Older fathers responsible for increase in autism?

Dad's age tied to autism riskThere seem to be a lot of reasons behind the increase in autism diagnoses(vaccines not being one of them). This is an interesting study. All I have read so far are news articles, so the actual findings might be somewhat different than how the media plays it.Guess it is a good thing my wife and I are adopting rather than having our own biologic child.

Anti-vaxxer Donald Trump dangerously blames increase in autism on combined inoculations

According to the article, the odds and risks are so ridiculously low; I wouldn't make this study be a reason to forgo having my own biological children.I mean, my father was 46 when I was born. And I turned out just fine.And so did I.

This sounds like BS at first but there is a science fiundtion for asserting the hypothesis that Autism is a genetic disorder caused by the recessive trait for Neanderthal introversion being stimuklated by the new cultural matriarchy that that species lived in before its extinction.We all know that modern man carries Neanderthal genes due ti inbreeding back maybe 150,000 years ago.
We also know that the nurturing of the right social environment can effect the genetic propensities.These two things can account for sudden emergence of so many new cases in the age.A proof could be established by measuring the number of s=cases of Autism in patriarchs like Islam.

My father was 50 when he sired me and 54 when he sired my sister. My sister is a scientist at LANL. She is currently in charge of the world's most powerful microscope. I was 35 when I sired my daughter, she is a highest honor student college senior finishing a double BS degree in math and chemistry. As to me, I am the black sheep of the family, being only a college dean. Granted this is anecdotal evidence instead of 'science' but I still smell a rat.I would bet money that this research will be contradicted by further research which allows for more factors. The most successful sperm must out compete millions.Seems on the level of nutrition 'facts'. Butter bad, margarine good.... no margarine bad butter good, eggs bad. No eggs good, milk bad...no milk good, bacon bad....no bacon good and so on. The same apples to pharmaceuticals but usually in the opposite direction.The usual sloppy statistics improperly considering all factors reported by the scum of all professions, the one without even the slightest pretense of an ethical code -- journalists.

That would not surprise me at all.I'm planning to not draw any conclusions at present. Let's wait until some other researchers have checked it out.

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increase in autism diagnoses

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Could a reason, at least in part, for this be the massive leaps in understanding the condition?
for one, Autism is understood, now, to be a 'spectrum'. So whereas many folk who had 'mild' autism would perhaps not have been diagnosed and/or just assumed to be geeky or have behavioural problems, are now grouped under the heading "Autism" thereby increasing the numbers with the condition.It's a similar thing with Cancer diagnoses, with the discovery of more types of cancer, and better techniques for detection it's inevitable that the numbers are going to increase.

Surely you realise that your personal account is not only anecdotal, but wholly irrelevant to the accuracy of this study.Most people do not develop autism. If children born to older fathers have a slightly higher risk of autism, then this means that most children born to older fathers do not develop autism either. If we picked somebody with an older dad at random, they'd be more likely to not be autistic than to be autistic.And yet I can't see any other reason for the rodent odour. What's so prima facie improbable about the idea?

Should be easy to test.Select a population of older men. Pair them at random with a set of one older and one younger wife.Screw.Breed.Track the results.Edited by jar, : fix sintax

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My father was 50 when he sired me and 54 when he sired my sister. My sister is a scientist at LANL. She is currently in charge of the world's most powerful microscope. I was 35 when I sired my daughter, she is a highest honor student college senior finishing a double BS degree in math and chemistry. As to me, I am the black sheep of the family, being only a college dean. Granted this is anecdotal evidence instead of 'science' but I still smell a rat.

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I belatedly apologize for my irrational position in this matter. Anecdotal evidence should never be relied upon in a rational discourse. It was simply rage against the dying of the light.You were right and I was wrong.

You volunteering?

IMO, one of the leading reasons autism diagnoses have gone up is that the criteria for the diagnoses have broadened and awareness of the disease has risen.Rising awareness may explain spike in autism diagnoses | Spectrum | Autism Research NewsAdults are being diagnosed with the disease now. It's not as if they just developed autism. They have had it all their life, but they are only now being diagnosed with autism. What does that tell you?

I saw an article a number of years ago that looked at people who were elderly (i.e. over 80), and looked for autism among them. They found that the people who could be diagnosed with autism in the over 80 group was at the same percentage as the general population.

The increase in instances of Autism has more to do with changes in the English language than any other reason. Vaccination has obviously been ruled out as a cause, despite the certainty of ignorance combined with a general disrespect for science among too many in the USA. Environmental factors are a possibility, but it is difficult to ascertain any due to the background noise for a very simple reason.When I was a child in the 1960s in Fresno, California, my mother used to do volunteer work at the home for the mentally retarded in a nearby town, Porterville. Today, the term mentally retarded is considered politically incorrect and anyone who may have been given such a diagnosis in the past is referred to as autistic. Recently, those who were lately diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome suddenly became mildly autistic, despite the fact many weird yet highly intelligent people with this supposed condition are immensely productive geniuses. So I guess some of those with the highest IQs and those with the lowest are all suffering from the same condition - autism.I figure at the rate the word is being redefined, pretty soon I will have autism and so will you. Great way to make a word become meaningless, but it happens all the time in a living language. Edited by anglagard, : clarity