Remember the autistic 5-year old who died of a heart attack?

[conuly]

Yeah, it's been confirmed as the chelation. Naturally. This isn't really news.

Comments

[conuly]

On the *other* hand, the implications are less than they are for genetic research....

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily... If autism is as strongly tied to VATER/CHARGE as I've been thinking it is, they could find genetic patterns up the wazoo and never be able to do anything about it.

The same results are showing up in genetic research for those two associations. They've managed, at this point, to track down a "maybe" for one gene, but have no idea what the gene is doing or why it's doing it or even whether others are involved. It appears that the gene might be changed in some subtle undetectable way totally at random, probably as a form of natural population control. (They do know with a fair amount of certainty that both autistics and VATER/CHARGE people initially have at least one identical sibling, tend to have absorbed another fetus' genetic code early on, and that attempts at cloning live animals has an extremely high rate of producing exactly the same anomalies seen there.)

Even in the event that they figure out a way to pinpoint what the gene is doing, and develop a method of identifying it, the resulting test -- unlike that for Down Syndrome, for example -- is going to be so incredibly expensive that very few people will make use of it. They likely will also, in the process, figure out (as we already know) that the same genetics are required to produce certain kinds/degrees of talent. While *we* don't particularly care about that, society sure does...

So my guess is that they *might* find a gene implicated in autism, but it's not going to be any more useful in getting rid of us than finding a gene for VATER has been -- or when it is, it will be too expensive in financial or social terms to be put to serious use. I could be wrong, but that's my current theory.

[conuly]

they could find genetic patterns up the wazoo and never be able to do anything about it.

Like a lack of evidence ever seems to stop people. Nor a lack of sense...

Still, it's a cheery thought.