What do you think causes Autism?

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Speaking more in terms of classic autism than Aspergers.
What is your view on the debate about whether mercury/vaccinations/Thimerosal contribute to the development of autism?
What do you think causes the many to develop normally, even at a fast rate, then to suddenly regress into Autism?
I am just kind of obsessed now with classic autism and keen to learn more of peoples' views on what causes it...what happens to cause it.

Viral or bacterial infection, or exposure to chemicals; any of these three at the right time in the right person. Probably an erroneous autoimmune response that damages certain parts of the brain.

Doesn't matter when, whether the child is under 1, or the child shows signs of normal development until 2/3, and they then "regress" developmentally.

Do you think the increase in diagnosed autism is down to more knowledge, a broader spectrum, or something else?

Hmm...my mother had pneumonia when I was in utero and I also had pneumonia when I was 18 months old.

In MY OPINION - NOTE: MY OPINION - the MMR vaccine theory is so flawed it is humorous. Mercury can attribute to probably any mental/physical alteration the you as a human can experience. So yes, it probably could cause autism, or set conditions that cause autism, since it can cause many genetic mutations, and some other unexplained anomalies.
All in all, it is my opinion that it is either entirely genetic, in the case of one born autistic, or a mixture of genes and environmental stimuli of some sort to 'trigger' development (in the case of one who develops it later on in life). I'm sure that I'm probably not giving you an original idea or opinion by any stretch of the imagination, as many of my points are widely agreed upon and/or are speculated.
Now... As for the ultimate, most unthinkable cause - Evolution. I said it. It makes sense. Think about it. Evolution doesn't take milliions of years to occur, or even a decade. It happens every moment. It is an ONGOING process. An isolated flock of birds nested on a small island in the middle of an ocean can evolve exponentially faster than any birds of the same species on the mainland (I know, this is because they are isolated, therefore must 'inovate', if you could say genes do that). They could become an entirely new species in under five years. But not all of the changes (indeed, few are) will be physical. Behavior is the most malleable component of complex life. Even microbes display some forms of behavior (regardless of wether or not instinct or genes are involved). Social evolution.
Now, I am not trying to imply that autistics are somehow 'more evolved' or 'superior' than neuro-typical peoples, because while evolution is normally sited as a positive development, it can quite often lead to extinction. If it is evolutionary, then it is merely a new branch on the great tree of human development, neither the first nor last fork in the genetic road. Now, consider social behavior and its rapid, radical changes in the past, oh, say, fifty years. Individuals have become more and more isolated. Keep in mind that autism seems to have sprung from nowhere at this time. Isolation could have changed us, just like the fore-mentioned birds on an island. Nobody can deny the fact that technology has kept us away from each other. If an infant grows up with no contact with another human, and is then suddenly thrust into an environment where they must interact with others, how would they behave? Quite nervously, one would imagine, and they, due to their social nature, mimick others in hopes of 'fitting in'.
Sound familiar? Sounds slightly similar to a fairly functional autistic, although you're not there yet... But that was just one tiny possibility that evolution could have traversed, so who knows what other results may occur.

Broader.

If you use Kanner's original criteria, the incidence is about the same as it was back then (read it in some study).

I say it's pure genetics. Anyone who has it has it when they're born and it can't be changed.

However, if it is in fact genetic, that is also a plausible cause. More of the population would contain the gene, so as they breed, it gets passed on, and spreads.

Again, if it is genetic, then it could very well be a broader spectrum, due to frequent mutation. If the gene is widely distributed, then the gene would mutate in a multitude of different ways simultaneously, producing hundreds of different variations within only a few generations.

Sorry admins for the, er, triple-pst, lol, but hey....
Looking back now, I think I can see the start of an epic debate, lol

Possibly so, at least in some cases. There is one fellow out there who is convinced that it is a human form of neoteny (see http://www.neoteny.org), now becoming more prevalent as a result of our shift towards a more matrifocal society. It may seem far out there, but it's the most plausible theory I've heard coming out of the "autism as it relates to evolution" ideas in a long time.

Hear! Hear! I say again, There are several members of my PATERNAL family line who have it and my PATERNAL family line grandmother obviously had clearly identifiable associated behaviors and she went to school in a one-room rural schoolhouse LONG before vaccines were made publicly available. Genetics, nothing more or less than genetics. It isn't inheritable straight down the line - not everyone in an AS family will have AS, but it will pop up here and there, depending on the mix of specific genes.

Personally, I think there's evidence that there are many forms of "autism" (classic autism vs. fragile x autism, for example) which have completely different mechanisms. The fact that they share a few symptoms means they're given a common name, though.

I also think that classic autism itself is a mix of things. But as a cake is a mix of ingredients and a method to make something that isn't obviously any of those to someone who doesn't know the recipe, so classic autism appears to be one thing but is really many. I believ that to also be true of virtually everything else in the DSM.

