The purpose of this website is to provide material supplementary to the update review (not yet published) of the 1993-published autism theory paper (linked in header above). All the posts here serve that purpose in one way or another, but some are more worthwhile or necessary than others. So here is a brief guide to the contents here.

Click here to read discussion of whether there is a relationship of vaccines to autism.

"Skeptical" people will generate plenty of supposedly clever reasons for rejecting the whole basis of the antiinnatia theory. That's despite the fact that any such "skeptics" must therefore be instead gullibly taking seriously one of a handful of utterly absurd alternative theories as explained in the update paper.

An answer to one of these "skeptical" notions is this one about being supposedly impossible for mercury to get to the DNA. And this one about supposedly the history of Pink Disease (acrodynia) proving that mercury doesn't cause autism. But perhaps you're a sheep?

Autism research is now becoming seriously distorted by official charlatanism similar to that of which the proof is shown here. And that distortion directly affronts the truths to which this theory relates. One of the leading sources of extreme misinformation is the book by Paul Offit, which is being distributed free to parents of victims via the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The myths:

1. that there has been no autism increase,
2. that mercury is not associated with autism, and
3. that removal by chelation cannot help,

are all addressed in the articles linked above and therefrom (and more fully in conjunction with the update review paper).

Turning to less militarised corners of the autism research field, I'll first point out that theories are often not in conflict even when they superficially may appear to be.

And there is only one autistic/ASD/etc syndrome, not several or many "autisms".

You can find the link to the spectacularly-predicted Purgatorius video here, along with some further evidence relating to my explanation of the hand-flapping.

Some other peoples' excellent graphs of the increase in the US can be found here, particularly the ones with multiple differently-coloured curves. They basically confirm my interpretation of the California DDS data as essentially a simple exponential-shaped increase.

Here is a link to my comment on close-spaced pregnancy findings of Keely Cheslack-Postava, Kayuet Liu, and Peter S. Bearman.

I've added yet another amazing new prediction, that the Flynn Effect (rising IQs increase) affects non-human animals as well.

Mitochondrial dysfunctions could be caused by antiinnatia (both within and without the brain), or they could be a non-antiinnatia "side effect" of mercury toxication. They could be part of some processes whereby antiinnatia affects neuronal function. So the reports about mitochondria appear to give neither support nor challenge to antiinatia theory.

Data on a "photoninthedarkness" blog leads me now to thinking that the increase has involved some diagnostic substitution, but not in the way that is assumed by pro-vaxxers. More later, but I reckon when there was a rapid real increase of autism c. 1985-1995, much of it was incorrectly diagnosed as non-autistic retardation. Thereafter the diagnoses substituted to the correct autism diagnoses. This leads me to suspect that the autism increase actually stopped increasing about ten years ago and since then it's just been an artifact of substitution.

“We’re finding that the immune system seems to function at a lower level in autism,” says Hertz-Picciotto. Which could be because the dental mercury that caused the autism increase is well-known to also impair immune functioning.

July 2011: Powerful yet further evidence of mercury involvement in autism - 6-fold increased autism in children whose grandparents survived Pink Disease.

(I'll continue work on this intro menu in due course, so be sure to check back later.)

Fallacy of a "changepoint" in the autism increase

This is my comment on the 2010 paper by Michael E McDonald and John P Paul. "Timing of increased autistic disorder cumulative incidence" Environ. Sci. Technol. 44, 2112-2118.

The authors reckon that they can usefully analyse the autism increase curve by making an approximation of it in terms of two straight lines. They then point out that the junction of the two lines, the "changepoint", at which they suggest the autism increase began, is about 1988-9.

In reality, just about any curve of roughly exponential increase form can have a couple of straight lines imposed on it such as to passably plausibly account for the entire data set. Especially if you set the time axis long enough so the increase will look like an abrupt event rather than a gradual one.

Nice correlations can be found for each line with its corresponding part of the data, and impressively high significance levels pointed out. It does not however follow that the increase is usefully understood in terms of such pairs of lines.

The paper of McDonald and Paul features remarkably small graphs of the increase, which tend to give the impression that there was no increase before their "changepoint". And they use a whopping 50-year timespan. It would be better to have larger (taller) graphs around the critical period so we can examine the end of the "level" section more closely.

I will put here this superb graph of the US IDEA data that others have kindly prepared. (Right-click it to open an enlargement in a separate window.)
(Graph provided by Thoughtful House Center for Children,
Graphing IDEA Professional 2010, Thoughtful House, Austin, TX,
Accessed at http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/disabilities/ on November 19, 2010.)

It should be quite obvious from this graph that there was not some abrupt changepoint around 1988, and not around any other year either.

One can also see that the increase was already beginning by 1980. This is nicely in line with the update review of the antiinnatia theory in which I state that the cause of the increase was the introduction of non-gamma-2 dental amalgams in the 1970s. (Among other evidence, the world's most famous dentist, Hal Huggins, said they became the new "state of the art" in 1975-6.)

Furthermore there is a conspicuous de-steepening of the gradient at 1992-3. I expect that this was due to some minor improvement of the amalgam usage protocol, such as avoiding for pregnant women, a slightly less toxic formulation, or improved suction systems.

I would not have commented on this "changepoint" paper except that it has been cited by Andrew Wakefield and some Age of Autism people as supposedly showing that the start of increase coincided with some changes in vaccination usage. No it didn't.

What evidence there is of effectiveness of chelation for autism, and what evidence that there is no mercury-autism connection anyway.

It is impossible to exist as a human with IQ above 50 or so without forming theories; for instance the theory that one should go to sleep at night, or that there's something called chocolate which tastes nice.

Those superiors who beam down their contempt for conspiracy theorising may be unduly believing in the opposite which we might call "integrity theorising". And the older I get the less and less evidence I see for any truth of such integrity theories!

Conspiracy theorising is limited in the contribution it can make towards resolving medical questions, but I think it can help. Here are two relevant “conspiracy theories” that are supported by so much evidence that I can’t even begin to present it here.
(1) Those who cause a great harm are inclined to go to great lengths to deflect blame from themselves. The medical establishment is well-aware that some of the sources of mercury exposure are from themselves, not least dental amalgam. So it has great hostility to any suggestion of mercury involvement in autism.
(2) One of the most profitable industries in history is Big Pharma. They have for numerous decades engaged in dirty tricks propaganda designed to suppress competition from alternatives to their own patented products. A million dollars spent on propaganda is peanuts to them. And just think how much more you could achieve if you had just one of those millions of dollars to deploy.

