Autism Battlefield--Ageism, Clusters, Diagnosis

Autism, it seems, is a contemporary paradigmatic stadium in which genetics, parenting, social factors, environmental toxins compete for causal authority. This past month, autism—or autism spectrum disorder as the draft DSM-V proposes to redefine the condition--has received a great deal of attention. In 1998 The Lancet published a study based on research by Andrew Wakefield that linked autism in the UK to the MMR vaccine. As a result of the study’s publication, many parents in the UK refused to have their children vaccinated. In January of this year a British panel found that Wakefield had failed to disclose a conflict of interest—as a paid advisor to attorneys for parents suing the vaccine manufacturer--and that the study itself was conducted without adherence to proper ethical standards of consent. Following the panel’s report, The Lancet retracted the 1998 paper from publication. Meanwhile, a number of recent studies have focused on rates of autism in California. The online journal Autism Research examined yet again the question of whether and how parental age has contributed to the increase rates of autism. A 10 year study of births in California concluded that maternal and paternal age each contribute independently to higher rates of autism, accounting for 4.6% of the increase over the decade under study. Two other studies found clusters of autism in California cities. One, out of UC Davis found 10 clusters in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, and associated these higher rates with high rates of parental education. The other study of autism prevalence in California was done by Columbia University based researchers led by Peter Bearman, Jonathan Cole Professor of the Social Sciences and our May 6 Narrative Genetics seminar guest. This group found a primary cluster in the West Hollywood area and secondary clusters in other parts of LA. While they did not attempt to identify cause, they linked higher rates to local variables, such as environmental toxins or social influences. We look forward to discussing all this in May.