But Wait - There's More! Yet Another "Theory" on Causes of Autism

Comments

November 19, 2007 at 11:58 am

(1) Julie says:

If this one was true, could I get a guilt break, because I wasn’t carrying a cell phone yet?

November 19, 2007 at 11:58 am

(2) Maddy says:

Lets just hope that it’s some kind of April Fool’s joke in December!
Cheers

November 19, 2007 at 12:08 pm

(3) Julie says:

I found the website for the college that publishes this journal! Here’s who they say they are:
Introduction
ACNEM (Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine) is a post-graduate medical college established in the early 1980s. It is independent of all governments, government agencies and other organisations and relies on no other body for funding. It is a non-profit organisation, funded from membership fees, subscriptions, courses and other programs, book sales and donations. The College is set up as an incorporated association.

Full Membership is open to all registered medical doctors. Associate membership is available to registered health providers with tertiary degrees, such as pharmacists, chiropractors, psychologists and registered nurses.

Apparently, they are a college that travels light, because they recently moved:

14th October, 2007
Please note that ACNEM has moved to new premises, in Sandringham. The new office provides a 3-fold increase in floor space. It is near Sandringham station and close to the beach and eateries. If you are in Melbourne, visit us. The address of the new office is: Unit 10, 23-25 Melrose Street, Sandringham. For postage, please use: PO Box 298, Sandringham Vic 3931, Australia.

http://www.acnem.org/

November 19, 2007 at 12:15 pm

(4) autism says:

Julie – how the heck did you find that?! I searched Google AND Google Australia, and found bupkus. guess I need a refresher course in search engines??

November 19, 2007 at 3:46 pm

(5) Carole Rutherford says:

Don’t laugh at this without first taking a more in depth look at this type of technology. I do not believe that mobile phones cause autism. However you can not discount that this technology could be impacting on the health of quite a few of us. Like vaccines some people will have no after affects whereas others will have life long lasting affects. Of course we will never prove this with vaccines or mobile phones of wireless technology but that does not mean that they are 100% safe for all of us. This research is not quite as silly as it sounds.

Let me tell you a little bit about mobile phone technology. Cell Phones broadcast on a particular frequency range (hubby knows the range) this frequency range is within the range of the alpha waves inside the human brain. There is an argument which says that the human brain is nothing more that a series of electrical impulses. If this is the case then it is possible for something to interfere with those impulses if they are being sent out on the same frequency as our brain waves. Which is what the technology was originally designed for? To understand more about this you would need to read about Woodpecker and the Cold War.

In June this year The World Health Organization recommended governments to take measures to study healthy levels of exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF). This is because more and more people do believe that these cell phones are interfering with the electrical impulses in some human beings.

About 8 years ago I was thrown into a battle between our local school and a mobile phone company who wanted to build a transmitting mast next door to the school. The Head Teacher did not want the mast and nor did the majority of the parents. This led us to undertake some extensive enquiries about this technology and we met with people and bodies of people who know far more about this then we did. We found that for some people with epilepsy living near to a mast increased their seizures. This is recorded in the UK.

We also undertook our own research in the form of a survey between our school with no mast, and a school that had had a mast for four years. We surveyed the state of health between the pupils attending both schools. What we found was horrifying. The pupils attending the school with the mast suffered from many illness, un-named conditions and rashes that the children attending the school without the mast did not have. Pupils with epilepsy were having increased incidences of seizures while they were in school. At the time my own two sons had not being diagnosed with autism (so what we found meant nothing to me at the time) but many of the symptoms that the children who were attending the school with the mast were experiencing were symptoms of autism. Altered sleeping patterns, lack of concentration, hyper activity, problems interacting with other children. A top scientist (Dr Gerrard Hyland) in the UK was not at all surprised by what we had found and since we did our survey people all over the UK living beside masts have and continue to complain about the same illness and conditions that our survey threw up.

What we did had a massive impact because after our campaign and survey schools had to be informed and given time to raise objections whenever a phone company wanted to build a mast within 500 meters of the school. We won our local battle but lost the overall war.

If we are looking at what is causing autism then we must surely also look at what turning the electromagnetic heat up with children who have autism could possibly do to them.

I myself think that autism for some children is in part a Molotov Cocktail effect of many things, and into that cocktail goes vaccines, environmental pollution, the things we pump into the animals we eat, the chemicals we lace our packaging with and in and yes we should also include electromagnetic pulses into the mix.

So I for one will not sit back and have a good laugh at this latest piece of research. I have seen too many people discredited and branded as idiots and heretics here in the UK only to find that they were right after all to just discount something without first doing some digging. I remember BSE in the UK and the scientist who said that humans could catch this from eating beef. He was for a time a laughing stock of his profession but he did have the last laugh. Sadly he was correct and what happened next was in no way funny at all.

Here is a link but it is not for the faint hearted.

http://www.tetrawatch.net/links/links.php?id=health&list=biological

I don’t really care if you laugh at me or think that I am silly having gone into this subject in some depth I know that we should all be giving this subject some serious thought.