There has been a lot of misrepresentation of chelation therapy, not least because it is a whole new approach to treatment, not properly fitting into the categories of either nutrients or conventional drugs. Just as you would not lump together all pharma-drugs or all nutrients as if they were just one treatment, so you should not lump together all chelation treatments. Huge numbers have been killed by prescribed drugs, but we do not seriously argue that therefore all drugs should be banned.

There’s also been a lot of misrepresentation of chelation because even many of those who promote it are incompetent, having little understanding of what is involved.

In my experience the unequalled mercury chelation expert is Andrew Hall Cutler who worked out how to cure himself of “amalgam illness” as he calls it. There’s no substitute for reading his slightly pricey book titled “Amalgam Illness”. But you can get to the key part of it by finding it on Amazon.com (not co.uk), and clicking the “Look inside”, then searching for the word “avid” which will take you to page 201. Page 199 onwards explains the essence of competent chelation, and of why incompetent chelation can be rather harmful. It’s simply the difference between brute ignorance and knowledge of the simple principles, not some amazing rocket-science expertise or great skill.

The purpose of chelation is, as per the diagrams on pages 200-201, to remove the toxin from the body. EDTA is not good for mercury detox; AHC explicitly condemned its use in this 1999 book. For adult amalgam illness he recommends only a specific protocol of (optional) DMSA for lowering the general body levels, followed only later by the (necessary) use of ALA which enables transport out from the brain (but also into it which is why the outside-of-brain levels must be lowered first). ALA is a nutrient, an amino acid, so not really comparable to a synthetic drug -- except that in mercurised persons it has that great potential negative (as I experienced myself before I understood I was mercury poisoned; I certainly didn’t take a second tablet of it).

Elsewhere in his book AHC explains how to counteract the tendency of chelators to remove required elements alongside the toxic ones. Again this isn’t exactly rocket science, unless of course your job depends on not understanding it.

Thus you can see now why inappropriate chelation can certainly be harmful, just as you can easily kill yourself with some commonly available pills from the pharmacy. And the sensationalist propaganda anecdotes by Offit and Fitzpatrick of one death caused by an incompetent’s use of EDTA casts not the slightest light on the question of safety of competent chelation protocols.

AHC’s recommendation for chelation of autistics is roughly the same (DMSA–)ALA protocol as for adult amalgam illness, except with shorter intervals. He’s been critical of the protocols recommended by ARI/DAN people, but I don’t know the exact details (as therapy is not something I reckon to have comprehensive expertise about).

Hopefully the above has adequately explained the proper and improper uses of the widely differing protocols applied to the various chelators.

~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, the medical corporo-establishment is hostile to the idea of mercury involvement in autism, for those two reasons of denying blame for causing it and opposing a non-pharma treatment for it.

You probably already know that it began with the thimerosal hypothesis, itself soon after Wakefield’s MMR hypothesis. These vaccine hypotheses were rightly debunked (at least as major autism factors), but once the debunkers got started they got carried away into falsely debunking everything else to do with autism-mercury -- in the context of those two prejudicing motives.

That included seeking to debunk chelation for autism. Both Offit’s and Fitzpatrick’s books deploy a number of fallacious critiques of chelation, accompanying their lurid highlighting of the irrelevant EDTA-related death anecdote. That latter is as logical as condemning the use of anti-depressants (“drugs”) on the basis of an anecdote of one death resulting from a pain-killer (“drugs”) overdose.

Meanwhile, what about the evidence of effectiveness?

Years ago the ARI instigated a whole load of carefully-designed studies which established the value of vitamin B6 in ameliorating autism in about half of cases. And then all that peer-reviewed, double-blinded, multi-replicated research was utterly ignored and pretended away anyway by the medical establishment.

Thereafter Rimland and Co understandably decided to let the “proper” scientific publishing process go to hell and the ARI concentrated on doing its own publishing via internet and conferences.

Non-establishment science faces increasingly severe obstacles to reaching the official recognition of a PubMed number. Researchers find funding unavailable; they fear having their careers trashed; and many journal editors and referees then deploy their own unsound hostilities. And then even if it does manage to get published it just gets ignored by the sheep and sheepdogs of the establishment anyway, like those B6 studies and my own theory paper.

The CDC, NIMH, MRC etc have not exactly been racing against one another to set up chelation trials with the millions at their command. It appears that eventually SafeMinds etc managed to pester them into setting up a trial, but it, oh, --so regettably!-- "had to be" halted due to supposedly some safety concerns. It couldn’t of course really even possibly be just because they were in danger of getting the “wrong” result and proving that chelation cures autism.

Meanwhile, in the real world, yes there are all those many videos of recovered children, which a lot of "experts" seem incapable of even mentioning, including for instance Simon Baron-Cohen, and "Research Autism" which pretends to be a charity trying to help autistics. And the plural of anecdote eventually does become scientific evidence despite all the efforts of sham scientists. Scientific American recently suggested that 75% of parents are now using the treatments decried as life-threatening quackery.

It is very analogous to the case of adult amalgam illness (which ironically is caused by the same amalgams that caused the autism increase). Many thousands of cases of spectacular “miraculous” recovery from serious intractable illness are on record; plus there’s my own stupendous case and the official lies and evasions to prevent me getting treatment; the internet is getting more and more flooded with such stark testimonies. Amalgam’s even been banned now in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. And yet parts of the med establishment and their slimey assistants such as Ben Goldacre insist on just churning out yet more lies and patently pseudo-science reports such as the SCENIHR one.

Evidence that the real quackery is coming from the medical establishment:
their defence of mercury is demonstrably a pile of rubbish.

Senior names in the research bureaucracy such as Linda Birnbaum assert that an autism-mercury connection has been found to be lacking. The putative evidence of this lack of involvement of mercury rests on three studies, namely Ip et al, Soden, and Hertz-Picciotto et al. 2010. But the first two have been shown to be flawed beyond repair, and indeed evidencing the opposite, by DeSoto and Hitlan 2010. And the remaining study has meanwhile been shown by myself to be worthless rubbish malfounded on a most elementary error.

Oh, and now we have this further would-be contribution: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19027035, which purports an ignorance of even the most basic principle of chelation therapy (namely removing the toxin from the body) and substitutes a straw-man fallacious in-situ “detoxification” concept of its own. It is just as impossible to carry out a test of chelation in vitro (or in this case "in tissue") as it is impossible to venture out on a test drive of a car engine which is standing isolated from the car body on a mechanic's bench. When a dentist drills your tooth it instantly creates more pain than was there already. But we don't validly infer from that that dental treatment is counterproductive; because the treatment has to be evaluated as a whole.

That’s four out of four piles of rubbish constantly cited by the very-well-qualified professional defenders of mercury.