On Slashdot, I argued that really the mind is a massively multi-dimensional space-mind-thing containing loops, rings, twists, wormholes and all sorts of other weirdness. What is called autism is some region of this space-mind-thing. So it's something like the Twilight Zone, only real. The Autism Zone? Other conditions are other regions. Some regions overlap, some don't. But they're all part of this whole, not separate things.

Because of this belief of mine (and I admit it's strange), anything and everything that can get you from where you started to somewhere in that space will mean you are "autistic". There's probably billions of ways to get there, all just as good as another. Some ways will involve something external like chemicals (though I'm not convinced mercury would be one - mercury poisoning produces symptoms I wouldn't consider being in the Autism Zone). Other ways will involve social conditioning. Then there's genetics, viruses, perhaps some exotic prions, head injuries and even the hormones the foetus was exposed to in development.

(That last one is important. It's well known that the gender of the brain is independent of the gender of the body - they develop by totally independent mechanisms. Since these mechanisms are based on the genetics of the mother, NOT of the foetus, your earliest development is controlled by two utterly different genetic mechanisms. You could argue that this is still genetics, and so the last option is really the same as the first, but that hides the fact it's different genes.)

There's likely other paths, too. Since the first steps in developing language are now known to be taken when the foetus "hears" loud talking, music or other significant sounds (the first cries follow the same waveforms the mother most commonly encountered), again we have something that is very second-hand and something utterly unexpected shaping the early brain. (Please note that I'm not taking sides on any hot-button issues that superficially seem related. For a start, they're not related, and secondly even tape recorders can repeat waveforms. The only thing that matters is that the brain is being altered by all this.)

Going back to the chemical issue and the possibility of mercury being involved. The mercury the foetus is exposed to each time the mother eats any kind of fish or eats anything that itself eats fish is far far greater than the mercury in MMR jabs or tooth fillings. Swordfish and shark are the very worst, tuna and salmon are next-worst (though ocean salmon is much better than farmed salmon for some reason I don't understand). This is a BIG gotcha, as fish are the primary source of Omega-3 and Omega-3 is essential for the correct development of a brain. You cannot cook the mercury out. I suppose it might be possible for fish farms to develop a safe chemical for detoxing the fish when alive - antidotes for mercury poisoning do exist but no-one has made one for fish. They'd need to also make it harmless to humans, or at least safer than the amount of mercury it has removed.

Viruses and bacteria are something else you need to consider. The human body is something like 1% human cells, 99% assorted bacteria, fungi and other microbes. The human body is also a horrible carrier of viruses that it can't get rid of. If you have ever had chicken pox, there's chicken pox viruses in you. This is the reason some illnesses "can only be caught once" (the body is permanently training itself to fight them) but can re-emerge when the immune system isn't doing so well. We've no idea what any of these organisms are doing, scientists have only just identified the first ten million - and the differences between people is staggering. We also know that - very very rarely - some of these can go rogue. There's a normally harmless version of strep that everyone carries all the time that can (for reasons unknown) turn into something from a horror movie and actually eat the person they're on. Don't worry about it - first off, it's treatable, and secondly it seems to occur about one in every billion people in any given year. More people really do have meteors land next to them than get this.

Because there are so many unknowns (one of the unknowns is how many unknowns there are, another is how the unknowns relate to each other like ingredients for a cake, which means that the total number of effective unknowns is the factorial of the actual number of unknowns, which means it's unknown how much bigger the problem is than the unknown number of factors, most of which are themselves unknown), the obvious solution is to persuade some white mice to build a giant supercomputer the size of a planet to find out what the question of what causes autism really means.

:lol: Great post!

I would agree that it's multifactorial, ( genetic, and epigenetic including intrauterine environment, viral and bacterial effects, early diet and exposure to chemicals, etc ), and that there are many different pathways to the conditions diagnosed as autism.

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Genes

In my opinion---based on research and personal experience.

Autism is caused by:

First---I believe the genetics must be in place, as inherited from ancestry.
Second---Once the genetics are in place, the gene(s) may turn themselves "on," or be turned "on" by another factor such as an issue concerned with birth.

This issue concerned with birth may include, but is not limited to, oxygen deprivation, premature birth, or C-section.

In my case, the genetics are in my family. But I got tangled up in my cord and had oxygen deprivation. I was delivered by an emergency C-section. Then I went to an incubator.

My AS son was born naturally with oxygen deprivation (though extemely quickly, it was like the dilation had just begun and there he was).

I believe genes need to be turned "on" in order to give the person autism. If the gene(s) are there, but they are not turned "on," then the person may have some autistic traits, but not enough render a diagnosis of autism.

As I alluded to earlier, these gene(s) can turn themselves "on" on their own without an issue.

Interesting to note is that at least 50% of AS people had a birth issue.