Re: from TIME MAGAZINE Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny - AUTISM SEGMENT

January 19, 2010

I am adding some comments from the AGE OF AUTISM website

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

.....

All of which brings us back to autism.

Our community has long asserted our children were not genetically

pre-determined to get autism. If autism was purely a genetic problem then

the numbers should be 1 in 100 from here until the dawn of time. The

autistic should be part of our culture, the stories we tell, the very fabric

of our society. But they’re not. Instead we have stories about the tidal

wave of adults with autism we can expect in the next few years and how

poorly prepared we are for them. Nobody saw this problem until it was first

described in the 1940s. From that time it’s gone from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in

100. With that rate of increase, can it be long until it goes to 1 in 10?

We need to find answers.

And let’s be clear about it. Most of us saw a change after a vaccination, a

procedure which has become more common since our generation (10 vaccinations

in the 1980’s before the age of 5 to 36 vaccinations under the current

schedule) and has been administered at earlier ages.

Many of the far-sighted researchers and physicians in autism have been

talking about DNA methylation for years. These concerns have finally begun

to enter the mainstream conversation.

Science is showing that a change in eating patterns can have consequences

that reach down the generations. Peanut oil in baby lotions might be behind

the amazing rise in peanut allergies. A drug administered to a fly affects

thirteen succeeding generations. What has the increased vaccination

schedule done to our children? What might a single vaccination do to the

genome of a child, or even an adult?

These are reasonable questions and I’m glad a magazine like TIME is coming

close to asking them. That’s what science is about. Asking the right

questions and getting meaningful answers which can help people. This needs

to happen in autism.

I hope the rest of the media follows TIME magazine’s excellent example.

Kent Heckenlively is Contributing Editor of Age of Autism

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