On the one hand there is that fourfold pile of rubbish supposedly showing no involvement of mercury. On the other hand the evidence that mercury is involved in autism is now so substantial as to be far beyond reasonable doubt (as reviewed in my update review forthcoming).

Wouldn't it be wonderful if researchers in capitalist countries were paid to find out the truth rather than to cover it up and oppress victims?
More pages relevant to chelation denialism are linked here.

(This post has been written in response to a question asked on the lbrb blog - search for the second comment by "daedalus".)
Two more studies apparently showing a mercury connection (though I've not read them as I concentrate my reading on things that don't agree with my current conclusions): http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a916457948 and http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/730552

There is only one autistic/ASD syndrome!

There are many thousands of autistics, and each one is unique.

But I resolutely reject the notion suggested by some, that there are "many autisms", for the following reasons.

The world has been aware of the autistic syndrome/Asperger syndrome for nearing 70 years now. Many people have spent much time trying to delineate separate subdivisions within that syndrome. The result has been a resounding lack of finding any such subdivisions. Even attempts to show any certain distinction between "Aspergers" and "high-functioning autism" have drawn a blank [as per Tony Attwood's review linked at end here].

Meanwhile there are certainly great variations in how autism manifests. And there is much reason to believe that the etiological (causal) factors can be quite different in different cases.

Years ago when I was first writing down the antiinnatia theory of autism I wrote a paragraph which explained about this. But because the paper (as published in 1993) was already rather long, I cut that paragraph out before publication. I'll now reinstate it here, in concept at least (as I don't remember the original wording).

Autism(/ASD etc) is like a tree. Just as a tree has many roots, so autism has many causes. Just as a tree has many branches, so autism has many characteristics and signs (notwithstanding the dumbing-down to a "triad of impairments"). But also, just as a tree has only one trunk, so autism/ASD/Aspergers/etc has only one central causal, definitional mechanism/concept, namely antiinnatia.

We can elaborate this metaphor of a tree by thinking of it as grounded in some rather peculiar soil. At the northwest corner there is a lot of (say) uranium in the soil, whereas at the southeast corner there is none at all. In consequence of this the leaves of one corner of the tree contain a lot of uranium while at the opposite corner there is little or none. But all are part of the same tree.

But....!
Notwithstanding the above, it would be wise for autism research to recognise various distinctions, such as male/female, and late/early onset. And another distinction I would suggest to be particularly important.

The evidence concerning this is is more fully elaborated in my update review, but I will briefly outline it here. According to my update of the theory, the autism increase has been caused by mercury (from non-gamma-2 amalgams); whereas the pre-increase autism had generally minimal involvement of mercury. (But it couldn't be zero as no-one has ever lived in a zero-mercury environment.)

It follows that within contemporary autism/ASD/Aspergers/etc we are looking at two substantially different things. On the one hand the minority (10-20%?) who would have been autistic/etc even if the increase had not taken place. These would be the "true" autism/etc, so to speak. On the other hand, those cases caused by mercury intake. These latter are very likely to have a variety of mercury-specific symptoms accompanying their antiinnatia-caused symptoms.

It follows that any research that just lumps together both these groups is liable to learn little about either. Indicators towards distinguishing between the two are likely to include: age of onset, number of maternal amalgams, level of indoor mercury vapor, results of porphyrin tests or hair mercury tests. Meanwhile, mercury levels in blood or urine are most unlikely to be worthwhile distinguishers.

It may be possible to discern the two categories in bimodal distributions and or scattergrams, getting beyond overly simple averaging of the whole autistic category.

Review of Asperger's/Autism relationship by Tony Attwood.

The politics of autism research

"...gene is mythical part of living structure which in reactionary theories like Mendelism-Veysmanism-Morganism determines heredity. Soviet scientists under leadership of Academician Lysenko proved scientifically that genes don't exist in the nature."
From Soviet Encyclopedia circa 1950

Huge numbers of words, including several books, have been written about allegedly unworthy deeds and motives of various people and groups involved in autism research. Depending on which side you prefer to believe, those involved in Defeat Autism Now, SafeMinds, Age of Autism, etc, are either evil profiteering quackery-merchants or else great heroes standing up to an evil profiteering medical establishment.

In my view, such conspiracy theorising does little to resolve any of the scientific questions. In my experience as a theorist, researchers almost never actually falsify their raw data (though in respect of commercially-criticial trials of therapies it may be less rare). I wouldn't have been able to so easily formulate coherent theories time and time again if that data were not founded in reality.

But I do think that anyone coming to look at autism research, and the forthcoming (non-/)reaction to my update review, would be well advised to be aware of some of the potential political factors that could be intruding to distort the science from its unbiased path. So I will just put these few thoughts here on the subject.

Some elements of the political context could be that:

1. Some people wish(ed) to blame vaccine manufacturers, or other medical institutions, for causing the autism of their children (and associated alleged increase). (the "heretics")
   
2. Some of those accused by the above wish(ed) to prove that there was no such causation, and or increase. (the "establishment")
   
3. Some professional researchers might conceivably wish to spin out the progress of science into false trails, so as to prolong their own professional research careers rather than resolve questions as promptly as possible. And some may fear losing their jobs if they raise the 'wrong' questions or publish the 'wrong' results. (the "careerists")
   
4. Some others may wish to falsely declare a crisis, and or falsely proclaim treatments, in order to profit from gullible customers. (the "quacks")
5. Yet others (the "establishment" again) may wish to falsely discredit valuable treatments as supposed quack remedies, because they undermine their own plans to market licenced pharmaceuticals for the same condition.
   

Malign motives can be attributed to all sides. And false claims can be shown on all sides, naturally enough given the human talent for making mistakes. And so little or nothing of the science is proven by any of the associated slime-throwing.

I'll just put below here my own impressions of how the science has been distorted in recent years, by way of enabling some anticipation of how my own update review will be misrepresented in due course. Please note that none of this is my certified testimony as to the truth of anything; please verify for yourself if you wish to take a firm view of any of it.

Firstly (see disclaimer above), autism had a most unhelpful tendency to become noticeable at just about the same age as some vaccinations are injected. And some of the heretics were noticing an increase in prevalence which aligned with increased vaccinations. Their reasonable suspicion was reinforced by the lack of any other obvious causal change, because the dental profession continues to assert that they're still using those same old amalgams tried and tested over 150 years, and so approximately no-one has noticed the huge unannounced changeover to non-gamma-2 amalgams.

The heretics of necessity tended to be rather amateurish, undertrained, underqualified and underfunded people. They naturally made plenty of mistakes, especially in the early years.

