One cause... or many?

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There have been many threads regarding the possible cause(s) of autism before and I noticed one pattern in them - they usually try to narrow it down to one specific cause.

I have been thinking about this subject, and I have developed my own hypothesis - that autism does not have just one cause, but many. And by "many" I mean hundreds... or perhaps even thousands of causes.

Most importantly, these causes never occur individually, but together - in a very specific combination.

Let me elaborate a little:


1. Autism is a spectrum - we know this for a fact. So if there is such a great variety of conditions, there should (logically) be a great variety of causes. Persons exposed to more autism causes would become more severely autistic (low-functioning), while those exposed to fewer of the causes have less severe cases (high-functioning autism or Asperger's). It all depends on how many of the causing factors you (or your parents) would be exposed to, and in what combination they would occur.

And these combinations could easily be billions in number.

That would explain why ASD persons have so many individual peculiarities despite their common diagnosis - each case was forged by a different set of causes, producing a different autistic brain every time.


2. Life is a complex system, constantly balancing innumerable external and internal factors to sustain itself. It is a very rare occurrence for dramatic changes to occur in the system only because of one factor.

I can't believe that one can be born autistic just because their mom forgot to take her vitamins regularly. Yeah, Vitamin D could be somehow involved in the formation of the autistic brain, but it definitely isn't alone. It could have an effect when combined with some other specific set of factors.

As a whole, life always seeks to adapt itself in order to survive - could autism actually be a survival trait aimed at some change that is going on in the world? A change we haven't even noticed yet? This could be good food for thought...


To sum up - I believe that the whole environment is involved in the process of developing autism. I think it would be wrong to assume that the world is generally clean and normal, and just one randomly encountered "bad molecule" is to blame for people being born on the spectrum.

My hypothesis also shows why there will never be a "cure" for autism - because each case would require its own unique form of treatment. Its own unique cure. Thus, scientists would actually have to discover not one, but millions of different cures - a practically impossible task



(Thank you for reading... I hope I was able to express my ideas clearly.)

thats why i didnt respond to the other thread. Everyone is looking for a single cause and its far more complex than that

Interesting post, and maybe you're right

Of course it's many. We've identified hundreds of causes of autism already. Problem is, all of them put together account for only a small proportion of autistics.

Unseen (OP) makes a good point that it could be many causes that contribute.
From the various low to high levels of the spectrum, if could various factors involved into what causes Autism.
It's likely many and not just one cause.