Environment May Be Especially Key to Autism: Study

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Well, there is no good evidence that the prevalence of autism was increased by vaccines, as anti-vaccine activists routinely and wrongly claimed, but, as noted in the paper, environmental influences encompass prenatal factors already known to increase the risk of ASD, including advanced paternal age, maternal infection, low birth weight, and multiple births, as well as maternal diabetes, maternal obesity, and inadequate intake of prenatal vitamins. Moreover, minor craniofacial anomalies associated with embryological changes during the first trimester of development are very much more common among children with ASD (p < .0001) and in children with ASD and normal intelligence than among their typically-developing peers, and such changes clearly cannot be explained as the result of vaccination. All of this points to environmental factors that operate long before birth, rather than to postnatal vaccines.

rb of CA 11:33AM July 05, 2011

Millions of research dollars have been spent looking for the genetic cause of autism with no substantial results.
Suddenly, it's the environment, but the specific cause remains unknown. I'm sure experts will conduct elaborate pharma-funded studies looking at every possible environmental trigger--everything EXCEPT VACCINES.
Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism

Anne McElroy Dachel of WI 9:45PM July 04, 2011