Autism

[nomadthethird]

i know G was a practicing psychiatrist (i heard the really touching story about his patients mourning him after his death) -- but parts of Mille Plateux do use the word schizophrenia in a more abstract, philosophical, and possibly "romantic", sense. the "had more to teach us" part you mentioned. i'm no expert on D&G but i think schizophrenia became for them a strategy, MO, and even desired state - "becoming schizophrenic" and all that, in (bad paraphrasing ahead) struggles for freedom against capitalist/fascist mind control.

and back to Autism, i just read this article: What Really Causes Autism?

might be dated compared to the ones in original post... according to this the jury is still out on the causes and genetic versus "epigenetic" debate. there are some good quotes in it though like "if you've met one autism patient, you've met one autism patient".

I don't know if I'm going to catch teh ban for posting this but yeah, Zhao, I think the talk about "becoming-schizophrenic" is more metaphorical than literal, if you know what I mean. They took schizophrenia as a sort of metaphorical condition that could help people transcend the limitations placed on them by fascism and capitalism.

Btw, vaccines have been cleared completely of any involvement in causing autism. All of the preservatives and mercury have been removed (since the first questions were raised around 5-7 years ago) and rates of autism have still been on the rise for the past 5 years. If you search, you'll find lots of information on it, but NeuroLogica blog writes tons about this if you check it out.

 

[nomadthethird]

Nothing to do with autism, but an interesting nuclear test factlet for you: cattle mutilations in the US all occur downwind of nuclear test sites used in the late '40s/early '50s, before the bombs got too big to be tested on the American mainland and they starting using sites in the Pacific. And the tissues removed from the cows - lips, tongue, digestive tract, reproductive organs, udders - are exactly the kind of soft, fast-reproducing tissues that you'd expect to have the greatest take-up of trace heavy elements, and the exactly the tissues you'd look at if you were a radiologist investigating the effects of radioisotopes on animals.

Very interesting, T. Check out this article that lists the discovery of infantile autism and the beginning of its rise starting in the 40s.

(P.S. Though you probably know more about this than I do, I'm pretty sure there was testing in the 50s and 60s on the mainland--not like there was pre- or during WWII, but still...)

 

[nomadthethird]

oh also, nomad, did the rise only occur in the US? as your nuclear testing theory seemed to suggest?

Edit: scratch that, that one's way off I'll look for a better one. I'm pretty sure the US has the highest rate in the world with one in 155 babies being born everday having autism.

What if--and this is just obviously off the cuff--there are two types of autism? One is the traditional late-onset type that is heritable but not due to chromosomal mutations, like the other type, which is the infant onset type that has been rising in prevalence since the 40s in the US? The traditional type is the kind you'll see throughout the world and the infant onset type (which is much more severe) is the kind that's caused by a genetic mutation that I'm guessing is linked to radiation.

 

[nomadthethird]

Really new research that links autism to mom's autoimmune disorder, which is interesting because autoimmune disorders have been steadily rising in women for the past 50 years or so and most people blame it on industrial waste products in the environment.

This is really the money quote:

"One of the things we are realizing about autism is that it is not one disease but rather many different diseases or conditions that has many different etiologies," Dawson said. "This may be one cause or one risk factor, and if it interacts with a genetic vulnerability, it can increase the risk for autism," she said.