It also doesn't seem too large a leap (but apparently it is) to assume us spectrumish dads (I confess to being one having a list of "shadow traits" and miserably failing Baron-Cohen facial expression recognition test) just had less exposure and barely dodged the bullet.

Likewise, the same treatments that help our kids are helping us (I think Barbara Fischkin had an article about this recently). Since GFCF no more dry-heaving and stomach pains every morning, no spontaneous hives, no picking my fingernails til they bleed.

I keep expecting to see a post on abmd or gfcfkids that reads something like: I think my husband is regressing. He's moody and refuses to call and talk to the plumber. He also had hives yesterday. Do you think his boss has been taking him out to lunch?

Maybe there is a secret gfcfhusbands yahoo group I don't know about.

Thanks Dan for your reporting on this issue. While the age thing doesn't apply to me, I was 29 when my son with autism was born, I did notice in the waiting rooms while my son was doing speech, OT, DAN dr's, etc., that many of the other parents were extremely accomplished. I also noticed a lot of twins and triplets. I guess I don't really "buy" into the age thing or susceptibility factors. My son was injected with a lot of mercury born in 1999. It's not like he was allergic to water. It's mercury. How any of the children walked away from this mercury poisoning is beyond me. Or have they? Time will tell....

Great piece in Spectrum, Dan, and I could not agree with you more!

This discussion is fascinating, too. That mercury menace just keeps on showing up in the darndest places!

Thanks for your continual journey to the truth. It is much appreciated.

From "across the pond":-

My late father used the pesticide aldrin from the early 50s until it was taken off the market in the UK in the late 60s. In 1966/7 on a still summer's day in the garden of our new house, I remember watching him scatter clouds of aldrin dust with his bare hands onto newly cleared ground. My mother protested but he carried on; the rest of the family kept away. In 1979, after a slow decline, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease which was on his death certificate when he died in 1986. Maybe Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" is due for re-reading? The Material Safety Datasheet for aldrin was still somewhere on the internet several years ago.

I remember reading a Californian(?) study published on the internet maybe ten(?) years ago which pointed out a connection between Parkinson's Disease in grandfathers and ASDs in their grandchildren. There was a similar study a few years ago. Is this another genetic(?) pointer of susceptibility in future generations?

"Ceramics are certainly chemically stable; would there be any risk of mercury exposure from ceramic tubs or cookware?"

I don't know about mercury but ceramic bathtubs, especially the older ones, leach lead. Get a lead kit from a Home Depot and see for yourself. If it turns pink you are in business!!

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/lead-in-porcelain-bathtubs.html

"This is classic mainstream malarkey (is that a Scottish term?). In the same paragraph-no, the same sentence-we go from having "no clue," to "the authors suggest," to "another theory suggests," all leading up to the idea that the autism "epidemic" is basically a social phenomenon that has played out over several generations, kind of like living together before marriage."

Don't know about *malarkey* being Scottish but I do know this *baloney* doesn't have O-S-C-A-R next to it!

Good sleuthing Dan. Can't wait to see all this information compiled in your book!

My bet is that there may well be an occupational environmental exposure that plays a roll, but that finding parents of autistic children in engineering, IT, math and sciences is not superficial at all. Also, for every engineer working with chemicals you have many machine operators and laborers with more direct exposures, and I’m not sure we are hearing that their kids are affected in the same ways. Unscientifically speaking, I see a lot of this. I believe that the same genes that facilitate success or comfort in these fields are also the ones related to autism spectrum symptoms. I believe there is a frustrated engineer locked inside that child that stares at the water facet or the ceiling. There is that person that has one more nanosecond of patience for studying such things then the average joe. I suspect a large percentage of the people evaluating the science related to autism are centered on the undamaged side of the spectrum. Certainly we see the ND science folks showing a very emotional reaction in slamming closed areas of inquiry and going after those that keep an open mind to cumulative assault. If they survived the vaccines, why shouldn’t everyone else? Is the issue too close to home for many of the people studying it?

With a few shining exceptions, there is no grade low enough to assign to media coverage of autism. And the tragic lack of attention to the history of autism is allowing ridiculous lies to persist in every article on the subject. Rates of classic autism in adults are vastly lower than the rates of classic autism in children. We know this simply by looking at current waiting lists for housing, knowing that in 15 years those lists will be much much longer. These are adults who received very few appropriate services, and no biomedical interventions. They should be easier to identify and have higher rates, not lower.

WHERE IS THE ANCESTRY OF AUTISM?

COEYMANS — It's possibly the biggest environmental mystery in the Hudson Valley: Why does the smokestack at the Lafarge cement plant release more toxic mercury than any other place in the state?

A suspect getting a closer look is coal fly ash, a fine gray powder residue of distilled pollution produced by coal-fired electric power plants and used in cement-making around the nation.

If you've never heard of fly ash, there's a simple yet disturbing reason: For almost 20 years, state and federal regulators have treated the substance as if it is less hazardous than household garbage.

Now, experts suggest that an unintended consequence of a clean air push through stricter mercury rules at power plants makes ash more dangerous by concentrating heavy metals such as mercury, a potent neurotoxin that causes developmental problems in children and fetuses.

http://timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?storyID=733185&newsdate=11/30/2008&BCCode=MBTA

If parental age was the key factor wouldn't second born children be automatically at higher risk since last time I checked a mother is always older when she delivers her second child (even if only 1 minute older as in the case of my boys).

So, it is really when having their first-born at a later age that might matter. While there could be lots of reasons for this certainly some would be from difficulty getting pregnant, miscarridges, etc. potentially from living on this toxic planet. And yes, genetically speaking a mother (or father) that can't detoxify all that well probably produces children that can't either.

Hi Fed Up == that is amazing about ceramics and fly ash. I had no idea. It shows how this idea that there's something quirky about engineers and that's why they have kids with autism -- the geek effect -- is so superficial, and once you get beneath it you often find an environmental occupational exposure, often mercury. It's the exposure that matters, not some stereotype about the occupation or the people who choose it. i came across this in a really important but overlooked study by mary coleman in the 1970s which found that 1 in 4 parents of kids with autism had an occupational exposure to chemicals, while only 1 in 100 american workers in general had such an exposure. a lot of them were chemists, as you might expect -- but there was also a roof tarrer. I had no clue about the exposure there until Mark Blaxill pointed out that tar is similar to coal -- decayed organic matter -- and has mercury in it just like coal does. unfortunately nobody paid attention to mary coleman in the 1970s, they went off on their gene jihad and we're still paying for that road not taken. -- dan