"SCIENCE" IS NOT THE NAME OF A SECRET SOCIETY!
The modern notion of Science as a special brand of information about the world, practiced by a distinct group and pursued through a unique method, didn't take hold until the very end of the 19th century. In the 20th, it began to blend into and be overtaken by what is more recently thought of as technology.
What preceded what we call "Science," and how on earth did humanity make progress without it? Curious, sometimes impassioned people, much like you and me, were there before Science, people like Sallie Bernard, et al., a determined group that researched and produced a seminal paper in 2000 called Autism: A Unique Type of Mercury Poisoning. Bernard et al. and the parent advocate group SafeMinds called attention to the rise in mercury (Thimerosal) acquired by American babies and children through vaccines. The paper demonstrated that laypersons, uncompromised by professional considerations, could stir things up in a credible fashion. And they did it with solid research. Mark Blaxill, a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton and another founding member of SafeMinds, drove things forward with more papers published in mainstream medical publications. And there are other parent advocates who've prodded Science, and continue to do so.
The parent advocate movement in the U.S. is moving in the direction of effecting a shift from concentration on genetic research toward research on probable environmental factors; the new study of epigenetics, referring to heritable traits (over rounds of cell division and sometimes transgenerationally) that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence may serve to inform a deeper understanding between the two camps. There is perhaps a growing awareness in all camps that a smoking artillery rather than a "smoking gun" is the likely cause of autism spectrum disorders. Epigenetic changes over the last century might belie the conventional idea that there can be no such thing as a genetic epidemic; could we be seeing an epigenetic epidemic? Could it be a factor in the growing incidence and prevalence of autism?
Isn't it time for some of us to drop overdeveloped opinions about what the cause it, and work on comprehending the broad picture? The puzzle has many pieces, and polarization solves nothing. We need to keep stirring.
(Two interesting recent pieces on epigenetics online: NEWSWEEK and NOVA "A Tale of Two Mice.")
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Anne Van Rensselaer has a 15-year-old grandchild who's thriving in a mainstream school this year thanks to his parents' stirring things up.
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