The boy, whose name is Roberto, is four and a half years old. He's neatly dressed, alert, seems comfortable in the room, with no signs of any emotional stress. But it doesn't take long for us to understand that something is wrong: he never engages you in conversation.
If you say: "How are you, Roberto?" his answer is: "How are you, Roberto?"
If you say: "The weather is nice today," his response is: "The weather is nice today."
Does he understand what we say? He avoids eye contact and his facial expression never changes. But if he sees a movement, he'll quickly turn his head and follow the movement. A slight movement of someone's hand will catch his attention, and he'll focus on the movement immediately. If a marble rolls on the table in front of him, he turns immediately and watches the marble.
We say: "Did you have cereal for breakfast this morning?"
His face impassive, he replies: "Did you have cereal for breakfast this morning?"
Roberto has an "autistic disorder": marked impairments in communication, impairments in social interactions, restricted interests and activities.
Is it genes? Or was there a fetal trauma that interfered with the development of his brain? Or have there been emotional problems in the interactions with his parents and siblings? The answer is none of these are involved. The apparent cause of his problem is that the concentration of lead in his blood is five times the national average for children his age.
A special chemotherapy is instituted (anti-lead chelation therapy), and when Roberto is interviewed two years later, his blood lead level (BLL) is down to the national average. Most of his autistic symptoms have disappeared, but he still has great difficulty in social interactions. Now he responds to simple commands, but in conversation he still repeats what you say back to you (echolalia).
Roberto is now six and half years old, and his brain is irreversibly damaged. He will live with the damage for the rest of his life.
Autism is in the news these days, and what's obvious about public attitudes is the passion for simple causes and quick fixes. People want a simple cause for a problem, and then a quick fix to get rid of the cause.
We need to understand that for autism, it's unlikely there's a simple cause, and it's unlikely there's a quick fix.
The current media focus is on mercury as a cause, but the fact is other heavy metals, such as lead, can also act as neurotoxins that cause autism.
In my view, we ought to be worrying more about lead than the mercury in the vaccine-additive thimerosal.
As I've pointed out several times here, lead is everywhere, in the air, the water, and the soil -- a heavy metal pollutant very toxic for the developing nervous system of the fetus and child.
It's important to understand that autism is a mangling of behavior -- a complex affair determined by the organization of nerve cells -- and there are more ways of causing autism than we probably know about. Any chemical, heavy metal or otherwise, that disrupts the development of the nervous system in the fetus and child has the potential, in principal, to produce the symptoms of autism.
It's also important to understand that individual fetuses and children can differ markedly in their susceptibility to neural damage by neurotoxins. We don't know why yet, but we do know the variability exists.
At the present time, many scientists, including myself, favor the "double-hit" hypothesis concerning autism. The idea is that some fetuses and children, because of a genetic variation, are more susceptible to heavy metal neurotoxins that damage certain connections in the developing nervous system -- the damage later producing the symptom-profile we call "autism".
But we don't know enough about heavy-metal neurotoxins. We don't yet know enough to identify causes of autism, and without an identified cause it's always unlikely you can have a rational fix.
I'm dismayed at the current battle between supporters of genetics and supporters of mercury- in-vaccines as the cause of autism.
Folks, when it comes to behavior, the complicated output of a very complicated organization we call the "nervous system," you're most likely climbing the wrong tree if you're looking for simple causes and quick fixes.
Nature doesn't care about our passion for simple causes and quick fixes. Nature is that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, schizophrenia, tuberculosis, cancer -- and autism.
We ignore too much if we ignore this lady's personality.
More information:
Autism Debate Strains a Family and Its Charity