But you can go ahead and keep blaming vaccines.

Liz, you're misusing the word correlation. In the example "drunk driving causes accidents" we have determined causation; I.E. being drunk causes people to be bad at driving a car. A correlation simply means you've done a statistical analysis and you've noticed a few things but have not determined causation.

For instance, I could notice that 6 out of 10 people in a car accident are left handed or that 2/3rds of them wore green shirts, or 51% of them were male. Now, if you get a large enough sample size then all that background noise should drop away (law of averages) but if you notice one of them remains higher than average despite having a very large sample size then you can say there is a correlation. You can then start generating hypothesis to be tested to see if they can be falsified.

CS you are at least attempting to explain the shady parts of the article. Thank you for that.
I think my problem is that - if I'm understanding things - they are trying to correlate too many factors especially since autism is being redefined. Instead of introducing new factors, could they not reevaluate things - including vaccines - in light of the new definition, then introduce those new factors? Or am I oversimplifying things?

Is this what you're talking about?

As for the correlations vs causation, please re-read the very first sentence...

"...may be contributing to..."

I don't understand how anyone could possibly confuse that with "causes".

That could be the case. I'm not in the medical field and wouldn't know.

I do know that being overweight does bad things to the body, and if one is overweight/obese during pregnancy, there's all kinds of complications to both mother and baby. Therefore, it doesn't seem to be an incredible stretch to think that obesity could play a factor.

OTOH, a few posters brought up the fact that a lot of folks with autistic children were not obese before or during pregnancy--which could just as easily could link to all the damn food additives out there that's in nearly every food that sits on a shelf.

You're not seeing the documentation in the blurb because it's a blurb. It is, however, quite clear that there is more to it than "the population is fatter, we have more autistic kids, there must be (a) link somewhere."

And the text MAOHS quoted explains some of the data.

Jenee? Is that you?!?!??

It seems the test group was 1000 so that should be large enough to get rid of most of the background noise and see if there really is a correlation. Still, I'd like to see a larger sample size which is more varied in age, ethnicity (some populations have higher risk for certain genetic abnormalities), and geographic locations.

The older I get the more I try to eat "natural." By this I mean food in it's original as-nature-designed-it state. Whole fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen whole fish fillets, etc. The more hands and stages the food passes through, the more chance of unwanted/fattening additives and the vitamins leached out. I'm trying to cut some links out of the chain from "as it's swimming/growing/clucking" to being on my plate.

I might end up living like Jack Lalain in my old age. He was obsessed with natural living and fitness.

GMO's in general...

I don't recall peanut allergies being potentially deadly 30 years ago.

Well, just about every one of us seems to have understood. Based on this sample, it'd be a fair bet that most of the unwashed masses will gt it too.

You, with your vast medical knowledge and reading comprehension, might want to bone up on scrubbing bedpans.

No, you don't get to say that the masses got it unless you got proof.
I was just the only one who posted.
Know what? From now on, even if I'm curious and want to know more, I won't post. Why? Because no one here is interested in improving the knowledge base of any one except themselves.
Pity.
Because I know folks here are extremely intelligent.
But also extremely mean spirited

As far as my nursing skills, I bet I can out do any new nurse at the bedside and then some.

See, I didn't study to be a paper pusher.

I studied to be a NURSE.

That's ridiculous.

Let's all stop saying anything until we "got proof," then.

To spare us the headaches?

That's also ridiculous. This place is full of people that think they know it all, who are more than eager to share that knowledge.

If you mean we don't suffer fools, you'd be right.

Your reading and comprehension skills are terrible. It honestly worries me that you're a nurse. Unless you're just wiping asses all day, there should be a high level of reading and comprehension skills required to do your job properly.

My take, just from having observed similar phenomena in the past, is that eventually autism will come down to a gene sequence that, in some individuals, is activated/deactivated by certain environmental factors. Maternal obesity could be one of those factors.

(There's already research into why some people don't have an "off" switch when it comes to food...they literally don't know when they're full, and keep eating to the point of obesity. An obvious case is Prader-Willi syndrome, a defect in chromosome 15 that causes compulsive, insatiable appetite. The "layman" - at least those at normal weight - dismisses all "fatties" as people with no impulse control, whereas the truth is that there are myriad causes of overweight, and they need to be looked at on a case by case basis.)

If it turns out that there's a gene sequence that causes some - some - women to be overweight, and that that gene sequence is found more frequently in women who give birth to autistic children than those who don't, then you look for a correlation.

Or, to look at it another way: Obesity doesn't cause breast cancer. What it does do, however, is cause the fat cells to retain high levels of estrogen, and higher levels of estrogen retained over long periods of time are related to an increased risk of breast cancer.

Now, a woman who's obese but has no other risk factors for breast cancer is at less risk than a woman who's cursed with either or both of the BRCA genes, but by being obese, she has increased her risk.

It baffles me that a nurse...who's required to take CE courses throughout her career...would not at least know that much.

As for "explaining everything to the layman"...the majority of laymen don't understand basic nutrition, but we still "allow" them to buy food. The layman has access to more information today than at any other time in human history. If a bit of medical news is alarming, there's the Internet on which to verify or refute it.

And if anyone can tell me what's wrong with encouraging overweight people to lose weight for the sake of their own health, never mind their unborn children's, I'd love to hear the reasoning behind that.

(And stop with the "95-pound woman," willya? A 95-pound woman stops menstruating; she's in no danger of getting pregnant. Again, something a nurse should know.)

So, bottom line, what would happen if in fact it's a gene or gene sequence that causes autism (or autisms; as with cancer and cystic fibrosis, it's a spectrum of illnesses, not just one all-purpose thing you can slap a label on), is what's happening now in cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, etc.: Pre-pregnancy genetic screening.

Eliminates a lot of heartbreak.

Wait so midgets can't get pregnant?!?!

ONCE AGAIN, SOMETHING THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YESTERDAY!!!

I coulda been raw dogging it the whole time.

You know what I meant, smartass!

For the last time, there aren't any midget nuns at the south pole.

You fucked a penguin.

there may have been advancements in medical knowledge since you took up the trade at the start of the Crimean War.

Some Florence Nightingale person seems to have raised the bar from the skill set you possess.

There probably wasn't much noise made about it, because parents weren't trying to get peanut products (and chocolate or anything that may have possibly come in contact with peanuts) pulled out of schools because one child in a school of 800 is allergic, either.

But, seriously. When's the last time you've picked up anything in a can and have been able to pronounce every ingredient without pulling out a dictionary? How people don't think that stuff like that will factor in how children will develop (as evidenced by more and more girls hitting puberty before the end of third grade!) is beyond me.

That Donald Trump believes it is almost reason alone to disregard it.

My thought about peanut allergies is that they may simply have gone unrecognized in the past, probably diagnosed as asthma. Kid died, family was told "unknown causes" or "failure of asthma medications."

There's some very recent evidence that there's a genetic flaw responsible: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-12698727

Edit: Eh, I was gonna be mean. Forget it, she already promised to stop posting