Cause of Autism Allegedly Found

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Can you post a link to the original study associating Autism with mitochondrial dysfunction?

technically it is possible as some proteins present in the mitochondria are imported from the genes and machinery on the outside. still, there are many other reasons this theory is probably no good.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/304/21/2389.abstract

Preliminary Communication
Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Autism. Cecilia Giulivi, PhD; Yi-Fan Zhang, BS; Alicja Omanska-Klusek, MS; Catherine Ross-Inta, BS; Sarah Wong, BS; Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD; Flora Tassone, PhD; Isaac N. Pessah, PhD. JAMA. 2010;304(21):2389-2396. doi: 10.1001/jama.2010.1706

Abstract: Context Impaired mitochondrial function may influence processes highly dependent on energy, such as neurodevelopment, and contribute to autism. No studies have evaluated mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) abnormalities in a well-defined population of children with autism.

Objective: To evaluate mitochondrial defects in children with autism.

Design, Setting, and Patients: Observational study using data collected from patients aged 2 to 5 years who were a subset of children participating in the Childhood Autism Risk From Genes and Environment study in California, which is a population-based, case-control investigation with confirmed autism cases and age-matched, genetically unrelated, typically developing controls, that was launched in 2003 and is still ongoing. Mitochondrial dysfunction and mtDNA abnormalities were evaluated in lymphocytes from 10 children with autism and 10 controls.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepe ... l-network/

My.Microbes: http://my.microbes.eu/

The simple answer is... most NTs prefer to believe what they want to believe. It's why religion is so popular.

I suspect you are correct about this, and it certainly ties in with my experience working in naturopathy and my own personal experience.

There are some conditions (quite a few) that clear up when allergies are removed. But then some people don't see any improment, so I'm left wondering if it's not just a question of us putting certain symptoms in a bag and giving them a nice label like "autism" or "fibromyalgia" when really those symptoms cross over into many different causes.

Our medical science often takes a too limited very Western approach, which is to say, there is a one-to-one relationship between disease and symptom.

It doesn't appear to be the case though.

What I wonder at is that when you say "flu like symptoms" to a doc they understand it could be many possible underlying conditions.

But if you say "I have migraines" they act like it could only be hormonal, when in reality it could be something completely different, or some combination of factors.

Research will get over that eventually, I expect, but as long as our focus is primarily "let's make a drug we can patent and make lots of money by addressing this one symptom" it will slow down our progress in dealing with actual ill health.

Personally, I can't help feeling as though Aspies are more likely the next evolutionary step rather than a mistake. All the quirks they list or at least most of the quirks I feel are great traits that I am proud to have. So maybe I don't talk to everyone. Why should I when I can tell that it will not be a conversation of any depth or importance.

At the end of the day:

BLAH BLAH BLAH, just another scientist trying to make a name for himself by coming up with another ridiculous theory that hopefully cannot be refuted so that he can claim he can cure us, making himself famous through the effort no doubt.

You know, for a scientist that claims knowledge of this stuff he is impossibly dense, doesn't he know that everyone shouldn't be the same and differing traits are good for evolution?

I would much rather have my own mind, with its quirks rather than being shoved into a world where stabbing people in the back and fighting over inches of floorspace in the worst pub in the world is normal.

Scientists can go shove their theories on autism for all I care and go do something worthwhile, like making a dehydrated pizza that looks remarkably like the one from back to the future, since they only have about 3 years and 6 weeks to achieve this feat.

I think media hype has overblown their results. I've seen plenty of research articles identifying a cause for autism where the news stories refer to the research as having found the cause for autism. Honestly, trying to find the cause of autism is like trying to find the cause for mental retardation. Both are basically just symptoms that can result from hundreds of different underlying conditions.

Anyway, the study seems screwy. Out of 364 autistic kids, the researchers picked 10 kids to study. They claim they picked them as kids who met both ADI-R and ADOS cutoffs for autism, but I seriously doubt that would result in only 10 kids given that ADOS and ADI-R scores are highly correlated. (Furthermore, the ADI-R is supposed to be filled out in reference to the child's behavior at 4-5 years and since much of their sample was under 4, the ADI-R may not be accurate for those children.)

So, they found high rates of mitochondrial problems in the 10 kids they actually studied. We have no idea how representative those kids are of all the rest of the kids, because the selection criteria they claim to have used should have gotten most of their sample instead of a small subset. They may have picked the children on some trait increasing the probability of mitochondrial issues instead.

What's this? Someone on wrongplanet.net who actually kinda gets it?

Gets what?

The moment you see someone claim that autism is caused by something "not working", you know it's BS.

I already know the real cause of autism and...

... I can cure all of you.



Now, who has paypal?

Autism.

Amazingly enough, the only lawsuit that I know of that was won because of vaccines, the child had mitochondrial disease...hmmm...And I read some about it years ago and mitochondrial disease seemed to be genetic.