November 19, 2007 at 4:03 pm

(6) autism says:

Carole – I suppose any theory has the potential to hold some water. and all should probably be investigated.

But over the last year and a half, since I’ve been the About.com Guide, I’ve heard of research that seems to implicate… televisions, ultrasounds, pitocin, fish, pesticides, airplane exhaust, cell phones, wheat, milk, dyes, sugar, soy, formaldehyde, alcohol, paternal age, maternal age, spontaneous genetic mutation, inherited genetic mutation, live vaccines, mercury-preserved vaccines, glutamates, yeast, viruses, lead, and more.

How do you determine which of these possible variables (among others) accounts for your informal findings? In other words, how similar were the two schools you compared – economically? racially? were there new carpets in one school? pesticides? a different diet in the lunchroom?

From what I know of scientific research, the key is to hold all other variables steady while varying only one. In real life (outside the lab) that’s almost impossible – which may be why science moves at such an awful crawl.

Not to mention that, as you say, autism is probably ” Molotov Cocktail effect of many things, and into that cocktail goes vaccines, environmental pollution, the things we pump into the animals we eat, the chemicals we lace our packaging with and in and yes we should also include electromagnetic pulses into the mix.”

Whew. Think I’d better stop talking now!

Best,

Lisa (About.com Guide)

November 19, 2007 at 4:57 pm

(7) Carole Rutherford says:

Lisa it is difficult because while some of the variables may well be an issue for one person, they may not even appear on another person’s radar. We may all have different trigger points and that probably hold true for autism as well as other things.

You asked.

How do you determine which of these possible variables (among others) accounts for your informal findings? In other words, how similar were the two schools you compared – economically? racially? were there new carpets in one school? pesticides? a different diet in the lunchroom?

Economically the two schools differed greatly. School A) the school without the mast was and still is in one of the top ten areas of deprivation in the UK. It is an area of high unemployment and one parent families. There are also a high percentage of children with special needs. While School B) the school with the mast is in an area where most of the children live with two parents. The majority of the parents are working. School A) is in an area inner city area while School B) is in what we call a residential area. School A) has a much bigger multi cultural population than school B) which is predominately made up of white children. Neither school had new carpets – both had wood floors. I really can’t answer about pesticides although neither school is situated in the countryside or in a heavy industry belt. School A) was quite near to the shipbuilding and mining area but that had ceased years before our survey. School meals here did not at that time differ that much from area to area – there has been a HUGE push for healthy school meals. School A) had 80% of their pupils on free school meals at the time.

The thing is I believe that we have created so many of these variables ourselves by our actions and without any thought for there long term implications. Which is why I was moved beyond words by this You Tube Video – says it all for me – and it would take us a lifetime to even begin to put it all back together if we ever can – sorry nothing to do with autism in a way but also everything to do with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRM5aquMO1I&feature=related

November 19, 2007 at 11:07 pm

(8) Kassiane says:

I thought they had it backwards…autism causes wifi…cell phones have been around, though not around in MAJOR use, since the late 50s-early 60s (car phones), 70s (bag phones) and 80s for hand helds. They just get more popular each year, its crazy.

November 20, 2007 at 1:35 am

(9) Les says:

It is very possible that Paternal Age is the Major Predictor for autism—Harry Fisch, MD

Harry Fisch is the author of The Male Biological Clock, The Patient’s Guide to Vasectomy Reversal, The Patient’s Guide to Varicocele Repair and Managing The Vasectomy Patient. He is one of the nation’s leaders in the diagnosis and treatment of male infertility and microsurgical vasectomy reversal. Dr. Fisch is director of the Male Reproductive Center and directs urologic microsurgery in the Department of Urology at Columbia University Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He is also professor of clinical urology at Columbia University, where he was recently named Teacher of the Year in his department.
For over fifteen years, Dr. Fisch has focused his research, practice, and surgery on male infertility and reproduction.

From the Psychology Today article:

“Everybody was familiar with the concept of women’s biological clock, but when we introduced ‘male’ to the equation, the reaction was ‘What are you talking about? Men can have children at any age,’” recalls urologist Harry Fisch, director of the Male Reproductive Center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and author of The Male Biological Clock. “It became a social issue. Men do not like to be told they have a problem.”
Nonetheless, a virtual tidal wave of recent research has made it irrefutable: Not only does male fertility decrease decade by decade, especially after age 35, but aging sperm can be a significant and sometimes the only cause of severe health and developmental problems in offspring, including autism, schizophrenia, and cancer. The older the father, the higher the risk. But what’s truly noteworthy is not that infertility increases with age—to some degree, we’ve known that all along—but rather that older men who can still conceive may have such damaged sperm that they put their offspring at risk for many types of disorders and disabilities.
“Men thought they were getting off scot free, and they weren’t. The birth defects caused by male aging are significant conditions that can cause a burden to families and society,” says Ethylin Wang Jabs, professor of pediatric genetics at Johns Hopkins University and leader of a recent study showing the link between aging paternity and certain facial deformities in offspring. “We now know that men and women alike could be increasing the risk of infertility or birth defects by waiting too long to have children.” In other words, by looking for perfection in your life before you conceive, there’s a very real chance you’ll have less perfect kids.”
In the past several years, studies worldwide have found that with each passing decade of their lives and with each insult they inflict on their bodies, men’s fertility decreases, while genetic risk to offspring slowly mounts. The range of findings is staggering: Several studies have shown that the older the man, the more fragmented the DNA in his ejaculated sperm, resulting in greater risk for infertility, miscarriage or birth defects. Investigations out of Israel, Europe, and the United States have shown that non-verbal (performance) intelligence may decline exclusively due to greater paternal age; that up to a third of all cases of schizophrenia are linked to increasing paternal age; and that men 40 and older are nearly six times more likely to have offspring with autism than men under age 30. Other research shows that the risk of breast and prostate cancer in offspring increases with paternal age. “