The establishment could have responded to the MMR and thimerosal theories with some sound science. Instead, some absolutely stupendously abysmal papers were published, such as Madsen in respect of Denmark. Such rubbish could be excused if it were coming from the amateur heretics, but coming from supposed leading expert scientists and published in supposedly top-rating journals any notion of good faith bungling was much harder to find credible.

The result of these abysmal publications (and the associated persecution of Andrew Wakefield) was a huge increase of distrust of the establishment. In reality there was soon enough sufficient sound science to radically marginalise the vaccine theories anyway. But now that the establishment has gained an image of untrustworthiness, that sound science is very much harder for the heretics and the general public to believe. Everything can now be rationalised away as lies and propaganda.

Associated claims from the establishment have been that the increase was not real, and that autism was almost entirely of genetic causation. Again the establishment used abysmal papers to justify its denialism. Again they unnecessarily undermined their own credibility.

It appears that those claims of no increase and no environmental cause thereof are now floundering in the face of a reality that is simply too big to be pretended away (though the NHS as recently as 2009 has published yet more rubbish in defence of that flat earth).

Which brings us to the present stage of this parade of denialisms. This is exemplified by a number of the highest-ranking research professionals touting blood levels of mercury as a supposedly useful means of showing that mercury has not been involved in autism. Any even slightly competent researcher should be well aware that using blood (or urine) measures of mercury is a great way to get the false negative that they want so as to put everyone off the trail to the real cause of the increase. Even my common-or-garden mere general practitioner (family doctor) was able to tell me back in 2004 that blood mercury is a useless test for chronic mercury poisoning. So how come these spectacularly-qualified supposedly leading expert researchers don't know even this most basic fact of what they are publishing about?
Reference for blood mercury: Mutter, Naumann, Guethlin. Comments on the Article "The toxicology of mercury and its chemical compounds". Crit Rev Toxicol 2007 37:537-549.

Meanwhile the other two papers (by Ip, and Soden) which are deployed as supposedly showing no mercury involvement have also been exposed as severely flawed, in this review by DeSoto and Hitlan.
(http://www.ane.pl/showarticle.php?art=7021)
So the case against mercury involvement rests on three papers all of which are fit only for the trashcan. Need I say more?

We can now look forward to hearing this same pseudo-expertise rolled out again as "professional" "expert" testimony to also "disprove" my update review on the pseudic grounds of a supposed lack of difference of mercury in autism.

One may hypothesise that there are malign motives at work, of (1) wishing to deflect blame from the medical establishment's endorsement of dental amalgam, and or (2) wishing to avoid identifying the real environmental cause so that these same researchers can enjoy decades of prestige and income at our expense on a wild-goose chase among any number of other non-causes of autism. One may also hypothesise (3) that some researchers are in an embarassing position, because they fear having their careers destroyed and ending up on the dole if they ask the 'wrong' questions or publish the 'wrong' answers.

Those are only unproven hypotheses. It is nevertheless difficult for me to suppress suspicion that the malign spirit of Lysenkoism is very much alive and distorting the world of professional autism research in the western world. On the other hand again, I would be wary of attributing evil to all the people involved. My observations of other "controversies" indicate that the most stupendous obtuseness can be achieved even by highly intelligent people having no possible selfish motive for their denialism (and this for reasons that were explained in my unpublished theory of neuroticism; btw, the low-neurotic can be even more denialic than the high).

Hertz-Picciotto et al 2010 very misleading about mercury

Contrary to widely-promoted assertions, the Hertz-Picciotto et al 2010 study does not in the slightest constitute evidence that mercury has not been involved in causation of autism.

They found no association of mercury blood levels with autism. Which is not surprising as the autism would be caused not by mercury in blood but by mercury in brain cells. It's been known for decades that blood levels of mercury are near-useless as an indicator of body burden of mercury and chronic mercury poisoning.

“The distribution of mercury into the body tissues is highly variable and there appears to be little correlation between levels in urine, blood or hair and toxic effects.” —NIDH/ADA Workshop on Biocompatibility of Metals, Journal of the American Dental Association 109 (September 1984).

Further references for the uselessness of blood mercury levels can be found in the critique by Joachim Mutter of the fraudulent SCENIHR report, and in Mutter, Naumann, Guethlin. Comments on the Article "The toxicology of mercury and its chemical compounds". Crit Rev Toxicol 2007 37:537-549.

Even my mere common-or-garden general practitioner ("family doctor") was able to tell me years ago that a blood test of mercury would be worthless for diagnosing chronic mercury poisoning.

A great way to get the wrong answers is to ask the wrong questions. A far more right question to have asked would have been whether there is an association between number of mothers' amalgams (i.e. a cause) and autistic behaviors (i.e. the key effect of interest). Some such studies have already been done and found significantly positive results. They are far easier to carry out than this one requiring going round sucking blood from children rather than just counting their mothers' fillings.

Another right question would be the association of lack of outdoor air with autism, and again significantly positive results have been found by Waldman & Adilov.

More advanced understanding of antiinnatia; this post is not for beginners here!

Don't start your reading here, first study the 1993 paper and the home page here.

It is mainly about concepts. Sound science cannot be founded on concepts alone, but science gets in a muddle if the concepts are not properly clarified. So this can be important.

The nature of the autistic syndrome.

An expression "the autistic spectrum" has become popularised. This is regrettable because it promotes a fallacy that autism variation is all or mostly on one dimension from mild to severe. A more reasonable concept is that autism, Aspergers, and related things such as dyslexia, are all part of the autistic syndrome, that is tendency to clustering together of certain characteristics. This clustering is many-dimensional, with the number of dimensions being equal(ish?) to the number of characteristics whose expression can be affected by antiinnatia. In practice, as generally found with factor analysis, there would be a smaller number of main/most important dimensions (such as predisposition to allocating attention to the behaviors of others), some mediumly important ones, and a lot of less important ones.

The inclusion of such things as dyslexia (or what might otherwise be called language disabilities) is warranted by the finding of these being found associated in twin studies, and their symptoms falling within the same theoretical framework of suppression of innatons.

The nature of antiinnatia factors

The 1993 paper indicated that both environmental and genetic factors would be antiinnatia factors. We might add that perhaps epigenetic, genomic imprinting or mitochondrial factors could also have antiinnatia effect.

In any case, there is no reason to suppose a yes/no distinction between variables that are antiinnatia factors and those that are not. Instead, like autism itself it is a matter of degree with no clear cutoff.

And one would expect some antiinnatia factors to be "purer" (more non-specific) than others. This can arguably be seen in the social class differential graphs of my 1993 paper (graphs of table 1 added in author's reprint). The "pure" would be due to the purer antiinnatia, while the "complicated"/"organic" would be due to the less pure causing what we might call side-effects. (I discussed this variable purity of antiinnatia factors already in the 1993 paper itself.)

