When I was about twelve years old, my two year old cousin was diagnosed with autism. As many of you probably know, autism is a disorder of neural development that causes impaired social and communication skills. These developmental deficiencies started showing up around 18 months when CJ hadn’t begun speaking as most his age had already mastered. From there, we began to see other characteristics of autism play out heavily – repetitive behavior, atypical eating, and restricted interests. In the last ten years, CJ has tried a gluten-free, casein-free diet, a plethora of supplements, occupational therapy, sensory attention, verbal behavior aid, and applied behavior analysis to name a few.
CJ has come an incredibly long way in ten years. He is now in fourth grade and the majority of his school day is mainstreamed. He is removed from the classroom for certain subjects and still has his autistic “quirks.” Lately, he is fixated on the family car. No one can touch it, sit in it, or even go in the garage and we’re not quite sure where this obsession came from. But no matter how far CJ comes, he will never reach the potential of a “normal” child.
For those familiar with the autistic world, the question still remains heavily on every parent, grandparent, teacher, and friends mind – how did this happen? There is still no determined cause of autism, yet as time goes by, it has become more common. About every 1 in 110 children is now diagnosed with this disorder. It is assumed that autism is caused by a combination of many things, one being genetics.
Tying autism into the material we have discussed so far, I think it is easy to assume that Pinker would agree that autism is a result of genetics. My question would then be why are CJ’s parents considered “healthy” individuals? Is the increase in autism diagnosis a result of giving the disorder a name? Is it possible that many of our elders, perhaps my aunt and uncle, may have some small degree of autism but were not diagnosed due to the fact that autism had not yet been given a name? I would have to completely agree that autism is a result of genetics to some degree. Most children are diagnosed within the first 6 months of their lives, which does not give a lot of room for the “nurture” component to play a role. Lewontin would argue that environmental factors during pregnancy, which are also suspected to play a role, are the cause of autism over genetics.
Abigail, I'm glad to hear your cousin is able to go to school with the rest of his classmates. I was wondering if you remember how effective his diets were at alleviating his symptoms? I have heard wheat gluten blamed before, but I just read about a study that linked autism to Vitamin D deficiency.
ReplyDeleteIt is known that darker-skinned people synthesize Vitamin D more slowly than lighter-skinned people. This wouldn't be a problem for those in Somalia, a country right on the equator and whose people are bombarded year-round with powerful sunlight -- producing too much might be dangerous for the body. But if someone whose genes are expecting to live near the equator moved north a great distance, the Vitamin D they produced would be only a fraction of what they needed.
A study performed in Stockholm, Sweden revealed that Somali women there were three to four times more likely to have a child with autism than non-Somalis. Here in Minnesota (Minneapolis is south of Stockton by 15˚ latitude) the Somali community is also dealing with a recent spike in autism cases.
Of course this could be because children in Somalia are just not being diagnosed with the disease, but it is very telling that there is not even a word for "autism" in the Somali language. Somali-born molecular biologist Huda Farah asserts that there have never been any documented cases of it or its characteristic symptoms in Somalia.
Adding legitimacy to this theory is data collected about autistic children from the States. In California, Oregon, and Washington, children born and raised in counties that are on average rainy and cloudy are twice as likely as children raised in other, sunnier parts of the state.
If this theory is to be taken seriously, it would seem that autism comes about both due to nature (everyone has a genetic predisposition to synthesizing Vitamin D at a set rate) and also nurture (how much time you spend outside in the sun will affect your ability to produce Vitamin D).
Lewontin might really appreciate this study, since he holds that our behaviors are not due completely to our genes. Pinker might argue that *all* of this is nature, including how much time one spends outside, but the article mentions something that undermines this point. Women living in Somalia don't have many non-Muslim strangers around, so they are free to dress less modestly. In Stockton or here in Minnesota not only does the Earth receive less insolation (nature), but due to their cultural background Somali women expose their skin to the sun for as little time as possible (nurture).
link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-and-autism&page=2