As with many complex disorders, causation is generally thought to involve some forms of genetic risk interacting with some forms of non-genetic environmental exposure. The balance of genetic risk and environmental exposure likely varies across the spectrum of ASD. .......... Researchers are working to better understand the interaction of genetic vulnerability with developmental experiences, such as a specific environmental exposure. While gene-environment interactions have been hypothesized to play a role in many medical disorders, these interactions have been difficult to prove or disprove beyond statistical tests showing that some genetic subgroups have a greater response to some environmental factor. ............ Progress in identifying environmental factors which increase autism risk has been made recently (Eskenazi et al., 2007; Palmer et al., 2006; Palmer, Blanchard, & Wood, 2009; Rauh et al., 2006; Roberts et al., 2007; Windham et al., 2006), although this area of research has received less scientific attention and far fewer research dollars than genetic risk factors. Environmental factors may be pertinent not only to brain development but also to chronic systemic features of at least some subgroups of ASD.
- The 2010 Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee Strategic Plan for Autism Spectrum Disorder Research - January 19, 2010, Question 3: What Caused This To Happen and Can It Be Prevented?
The 2010 IACC Strategic Plan statement that environmentally focused autism research has been under funded and largely ignored could properly be characterized as a long overdue confession by the autism research establishment. Autism research has been focused overwhelmingly on genetic causes of autism to the near exclusion of environmentally focused research. for well over a decade with potentially serious consequences for our current understanding of possible autism causes and treatments. Given that imbalance it is perfectly understandable that few potential environmental causes of autism have been identified or confirmed through research. If we don't open our eyes and look, if we don't do the research, then we will not find environmental causes of autism.
The overwhelming imbalance in favor of genetically based autism research was identified over a decade ago by researcher Teresa Binstock in her 1999 description of the "It's gotta be genetic" autism research paradigm. Binstock pointed to the culprit - the old guard network that insisted that autism research be genetically focused in order to have any hope of receiving public funded research dollars:
My own hunch is that the NIH and NIMH will not change from within; the senior practitioners of the "it's gotta be genetic" model have too much influence. Just as Semmelweiss and his data were suppressed, so too will the NIH/NIMH autism-research insiders continue to act against the the growing body of new data in autism; the NIH's pro-genetic old-timers will cling to their paradigm and its funding. As a result, change within the NIH and NIMH will have to be initiated from outside those tax-supported corporations.
The imbalance in favor of genetic over environmental focused autism research has resulted in a call for more balance from many sources and hopefully that call will result in more than lip service. There have been signs of an autism research paradigm shift over the past few years from the purely genetic model of autism to one which looks at autism as the result of a genetic and environmental interaction but the pace of change has been far slower than first hoped as pointed out by the 2010 IACC Strategic Plan above , by Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto and by Dr. Jon Poling.
Too much time has been wasted on the irrational insistence that autism research must be genetically focused. We have lost the knowledge that years of more balanced autism research, with greater attention to potential environmental factors, might have given us. We must find that balance as we move forward or more knowledge, and possibly treatments and cures, will continue to be lost.
Environmentally focused autism research must receive more attention and funding. Even the IACC has recognized the imbalance in favor of genetic over environmentally focused research.
It is now time to redress the imbalance.
autism
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