The numerous antiinnatia genes in combination would act as a relatively pure, general antiinatia factor, even though any one of those genes taken in isolation might have some idiosyncratic side-effects.

One would expect some grossly injurious process such as an untimely bash on the head, or a severe infective brain inflammation of viral encephalitis would have substantial side effects.

I would reckon that mercury, while a relatively pure antiinnatia factor, would be less pure than the 'portfolio' of antiinnatia genes, due to its interference with thiol-dependend enzymes, and its tendency to generate oxidative stress.

One can then go on to reasonably expect that there would be some other factors which have more or less of antiinnatia factor effect. And obviously any gene specifically related to language function is going to tend to be a factor in suppression of at least language function, and hence favour outcomes with a bit of resemblance to autism even though arguably not properly considered a true antiinnatia factor.

Abstract of the draft of the update review of the antiinnatia theory

While I cannot post here the actual full paper (as that can breach the pre-publication policies of some journals), I think it will be ok to put here just the abstract (summary), as currently drafted. It's important to understand that this abstract has space only to merely assert the conclusions therein stated, but the full paper presents the evidence and reasoning through which those conclusions are reached.

The causes of autism: A theory now further supported by four predictions;
why dental amalgams caused increased autism;
and why mercury pollution caused the Flynn effect IQ increase

The gene-expression theory of autism and IQ (antiinnatia theory) is further supported via others’ findings relating to four predictions:
1. Correlation of body symmetry with IQ.
2. In autism, rationality less reduced by innate predispositions.
3. Autism being caused by molecules which erratically, dose-dependently bind to DNA and thereby reduce gene-expression (e.g. mercury).
4. Shared causality of raised IQ (the Flynn effect) and autism.
The hitherto-puzzling Flynn effect is explained in terms of varying atmospheric mercury. The Flynn effect has reversed because mercury pollution has reversed. Mercury pollution is probably causing harm additional to that currently recognised. Fetal testosterone is only a minor antiinnatia factor. Autism partially coincides with “extreme-male-brain”. The concept of “developmental instability” is unsound.
Summary of the amalgam case:
· Autistic behaviours are shown to have increased about tenfold in Western capitalist countries.
· Mercury was definitely involved.
· Mercury vapor from amalgams is the main source of mercury in the body.
· No other tenable sources of the mercury are available.
· Non-gamma-2 amalgams emit 30-50 times more mercury vapor, which is highly absorbed by lungs and infant brain.
· Exponential increase started promptly after the introduction of non-gamma-2 amalgams.
· A marked change of ratio of age of onset coincided closely with the increase. Yet the ratio remained low in Poland, where data did not show any increase either.
· Number of maternal amalgams is a risk factor for autism in the US, but maybe not in Poland.
· The antiinnatia theory had unknowingly pre-explained how mercury would cause autism.
· Accords with the antiinnatia theory causality of maintained suppression rather than knockout blow.
· The late onset is explained as due to accumulation when infants regularly inhale the vapor.
· The new ventilation prediction has already been supported by correlation of rainfall/snowfall with autism.

I cannot put this update paper on a website in advance of it being accepted by a journal. But in the interim I can send you a draft copy by email if you email a request for it to rpclarke{att]autismcauses{dott]info .

Abnormalities of the "resting network" and of language lateralisation

In my most recent draft of the update review of the theory, I wrote:

Pisula (2010) lists numerous areas of the brain which are known to be normally (and by implication innately) associated with specified psychological functions, and which function abnormally in autism. She notes that these findings cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of “theory of mind” or “executive dysfunction” or “lack of central coherence”. But they all rather obviously fall very clearly within the concept of innatons being affected by excessive antiinnatia. So Pisula’s review can be re-read in retrospect as even further testimony to the empirical soundness of the antiinnatia theory...."

I'd now add to that list two more instances of a similar kind.

Firstly the "resting network", which in neurotypicals activates while not concentrating on a task, and becomes inactive when task-engaged. Whereas in autistics it tends to just have a similar level of activity in both circumstances. Ref: Failing to deactivate: Resting functional abnormalities in autism. Daniel P. Kennedy, Elizabeth Redcay and Eric Courchesne

Secondly, here is Dr Courchesne speaking before the ASF's 2010 meeting:
“We discovered that autistic infants and toddlers displayed a pronounced abnormality of language activation and cortical development.” “At each age studied from infancy to young childhood, most autistic subjects had greater activation on the incorrect side, namely, the right temporal cortex, compared to the left side and this incorrect activation pattern did not change or “normalize” even by 3 or 4 years of age. The abnormal pattern was strong in a substantial percentage of autistic infants and toddlers....".

Head size, simplex/multiplex autism, and IQ

A number of reports have been published indicating that head size in the first year of life has been found to be several percent greater in autistics, such as this latest one.
Media report linked here.

This is important and substantially competent research by this team. But there's some room for improvement.

Like most researchers they presume that autism is a "disorder" for which they are trying to find out what has "gone wrong". And so even when something good is found it has to be labelled as "overgrowth" of the brain.

And yet a remarkably similar progression of "overgrowth" has been found to be characteristic of high-IQ children (Gale, O'Callaghan, Bredow, Martyn 2010). And the 1982 published 1993 antiinnatia theory explained that whatever in low doses causes high IQ in higher doses causes autism.

You can see a very good presentation to the IACC about this "overgrowth", by the founder of this line of evidence, Eric Courchesne (between minutes 130-162 plus discussion to 174). He explains that it involves substantially higher numbers of neurons particularly in prefrontal. And that it is characteristic of "simplex" autism rather than of "multiplex" autism (defined as autism cases occurring more than once in a family). And furthermore, the advance over normal growth comes to level off after the first couple of years and indeed may be followed by a decline to below normal.

I've not looked into this research in great depth, but would provisionally suggest the following as reasonable explanations of these findings.

Multiplex autism could usually be due to a family sharing an indoor mercury vapor pollution problem from (mainly maternal) dental amalgams. EC notes that multiplex is much more common, which is in line with my conclusion that dental mercury- induced autism now accounts for 80% or more of all autism.

So it would be the simplex autism that is more a matter of too many antiinnatia genes, that is genes for high IQ, and which would also be genes favouring large heads and more neurons, which is in line with these observations. (The larger heads and more neurons would not cause the higher IQ but would be correlated with it.)

