Kelly Preston thinks environmental chemical caused autism

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Just saw Good Morning America -- Kelly Preston was apparently on the U.S. TV show The Doctors yesterday and talked about her Autistic son, who also had a seizure problem, and who died about 4 years ago as a result of a seizure. She blames, among other possible causes, carpet-cleaning chemicals, food poisoning during pregnancy... and I think she said she was taking some medication during pregnancy.

something is causing the drastic increase in people who are on the spectrum. It is absolutely possible that chemicals turn on and off certain genes during fetal development. Scientists have already proven this for other things.

Well, diagnoses are much more common these days -- perhaps because of the way the diagnoses are made.

I can bet that there are more diagnoses largely because there ARE more people on the spectrum. Yes more are getting diagnosed now due to more knowledge, but it still seems that there is an increase anyway.

And who in the world forced that person to use those chemicals, eat poisoned food and take medication in spite of the fact that she was pregnant? It's so pathetic to blame others for own mistakes. Sounds like she's on an attention--craving party.

Simply the new "X causes autism" flavor of the month.

I think it's absolutely possible that some environmental chemical/drug/whatever causes some cases of autism.

The problem arises when people claim to know that some single specific environmental thing causes autism. There simply isn't enough evidence to show any such link with any environmental trigger. People who make such claims are simply picking things blindly and somehow convincing themselves that this is the cause. This leads to at best ineffective treatment/prevention strategies, and can often even lead to harmful ones (e.g. chelation)

I didn't see this TV show so I don't know whether Kelly Preston was merely stating that it possibly was caused by some environmental trigger or if she was blaming some specific trigger.

There have been numerous studies regarding vaccines and we can pretty confidently say that vaccines/mercury don't cause autism, but as for any other environmental trigger we don't know. Maybe carpet-cleaning chemicals did give her son autism. Maybe it was the food-poisoning. Maybe she had too much multigrain bread while she was pregnant. Maybe she didn't have enough multigrain bread. With so much unknown trying to change our behaviour in order to reduce the chance of autism is playing a losing game against probability.

She's a scientologist, so we can't be expecting much sense to come out of her mouth.

Def worth investigating.

And we're listening to Kelly Preston on this topic WHY?

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

We are using more and more chemicals, do we fully know how they interact together? In children? What happens when they mix together?

We're also using more and more internet, do we really know how these kinds of behaviours affect us neurologically? I also see a suspicious amount of pregnant women on cellphones, has anyone investigated the effects of cellphone radiation on unborn children? And what's with all the gluten free food I see around the place? Maybe pregnant women aren't getting enough gluten in their diet, and this gluten deficiency is giving their children autism. And jet planes! And solar panels! And fluoride in our water supply, what if there's too much? WHAT IF THERE'S NOT ENOUGH?

No harm in checking those things either.

I do think things in the environment can cause autistic like symptoms and then later on they get diagnosed with it. They need to have a label so they get the help they need and if autism or any ASD is the closest they can get to for a diagnoses, so be it.

I wonder what Jenny McCarthy thinks of this?