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Summarised by Centrist
A long-standing pillar of the official autism story, that the condition is almost entirely genetic, may be starting to collapse.
The New York Times has reported that genetic mutations account for only about 30 percent of autism cases.
That leaves a large share of cases unexplained. This raises questions about whether environmental or chemical factors long dismissed as “fringe theories” deserve a fresh look.
Research cited shows that many mutations are de novo, meaning they appear spontaneously and are not inherited from parents. For vaccine sceptics and medical freedom advocates, this is an important distinction because such mutations can be triggered by toxic exposures rather than DNA inheritance.
Critics of the mainstream view, including public health analyst Toby Rogers, Ph.D. argue this marks a major shift.
Rogers, whose doctoral thesis, The Political Economy of Autism, examines how government and industry regulation of five major classes of toxic chemicals may contribute to rising autism rates, wrote, “Autism is not genetic.”
He called the Times report “a crack in the official narrative so large that it can’t be patched. ”For years, researchers who questioned pharmaceutical or environmental links were marginalised, using a “paint-by-numbers script — ‘autism a mystery; it couldn’t possibly be caused by vaccines, Tylenol, or food dyes; Robert Kennedy, Jr. is terrible;’ etc,” he said.
Yet even cautious scientists now acknowledge that genetics alone cannot explain the surge in diagnoses.
“We are winning this debate. The official narrative is crumbling before our eyes,” Rogers wrote.
Read more over at Children’s Health Defense and The NY Times