The subsequent decline would be readily explained by two processes. Firstly anyone with even fleeting acquaintance with autism can see that it soon leads to the autistic experiencing a substantially understimulating environment compared to neurotypicals. Such an understimulating environment can reasonably be expected to lead to the brain waning away somewhat. And meanwhile, for those autism cases caused by mercury, the mercury would continue to accumulate due to the defective detoxification, and the brain would consequently lose neurons due to that neurotoxin accumulation.

Vitamin D, sunshine, skin color, migration, and autism

Others have pointed to evidence suggesting that autism is associated with migration to less sunny countries, especially by darker-skinned people. For instance according to Autism, ethnicity and maternal immigration. Keen DV, Reid FD, Arnone D.:

"Maternal immigration is associated with substantial increased risk of autism-spectrum disorders with differential risk according to different region of birth and possibly ethnicity."

There's the notable "epidemic" among Somalian immigrants. This could conceivably have something to do with (I guess) higher selenium levels in Somalian diet (due to lower rainfall, different geology, or the high fish content of the local diet). People moving to a diet of less selenium than they had evolved for could be more vulnerable to the antiinnatia effect of mercury, in absence of less antidoting selenium.

But while I don't rule out that possibility, a more likely process appears to involve vitamin D deficiency. Indeed a theory of causation by vitamin D deficiency has already been published in Medical Hypotheses (before that journal's editorial decisions recently became subject to non-editorial interventions by the owner, the publisher of supposedly scientific journals Elsevier).

This vitamin D deficiency thesis would tie in solidly with the antiinnatia theory, for the reason explained by the popular health writer Joseph Mercola:

"In fact, there’s compelling evidence that vitamin D is in fact KEY for proper gene expression." "Each cell in your body has its own ‘DNA library’ that contains information needed to deal with virtually every kind of stimulus it may encounter, and the master key to enter this library is activated vitamin D."

In other words, Mercola is here stating that vitamin D deficiency is something of an antiinnatia factor. So of course it would tend to cause autism (at critical developmental periods). Indeed, I indicated in my 1993 paper (and indeed all versions from 1982 onwards) that deficiencies of nutrients could obviously be antiinnatia factors.

Questions now arise as to how much contribution to antiinnatia (autism etc) is made by vitamin D deficiency, and whether the relationship with mercury, antiinnatia genes, etc is additive or synergistic.

Of course using vitamin D deficiency to raise one's infant's IQ would have certain major downsides, probably even worse than dosing them with extra mercury vapor; so farbeit from me to recommend it as a sort of "smart" drug.

P.S.: Vitamin D deficiency as an antiinnatia factor could also be the basis of recent observations of seasonal variation of autism incidence (by birthdate).

One might next predict that if D deficiency is indeed an antiinnatia factor, then IQ should also be season-of-birth dependent. It looks like that may not be the case. But then quite possible reasons for that could be that in the populations studied there was not much sunlight exposure anyway, and schoolchildren were routinely supplied with cod liver oil and orange juice (as in the uk for many years) such as would prevent substantial deficiency.

Why mercury supposedly could not get to DNA to cause antiinnatia!

Wegener's collossal epoch-making discovery of continental drift was dismissed with derision by the community of professional geologists for 50 years, apparently merely because he was unable to show any mechanism by which the continents might drift. That was even though his deriders were in no position to show anything that would prevent the continental drift. And was even though volcanos have long made it reasonable to believe there is a layer of molten rock under the Earth's crust.

A similar situation exists in respect of the incorporation of environmental mercury into the antiinnatia theory (in the forthcoming update review paper). 'Skeptical' nitpickers could say that there is no demonstrated means by which mercury ions could reach the DNA in order to attach to it as per the theory. They would point out that the DNA is in working normal life not loosely and openly floating around in body fluids but instead is confined to a very controlled environment of proteins such as histones and secluded away inside the protective membrane of the cell's nucleus which in turn is some way in from the cell's lipid bilayer outer membrane. They would further point out that the DNA is to a large extent tightly curled up in condensed inactive form, further inhibiting unconstrained access by rogue mercury atoms. They would claim that mercury would have already bound with sulphydryls of proteins before it could get to the DNA. They would claim that mercury is bound much more strongly to other things than to DNA (though not sure if there's any real evidence on that).

Those who dismissed Wegener's continental drift theory could not show any videos or even photos from under the Earth to substantiate their assertions. And likewise those who would dismiss the idea of mercury getting to the DNA can't actually show any proof that mercury never gets to it. And despite even some of those queries listed above being true, they do not genuinely undermine the case, as I will now explain.

The antiinnatia theory does not entail a notion that most or even a high proportion of gene-expression is suppressed by antiinnatia. If it were then it would surely result in non-life or at the very least a being that had little resemblance to a human. On the contrary, antiinnatia theory entails only a very small proportion of gene-expression being suppressed, perhaps 1/1000th or less to produce an autism diagnosis condition. Furthermore it is not being suggested that all children exposed to mercury become autistic, rather only a small minority. And even they only become affected by the mercury after 18 months or so, in accordance with the evidence shown in the update paper.

Furthermore there is the fallacious notion that mercury is absolutely a "bad" "toxic" thing such that the organism's mechanisms could only be designed to keep it out. On the contrary, the whole point of the antiinnatia theory is that antiinnatia is highly advantageous provided it does not reach the excessive levels which manifest as autism.

And so, at lower levels, mercury as an antiinnatia factor would not be opposed by the organism but actually positively selected for. There would be natural selection positive selection of processes (or 'faults') which passively or even actively admit mercury to access the DNA. I don't mean flooding the DNA with mercury, but merely allowing just a very few atoms of Hg to sprinkle themselves sparsely on the DNA. DNA strands are rather complex molecules. It is quite conceivable that there are occasional locations among all that complexity at which a mercury atom could find itself relatively welcome and unrepelled.

That is clearly a far from unreasonable concept. Everyone is free to choose their own reckoning of the burden of proof in this matter, but it looks to me like the common-sense burden of proof lies with any "skeptics" to show that the mercury could not even occasionally, even after 18 months constant exposure, even in very modest doses get to the DNA, rather than the burden being to show that it does.

Should I say that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"? No, because there is not an absence of evidence. In the update review I will show the compelling abundance of other (including non-biochemical) evidence that mercury is an antiinnatia factor. That's what gives me faith in the unseen, faith that the binding to DNA that has been decisively shown in vitro also occurs in living human beings.

