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New
Study Confirms Role of Environment in the Development of
Autism
NAA Calls NIH Autism Gene Search a Waste of
Money, Says Focus Should be on Environmental Causation
Nixa, MO
– A study published this week again confirms that
environmental factors play a critical role in the
development of autism.
Genetic Heritability and
Shared Environmental Factors Among Twin Pairs With Autism,
funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provides
further confirmation that genes alone cannot explain the
exponential rise in autism rates over the past two decades.
Now an epidemic, autism prevalence was 1:10000 for children
born in 1980 but rose to 1:110 for children born in 1998,
with a 57% rise in prevalence among children born in 1994
based upon CDC-reported data.
The authors concluded: "Our
study provides evidence that . . .
the influence of genetic factors on the susceptibility to
develop autism [has been]
overestimated. . . . Increasingly, evidence is
accumulating that overt symptoms of autism emerge around the
end of the first year of life. Because the prenatal
environment and early postnatal environment are shared
between twin individuals, we hypothesize that at least some
of the environmental factors impacting susceptibility to
autism exert their effect during this critical period of
life. . . . Future studies that seek to elucidate such
factors and their role in enhancing or suppressing genetic
susceptibility are likely to enhance our understanding of
autism."
The
National Autism Association (NAA), along with several other
advocacy organizations and thousands of families nationwide,
has consistently pointed out that a purely genetic
"epidemic" isn’t possible, and that environmental factors
including vaccines must be examined more closely to find the
causes of autism so that new cases can be prevented and
existing cases treated. “This is further evidence that we
have to stop siphoning scarce autism research dollars to
search for elusive autism genes,” said parent and NAA board
chair Lori McIlwain. “Blaming genetics has gotten us
nowhere. With one percent of our nation’s children
affected, we must focus on autism research that will lead to
better treatments in the shortest amount of time possible.”
With the
passage in 2006 of the Combating Autism Act, Congress
directed NIH to research environmental causes of autism,
including vaccines, yet only 9% of FY09 research funding was
spent on environmental causation. Despite the Congressional
mandate and repeated calls for vaccine research, e.g.
comparing the rate of autism in fully vaccinated versus
unvaccinated children, no CAA money has been spent examining
vaccine causation.
The
Federal Vaccine Court has been compensating autism cases
since 1990, making vaccines one of a small handful of
environmental factors known to cause autism.
http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol28/iss2/6/.
A few poorly designed, and in some cases fraudulent,
"population" studies funded by CDC have failed to find a
link to vaccines, but recent privately funded studies using
CDC and Department of Education data have found an
association. The Institute of Medicine held a conference on
autism and the environment in 2007, focusing in part on
vaccine causation. Its 2004 review of epidemiology left
open the possibility that vaccines were causing autism in
susceptible children. “We urgently need much more research
on vaccine causation and other environmental factors,” said
Ms. McIlwain.
In recent
years, a growing number of parents around the country have
reported sometimes quite rapid loss of social, language, and
behavioral skills in their healthy children following the
receipt of vaccines, many of which are given simultaneously
during “well baby” check-ups. Following the current
schedule, children will receive 49 vaccines by the time they
reach kindergarten. The safety of giving simultaneous
vaccines, and the cumulative health effects from vaccines
have not been adequately studied, yet federal health
agencies and most in mainstream medicine attribute
regression following vaccination to coincidence.
Parents
and autism advocates have repeatedly asked that federal
research funding be directed towards vaccine safety concerns
including a comparative study of overall health outcomes in
vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated populations. “Determining
which factors can lead to an autism diagnosis obviously has
implications for improving treatment options,” said Ms.
McIlwain. “This latest research is yet another wake-up call
to our federal health agencies to stop following a fruitless
genetics research agenda.”
For more
information on autism, visit
www.nationalautism.org
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