apologize to the Aspie community - I guess she is an NT and even with all the research and backing for her program still gets things wrong at times.

My father has a strange way of reasoning, you'd think he's got a screw loose. He doesn't have AS though, but I know I probably got something from him. But I'm really the first in my familyt to have AS.

Oprah has a pretty long history of misrepresenting autistic people - she's famous for the old "show footage of autistics having tantrums (and nothing else), then listening to parents complain about their lives" style of autism show.

Oprah paraded out the most stereotypical autistic people she could find. It played into the "Rainman" stereotype or the autism is synonymous with retardation stereotype.

I think it's a combination the genetics and the vaccinations thses days. In othewords Aspergers might be slightly more managable on its own but once that much mercury is injected into you with those shots. It becomes harder to deal with.

Last edited by loudmouth on 02 Dec 2007, 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Except that a) where thimerosal is used as a stabilizer in vaccines, the amount of mercury barely qualifies as trace, and b) in countries where thimerosal-stabilized vaccines have been outlawed, the incidence of autism has continued to increase at the same rate as the rest of the world. Repeated epidemiological studies, by such groups as WHO, CDC, and the European Union, have consistently failed to show any linkage between vaccinations and autism, despite the shrill denials from parent groups (whose DNA is obviously too pure to have been carrying a recessive autistic gene...).

On the other hand, as noted in my last post, genetic links have been found, specifically on chromosomes 2 and 11.

Seriously, some of these arguments have been like saying, "Well, Mom's got perfect vision, and Dad says he's not farsighted, his arms are just too short, so there must not be any genetic component to my vision problems!"

Autism (and with that term I am referring to the entire spectrum) is not only genetic, it is evolution in progresss. Humans are evolving to accomodate a new niche environment created in recent years... many autistics naturally have technical skills that are required to maintain our technological society, therefore making it evolutionally "advantageous" for autistics to exist for the first time in human history.

Yeah, but are more autistics having children than ever before? It seems to be it's not like we killed off autistics when we didn't need them for technological fields. I mean, I guess there is more opportunity for certain people who previously would have been institutionalized to succeed in these fields, but I wouldn't call it evolution because I still think many autistic people have a difficult time getting married, and therefore having children, spreading the genes further. I don't know whether autism is more common now because it was previously classified as mental retardation, because before people were institutionalized, or because mildly autistic people were simply thought of as weird and not having a syndrome, but I don't think it's a recent evolutionary surge. Idk...I hope it does get explained, but the nature of it seems unlikely to be cured, unless they can locate a gene malformation in early pregnancy and somehow fix it.

I have strong but varying symptoms on both sides of the family...my mom has always seemed very Aspie-like....Her dad died when I was 2, but the wat she sometimes describes him, i think he coulda been an Aspie....though she ascribes alot of his detachedness and untalkativeness to PTSD from having participated in WWII...

and on my dad's side there is alot of high intelligence and creativity coupled with OCD and other very eccentric behaviors...I also have some sorta distant cousin with slightly more severe autism...non-verbal...

Throughout most of history, it's tended to be harder for us to find mates than is true for the general populace (Jane Austen, for instance, had enormous difficulty in finding a man in Victorian England who would accept a woman like her). Today, though, with our affinity for technical matters, we have access to the entire panoply of mating cues that the NTs have long used, rather than relying on our charm and wit. (Seriously, however much they may be in love today, does anyone seriously think that Melinda was first attracted to Bill Gates because of his boyish personality and rugged good looks?)

It is also interesting to note that many "clusters" of autism tend to occur in proximity to tech nodes (Silicon Valley, for instance, or Redmond, WA). I believe this is best explained by the fact that not only do we tend to make the most money (which, romance aside, is a draw), but also male and female autistics are more likely to encounter one another when their jobs draw them together.

My mom has some traits that are pretty convincing arguments for AS. I am pretty sure I am AS. My son is officially dx'ed. I have a first cousin who is classically autistic. I have two second cousins that are on the spectrum. Opposite ends.

When dx'ing my son, the doctor did ask about family history. If he hadn't had the family history and the touched on dx of autism when he was little, our chances would have been pretty slim of getting him dx'ed when we did.

are we...the next stage of evolution?

*becomes magneto and plots world domination by aspies*