Copy number variations are at best only marginal to autism causation (which is in accordance with antiinnatia theory)

The main importance of this study in Nature lies in what it has not found. It has involved a huge amount of time and effort expended on seeking for pathological genetics underlying this so-called 'disease' or 'disorder' (ASD), and yet such pathology as it has found can account for only about three percent of all the autism-related cases under study. That doesn't surprise me at all. It is entirely in accordance with the still-unchallenged antiinnatia theory. Therein, I agreed with those who reckoned that autism was a polygenetic condition just as IQ genetic variance was polygenetic. The vast majority of genetic variations genuinely associated with autism would be the very same "normal", non-pathological, variations that contribute to IQ differences -- for the reasons the theory explained.

These authors are scraping the bottom of the wrong barrel, looking for the wrong things, and as a result they find the wrong things which then lead them away from the main story of autism causation. So-called ASD is a very rough and broad empirical diagnosis which is liable to include quite a number of cases who do not really belong in the true autism broad syndrome but just have some genetic twirks that make them behave rather similarly (like a bee misleadingly resembles a wasp). All the vast media/discussion hype then goes on to assume, falsely, that the study results really are about autism per se rather than such false trails. Their study could have had more hope if it had used narrowly-defined core autism as its cases.

But the people there are working to a pre-set paradigm, within what we might call the disease model. This presumes that something has "gone wrong" with these individuals and seeks out that "wrong". Furthermore they assume it is genetic! It may be significant that their 90% genetic stat is supported only by a reference that is 15 years old. In my 1993-published theory I indicated conditions in which autism would change from being mainly genetic to being mainly environmental. And exactly that has now happened in the last 2 decades.

Their pre-set paradigm is to find what has "gone wrong" and then find a drug to "put it right" and voila! a profitable patent emerges (they hope).

Huge publicity is being given to these marginal fringe findings, while the real central ressearch is all but completely hidden by this hype. For instance the Autism Research Institute's evidence that DMSA chelation to remove mercury can cure about 70% of cases, as documented by online videos of the cured children. But that doesn't generate profits for big corporations, or jobs for the 170 researchers listed here. So it is ignored, despised and even persecuted just as was Semmelweiss's immense discovery, inter many alias. Or they could have just spent a little time more enlighteningly reading my 1993 paper. But then Wegener's continental drift had to wait through 50 years of professional derision so perhaps I'm calling time a little prematurely here.

There's reason to suspect there's already a fairly good genetic test for autism, namely whether both parents have Mensa-level IQs. An even better test is how many non-gamma-2 dental amalgams the parents have, and how little outdoor air. But why follow the facts when you can follow the crowd that's following the money instead?

Edit: There's now appeared a much more detailed (but far longer) critique by Mark Blaxill. My only reservation about it is that the claim in the title that it "proves that inherited genes don't cause autism" is absolutely unfounded.

P.S.: Prof Alexandre Raymond explains that the genome is more complicated than geneticists have assumed, and so we should be wary of imagining we have more knowledge and understanding than is actually the case.

Gradual regression notably in line with the theory's gradual causation

It has this month been reported that the regressive form of autism does not tend to have an abrupt start (as commonly perceived, especially by those blaming vaccines for causing a sudden start of the condition). Instead the condition develops gradually from age 6 months up to 3 years (and possibly onwards as the study stopped there).

This is of course very compatible with the causation proposed in the update review of the antiinnatia theory, because that causation itself does not strike suddenly (like a vaccination shot) but instead builds up gradually with the infant's cumulating constant inhalation [breathing in] of the mother's dental mercury vapor.

The accompanying observation that parents tend to under-perceive their child's abnormality can be simply understood in terms of the universal natural reluctance to believe bad news. Which for a parent who already has an autistic child, is even badder news.

More evidence on the autism increase

Uta Frith is one of the most notable names in what we might call the autism research 'establishment'. She has recently stated [1] that autism in earlier decades was usually of the classic, severe variety, whereas nowadays most or many cases are of the mild to moderate or high-functioning variety. Putting that in the context of my view that there has been a major global increase due to a certain identified environmental factor, her observation poses the question of why that environmental factor should have produced generally less extreme autism than the preceding "genetic" form did.

And that is a question that is very happily answered by my explanation of the increase. Because the cause I invoke accumulates postnatally, it only impacts at a later age, whereas the classic genetic causation would impact from long before birth. And so one would indeed expect the new causation to commonly be less severe than the earlier variety.
1. Uta Frith, Autism: A very short introduction, OUP 2008

Defeating Autism by Michael Fitzpatrick: Shallow critiques of the Holmes and Bradstreet studies of mercury

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The Holmes and Bradstreet studies have been supposedly demolished by critiques in the book Defeating Autism by Michael Fitzpatrick. In reality his critiques read self-damningly in the context of his having a whole chapter titled “Being appropriately critical”.

A widely cited study published in 2003 examined the mercury content of babies’ ‘first haircut’ samples from 94 children with autism and 45 controls and found levels significantly lower in the autistic children (and the more severe the autism the lower the mercury level)(Holmes et al. 2003). The authors interpreted these findings as suggesting that children with autism do not excrete mercury into their hair — and that the mercury burden remains active and toxic, within the bodies of children with autism. There were, however, a number of reasons to be sceptical about these findings {Institute of Medicine 2004: 133-134). Firstly, the study was funded by Safe Minds, a militant, parent-led, anti-mercury campaigning group.

But so what? Almost all other studies are funded by immensely-wealthy corporate-dominated interests such as pharma manufacturers and the institutions they dominate. Applying that objection evenhandedly rather than with Fitzpatrick’s peculiar selectivity would result in there being virtually no studies at all recognised as legitimate in the last century of medical research.

Secondly, its authors included only one recognised scientist, the Kentucky [[University!]] chemist [[Professor!]] Boyd Haley, well known for blaming mercury in dental amalgam and from other environmental sources for a range of disorders, including chronic fatigue syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. Another author, Amy Holmes, is a doctor with an autistic child; she is a campaigner against vaccination and a provider of chelation therapies. Another, Mark Blaxill, has a business school MBA.

Here Fitzpatrick employs ad-hominem insinuation, which is widely condemned by scientists as meritless, albeit being popular in the unscientific circles at which his book is aimed. And he deploys it with extremely prejudiced selectivity, because one might just as reasonably dismiss all or most professional (hence “recognised”) scientists on the basis of their money-making connections to corporatised, institutionalised and career-ised operations. Applying his argument with any diligence would leave little or nothing standing in the scientific record. And even such greats as Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Faraday and Einstein were not “recognised” scientists, until retrospectively so recognised.

Thirdly, there were concerns about selec­tion bias: autistic subjects were recruited from Holmes’s clinic and controls via the internet.

But so what? Quite how could any such selection bias account for that finding of 8-fold difference with very high statistical significance, p&lt0.000004.