November 20, 2007 at 7:54 am

(10) autism says:

Kassiane – you crack me up! actually, I suspect you may be LITERALLY correct, since so many people on the spectrum have advanced digital technology…

Lisa

November 20, 2007 at 6:36 pm

(11) MattySF1 says:

Lisa,
My brother just sent me a link to the story on WiFi and Autism. Since the link’s suddenly no longer working, I, too, searched for more info on the journal/article. Your page popped up. Frankly, I’m surprised how easily you ridicule such a claim, and the institution behind it. Google can’t provide us with everything, eh? (And if you can’t Google it, it may still exist…!) If you’re truly concerned about Autism, and your/our health in general, you wouldn’t poo-poo such theories. In San Francisco we’re literally bathing in hundreds of crisscrossing wireless signals (cell, HDTV, WiFi), and I’ve often wondered what the health effect might be. Please know that I’m no technophobe: I have my own wireless network in my home…!
-Matty

November 21, 2007 at 3:34 pm

(12) Jean says:

My concern is with the phrase “peer reviewed journal”. To the scientific community this indicates that a group of peers with subject matter expertise have reviewed the article and approved it for publication. Those types of articles are abstracted (summarized) in PubMed, part of the National Library of Medicine. If it’s not in there (and this particular journal is not) I have to wonder if it’s really peer-reviewed. I might add that PubMed includes journals from all over the world, and about 20 with the word “Australia” or “Australasian” in the title.

November 27, 2007 at 11:11 am

(13) Liz says:

Personally I think Autism causes technology. Look at all the things that have been invented in the last 3 decades and compare them to the increases in the number of cases of autism. Hmmm. Maybe autism is the next step in evolution?? I like to think so and so does my son.

November 28, 2007 at 10:38 am

(14) Dewey says:

I used an electrical heating pad a lot during my second pregnancy. Asperger son, but then I look at my brother in law and I know it was in the genes.

January 7, 2008 at 4:09 pm

(15) Andy says:

Thanks to Carole Rutherford for that indepth comment. It was definitely worth reading. People are too quick to poke fun when things like these come out. Their view seems to be that everything done by people with letters after their names must be true, and everything by others must be a joke. As a scientist and PhD who has published in leading journals and has been cited many times I can tell you we are humans too, and we rarely do anything to undermine our own careers. If I were a wireless researcher, I would balk at anyone who might suggest the harmful effects of EM radiation. We protect our own turfs like anyone. The article under question is well presented, and should be pursued further. That would be the right thing to do. It would be highly unusual if the EM radiation from cell phones had NO effect on humans. The question is how much, not if it has any effects. Xray technology went through the same phase. They used to have Xrays at shoe stores to size your feet. The ones who raised concern back then were labelled as alarmists. Xrays are highly useful when used sparingly. I suspect the same might turn out to be true with RF as well.

I have never heard of the Australasian Journal of Medicine. I do not care whether it is peer reviewed or not. I look at one paper at a time and form my own judgement about its validity.
From experience I know that ‘peer review’ is not what most people believe it to be. We publish in peer reviewed journals only when we want it to count for promotions and awards. We publicize things we feel passionately about through other venues such as seminars and personal websites. Peers are not divine powers who look at everything objectively. Also, the system of peer review is a dying relic from the days of printed journals. Right now I have two manuscripts on my desk waiting for review for a leading international journal. To be frank, this is an annoyance than a priviledge. I might spend 10 minutes tops reviewing them. If the author says anthing that might tickle me the wrong way, the paper would most likely be rejected. I’ve been told that 10 minutes is way too long to spend on a single review so most people probably 1-2 minutes for a review.

January 8, 2008 at 12:46 am

(16) Nancy says:

I appreciate that in spite of the fact that you don’t value the study, it gets attention on this website. People can look it up and judge for themselves. Rather than worry about the legitimacy of the journal, I read the study. I found it very comprehensive and informative. I think everyone should do the same. Thanks Carole for her insights.

May 29, 2009 at 6:46 am

(17) Paul says:

The paper can be found at

http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/emr_autism_acnem_final_1.pdf

This is the website of the Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine

http://www.acnem.org/modules/mastop_publish/