Considering the personal relationships I have with members of the educational community, I often hear teachers refer to children that are “on the spectrum”, the autism spectrum that is. However, the descriptions of difficulties teachers experience with these kids- social ineptitude, tantrums, breakdowns, and sometimes harmless quirks lead me to believe that the autism spectrum generalization perhaps sheds less light on understanding these students than if their cases were treated individually. My primary concern is the generalized comparison between students said to exhibit Asperger’s or highly functioning-autism and students exhibiting general autistic symptoms such as cognitive deficits and total communicative disconnect. My concern arose from a research article our Neurochemistry class read on autism and its likely environmental causes. After investigating the article I found among the most prominent holes exhibited in the hypothesis was whether or not the autistic group under evaluation was of the general autistic class or of an Asperger’s type.
The makes a few key observations, some social and many biological, and comes to a seemingly straightforward conclusion that heavy-metal pollution and other environmental factors have led to a drastic increase in the presence of autistic cases throughout the past few decades. Indeed, as the article states there has been a drastic increase in the number of reported autistic patients, however there are other factors surrounding the increase in autistic cases than strictly the biological repercussions of pollution. Namely, the diagnosis of mental disorders in general has greatly increased for social and biological reasons. The social rational for diagnosing mental disorders at an early age is that subjects exhibiting such a disorder may be able to receive supplemental help at an early age, which will likely increase their chances of leading a more successful and independent life in the future. Biologically, many disorders worsen if untreated with medications or other forms of treatment, thus the subject is likely to lead a more healthy life if medical intervention occurs at a young age. Lastly, psychology and psychiatry has developed extensively over the past few decades, which has lead to more extensive diagnostic recognition of disorders. So, regarding the validity of environmental factors being the primary cause of increasing autism cases is a debatable issue.
Now that a little skepticism has been offered to level the autism-causation playing field a few interesting points regarding the hypothesis offered in the article should be brought to attention.
The researchers attribute heavy metal consumption to lead to the development of autism; this however is not the whole of the story. They suggest that heavy metals interfere with biological processes, which further interfere with other biological processes, which have been shown to have a correlation with abnormal neurological development, which finally has been correlated to the types of neurological deficits exhibited by autistic subjects. Well this doesn’t exactly seem to obey the law of parsimony, but with a system as complex as the human body, perhaps this is the most logical reasoning behind the increase in autistic diagnoses.
I am curious as to whether the increase in autism diagnoses is in reference to Asperger’s syndrome subjects or general autism, and can the two types be compared. While patients suffering from general autism often exhibit significant cognitive deficits, those with Asperger’s often show normal and even high levels of cognitive function. If the mental conditions under consideration reflect such different symptoms, scientific rational would suggest that the origins/progressions concomitantly different. In addition, if we consider the use of heavy metals and the environmental policies, which have been extensively restricting their use over the past few decades, it is reasonable to believe that heavy environmental heavy metal levels have receded, thus weakening the hypothesis of the article. In order to gain further insight on this topic, extensive research needs to be done on the environmental levels of toxic heavy metals, as well as their relation to different types of autism and how these factors successfully or unsuccessfully explain current trends in the prevalence of autism.
