RE: Ten years later, where is Erin Brockovich?
for hates idiots
first know thyself
second the increase in autism is not yet proven nor understood because there is no positive diagnosis for autism. it depends greatly on the onlooker. a recent study noted that the number of autistic children appears to be greater in wealthier neighborhoods, with someone postulating that because the wealthier are better educated they are more likely to see the signs in their children. an alternate hypothesis is thet the wealthy might tend to panic more and see what they want to believe is there. further, this study was done in california and in those wealthy neigborhoods it is far less likely the people are drinking water out of the tap , but are drinking only bottled water and so have less exposure to heavy metals.
my own theory is that autism and allergies are increasing more or less at the same time that children are being less exposed to toxins that cause antibodies to be developed by their immune systems, mostly because we sterilize everything and do not let our children play in the dirt any more. this would also be more likely to be true in the wealthier neighborhoods. when i was a kid in the 1930s, i can only vaguely remeber that there may have been one other child that i knew that may have had an allergy, but then we did not use chlorox or lysol to sterilize every surface, and we all played in the mud; and we lived in the city. the farm kids peobably developed even better inmmune systems because they also were around farm animals all the time.. in those days i doubt that anyone ever mentioned autism. by the way at least one of my children showed some of the signs of autism, mainly because he was so interested in what he was about , working in his own room, he did not have the time nor inclinatioin to be bothered by other trivial pursuits.
at such time as someone develops a true way to diagnose autism, or a test of the disorder, we can then discuss the number of cases. at this time, remember occam's razor, look for the simplest explanation and that might be that we live in a nation that is in a continual state of panic, and fightened of literally everything. the increae in autism might just be one of the diagnostic signs.
