Comment by brightball

> I have investigated various matters throughout my career. That statement has all the symptoms of confirmation bias. The way to get an unbiased result is to do a large-scale, randomized (double-)blind study. You need quantified data, not emotional anecdotes. And if you have something specific in mind and the quantified info to back it up, then we can discuss. Otherwise, those assertions are moot. And for that matter, do you know that these symptoms are extremely hard to identify in infants? The timing of recognition of those symptoms is a rather unreliable indicator for anything.

If you have investigated then you already understand the biggest challenge to double blind studies here: control groups because of the variety of issues on the spectrum and the difficulty in measuring the severity of each of them. There’s a doctor in Indiana who’s been trying to categorize them all and has it narrowed to about 140 or so. It’s not an easy group to run studies on.

Autism is very much a digestive issue. People who just observe the behaviors without being close to treatment believe it’s purely neurological.

The core issue with everything you’re saying is that we have an information vacuum. With cancer, for example, we as a society are more than comfortable saying almost everything causes cancer. With autism, we’re not allowed to even speculate publicly. If we do it’s a simple “I don’t know what causes it but it’s DEFINITELY not the thing that I don’t want to believe is involved.”

Autism is a spectrum and there are a lot of severe cases. The severe cases often result in exactly what I’m describing above. Therapy helps in most cases but the experience described above is very real. In many cases it’s much less severe and kids are mainstreamed with some social awkwardness. The violent outbursts described in a scenario above, again, aren’t in most situations but they do happen consistently for some certain kids and when they do it’s a nightmare.

It’s not harmful to tell the truth, but it is to ignore it.

The problem with watching this discussion in real time on social media is seeing people who know one or two people who have a child who is autistic and that shapes their entire perspective. The parents who have children who are more severe on the spectrum often have very few people who know them because just the idea of time to socialize with others is often difficult to obtain.

The information vacuum is very real though and until we get a definitive answer on the cause of autism, people are going to speculate. You watch discussion of it be suppressed for over a decade and it creates trust issues.