Autism Compared To Sickle Cell--Comments?

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I have a theory about autism and Asperger's. Feel free to punch it full of holes!

I have read where sickle cell anemia comes about when a person has the gene from both parents. It's a serious, dangerous thing. A person who has only one copy of the gene, however, will have sickle cell trait. It is a lot less dangerous and may never show any symptoms. However, it provides a significant protection from malaria; people with the trait who contract malaria are much more likely to survive.

I have the feeling that classic extreme autism corresponds to the sickle cell disease, and Asperger's to the trait. I am not saying that it's an exact parallel, just that there seems to be some similarities in their relationship. Classic autism makes it much more difficult for a person to make a significant contribution to the species because communication is a major problem. However, I do believe that through the ages it has been the Aspies who have come up with a lot of the real advances in technology, and that without them we would probably all still be hunter-gatherers. Sort of as if it were like sickle-cell communication, or sickle-cell perception. I'm relating this to the differences autistics and aspies share compared to NTs. I really don't have any data to back this idea up, and I'm just too lazy to do the research to get some.

Responses?

So just for clarity; in the comparison having both sickle-cell genes to being an aspie and one gene to being a classic autie and wether or not we contract malaria to our usefulness in society? That's quite complicated but I think I got ya

Um yeah, interesting if tenuous comparison. I'm not sure I agree with the part about no progress without aspies though but it could certainly be a factor.

I'm thinking less progress because although many NTs would be able to think of improvements to a spear or a plow, I think it's more likely that someone who perseverates on a task or problem and does not think like the other members of the tribe is more likely to be the one to think of a whole new tool, like a bow and arrow or a canoe built on a framework, rather than a dugout which is basically an improved log.

Hm. I think I read somewhere in large populations of "nerds" (or whatever the NT term is for people they don't know are aspie), they're finding that the children of those nerds are classically autistic.

So...

two aspies are having classically autistic children.

That's not always a given, but I was reading an article that said that silicon valley had an unusually high percentage of classically autistic kids. Considering how many people working there are probably aspie...

Interesting.

Perhaps it is more something like "broader autism phenotype - sickle cell trait; autism and asperger - sickle cell disease".

There are some studies showing that "giftdness" and schiziophrenia run in the same families (some authors explain the persistence of schiziophrenia by this).

Perhaps there is a similar case for autism (specially attending that much probably the schizophrenia spectrum and the autism spectrum have genes in common - after all, the milder variants of both spectrums are basically indistinguishable)

when i saw the title i thought you might actually be trying to suggest that there was a link between sickle-cell disease and AS/autism.
which is absolutely absurd, so originally i came in here to laugh at you .

but now i see that's not true.
though i don't concede to believe fully your theory nonetheless. though it is an interesting notion