Fourthly, though the hair samples were described as ‘first haircut’, they were taken at a median age of over 17 months, rather than at birth, so the implications of their mercury content for prenatal exposures (for example, to RhoD immunoglobulin containing thimerosal, given to Rhesus negative mothers during pregnancy) were unclear.

But my own theory of the increase involves postnatal exposure to mercury rather than prenatal, so even if that objection had any real soundness it would still not apply to that amalgam theory.

Fifthly, infant exposures to other sources of mercury were not ascertained.

But again, in terms of the study being merely evidence of a mercury-autism connection, so what?

Most importantly, the authors presented no direct evidence for their hypothesis that low hair levels of mercury reflect persisting toxicity in chil­dren with autism.

But so what? Has anyone presented any evidence against that hypothesis?

A subsequent study comparing children with autism and controls in Hong Kong, found no difference in mercury levels (Ip et aI. 2007). The authors concluded that their results showed that there was ‘no causal relationship between mercury as an environmental neurotoxin and autism’.

But that Ip et al. study has been absolutely discredited and shown to actually corroborate Holmes et al. rather than challenge it: http://www.ageofautism.com/2007/12/the-ip-blip-and.html. And it anyway concerns 7-year-olds (and in the context of Dr Fitzpatrick’s own nit-picking of a mere 17 months delay above).

Though numerous anecdotal reports and testimonials claim dramatic improvements in symptoms of autism following chelation therapy to remove mercury and other heavy metals believed to be toxic, it is impossible to find independent confirmation of these benefits.

But those “numerous anecdotal reports and testimonials” are “independent confirmation”. Except that when Dr Fitzpatrick uses the word “independent” he in reality means “corporate-establishment-dependent”. And those corporate-institutionalised groups had not found any confirmation for the simple reason that they did not carrry out any studies because they did not want to find any such confirmation.

However, one study of chelation has been widely cited in support of the mercury-autism theory. In this study, conducted jointly by the Florida DAN! doctor Jeffrey Bradstreet and the Geiers, more than 200 children with autism were found to have excreted significantly more mercury in their urine than 18 controls (apparently healthy children whose parents had sought chelation treatment because of worries about heavy metal toxicity) (Bradstreet 2003). Apart from revealing a frightening willingness of parents to subject their children to chelation therapy, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from this study.

That study found more than 3 times higher mercury in autistics, with a huge significance level of p&lt0.0002. But Dr Fitzpatrick indeed could not draw the mercury-acquitting conclusion he wished to from those brief numbers so he did not find even a tiddler of space for them in his book (perhaps because it was required for his closing masterclass about “Being appropriately critical” instead).

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Apart from revealing a frightening willingness of parents to subject their children to chelation therapy,

....in the context that no-one has ever been killed by DMSA chelation, in stark contrast to the lethal drugs that Dr Fitzpatrick routinely prescribes. But then his book also didn't find the little space to mention that it was DMSA rather than EDTA in the study (and this in a book that opens with a shock-horror anecdote narrative about a unique EDTA case).

Increasing support for the handflapping explanation

When working up the details of the antiinnatia theory, it very soon became apparent that some features of autism could not be credibly explained as due to simply loss of innatons. This led me to think of the idea of prehuman innnatons being suppressed by later suppressing characteristics, and indeed I thereafter learnt that this concept was already well-established and called atavisms. I explained the handflapping and posturing as a re-emergence of the sort of behaviour regularly seen in wild rats, squirrels and birds in the wild. Fuller details are in the 1993 paper.

Nowadays with the internet it is vastly easier to research things than it was back in the 1980s and 90s. I have now learnt that we did indeed have a rat-like prehuman ancestor, for 163 million years! As indicated in this video of your granny (which be warned is rather 'exciting' by the way):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0iSf4yISDA
same as at:
http://animal.discovery.com/videos/animal-armageddon-purgatorius.html
P.S.: The palaeontologists have not presented a very accurate image of the rat-like behaviour here. Just watch any squirrel or bird (in the wild) to see what I actually had in mind, and which surely would have applied as a defence against dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, in this charming video, eight-year-old Anthony seeks to describe his (and others') stimming (by which he basically means handflapping episodes). Note that he emphasises that it is liable to involve getting up and moving forward, which rather agrees with my theory's explanation of the handflapping as an atavism of the rat-like behaviour of our ancestors, as per Purgatorius video above. The point being that this shows some remaining trace of (hind) legs movements and forward movements as per the original function of the hypothesised innatons. Note in my 1993-published paper my explicit assumption that the handflapping did not have any related leg movements (because I was only going on the information I had at that time).
I should add that Anthony's attempted simulation of hand-movements does not correspond very well with actual videos of handflapping, which do indeed look suggestive of the rats' sprinting movements. For instance you can see (at 1.56) in this video of the Minamata disaster a more typical example of autistic handflapping, in this case seemingly caused by the mercury from the Minamata pollution (so best pretend you've not noticed it if you work for the FDA, CDC, NHS etc). And immediate before that you can see a cat doing something remarkably similar.

"Offensive" / " inappropriate" language about autism

When I first started sending manuscripts to journals, I once got back a reply that it was offensive to use the term "autistics". Instead one has to ramble on about "children with autism" (which is probably why so many people assume that autism is confined to children, and is something that one either "has" or does not "have"). Meanwhile it has become the standard practice of the same people to refer to autism and related conditions as "autism spectrum disorder", or ASD. There's even a journal called the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Now I may be just a twit but I would have thought that referring to autism as being a disorder must be genuinely offensive, given that so many autistics do not want to be "cured" of the "disorder" they supposedly have. And meanwhile let's not be big hypocritical babies unable to usefully call a spade anything shorter than "tool for digging".

Persons with femaleness.
Persons with generosity.
Persons with racism.
Persons with Britishness.
Persons with Protestantism.
Persons with degrees.
Persons with professorships.
Persons with elderliness.
Autistics with childness.

In addition, the terminology of "autistic spectrum" I find very unhelpful, because it gives a false impression of having only one dimension of variability. In reality the autistic syndrome is a rather multidimensional thing, which would be best referred to as just that. It naturally includes those diagnosed as Aspergers and also those with just one or two features of the syndrome (such as the communication disabilities noted in siblings of the Rutter/Folstein twin study).

Causes of autism - update of unchallenged theory

This is a website relating to the unchallenged theory of autism, IQ and genius (the antiinnatia theory). An update review paper is being prepared for publication. Meanwhile you can download the original 1993 publication here . Be sure to print it out rather than trying to read on screen.

I cannot put the update paper on a website before it has been accepted by a journal. But in the interim I can send you a copy by email if you email a request for it to rpclarke [at] autismcauses[dot]info .