Autism is caused by faulty genes, nothing else

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My mum never drank or smoked when she was pregnant with me.
She was 25 when pregnant with me and my dad was 29.
I wasn't born premature, in fact I was born nearly a week after my due date, weighing nearly 8 pounds.
There were no complications at birth, just a natural birth.
I was a healthy baby.
I reached all my milestones at the average stages as a baby/toddler.

Even though my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc are not on the autism spectrum, I still turned out to be on the spectrum. Must be caused by a faulty gene, not vaccines, not premature births, not complications at birth, etc etc.

But if it's caused by faulty genes, why doesn't it typically come with physical health problems, physical deformities or affected life span? Why just a different brain wiring?

Your conclusion is not necessitated by your premises.

Please try again.

In most autistics its most likely genetic or epigenetic. My sister has diabetes but not aspergers, and I have aspergers but not diabetes. So she got the physical thing and I got the mental thing. Go figure. Just the way it is.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 06 Sep 2018, 7:21 pm, edited 3 times in total.

This seems misplaced in The Haven, so it has been relocated to General.

It's just that a lot of Aspies say they were born premature or had other complications at birth or had older parents, thinking that those are the reason(s) why they are on the spectrum.
Premature or complicated births happen to a lot of babies but they turn out just fine (with no ASDs or even no other developmental disorders). Physical conditions are an unrelated thing to what I'm talking about.

I just think that autism is down to genetics. They say that the cause of autism is unknown, but if Aspies like me are unlucky enough to have an ASD without having older parents or birth complications or whatever, then what else caused my ASD?

I put this thread in the Haven because I'm just feeling sorry for myself. My hatred of autism comes and goes. Well, I always hate autism, but sometimes I get angry with myself for having an ASD even though it's not my fault.

There seems, in many cases, to be a genetic, and sometimes even a chromosomal, element within autism.

However, it is not a classic "Hegelian genetic" disorder. There is no one "autistic" gene. It is not inevitable that autistic parents will beget autistic children. It is not "dominant" in the sense that 1 out of 2 births result in autism. It is not "recessive" in the sense that 1 out of 4 births result in autism.

I believe there are times when a predisposition towards autism is found within a person----which sometimes develop into autism, and sometimes doesn't develop into autism.

As you might know (?), Joe, various members here have had very serious illnesses. I am one of them, although some here have been far more ill than I was. I didn't feel any anger, though I know many do. I spent half a day in shock at my first life threatening diagnosis of cancer, then it was immediately: ok, what's are the best solutions for me from here? Maybe being older makes it easier to see things as problems with potential solutions rather than defaulting to feelings of hopelessness.

Being angry over things over which you feel you have no control, and no responsibility for, is understandable. Often the anger is a cover over for underlying grief. Sometimes it's the grief that needs attention before progress can be made with the eruptions of anger that block you from moving on.

Hegelian genetic? KK, did you maybe mean Mendelian genetic?

Joe90, although you say you are the only one who ended up autistic, in other posts you have mentioned other people in your family with other psychiatric disorders. One of the interesting recent findings about autism and genetics is that it is one of several disorders that appear to be genetically related, but not specifically. One family member may have schizophrenia, another mood disorder, another personality disorder, another ADHD, etc.

It's a genetic predisposition, but probably in order for a disorder to appear there would need to be some kind of environmental factor that provokes the genetic predisposition into action.

Yes, of course! Hegel is a philosopher! Mendel is the genetics guy. LOL

You can't co through your whole life feeling sorry for yourself. I refuse to feel sorry for myself because I'm autistic.

May be but I think you may be wrong. It also could be the result of something that happened in your childhood and the autism is something that you developed for mental or physical self-protection. But everyone's brain is different. But why don't try to get rid of it? For this ask yourself for the reason that causes a small child to become as you are now. May it be a hard rejection by someone it likes or getting hurt by some friend aso. Ask yourself how you could deal with such a situation now and try to get metally back to your innocent mental state before that means back to the time where the world was always nice and beautyful and full of wonderful people who all liked you and who were always neat to you. How would you deal with the situation now while keeping the innocence and kindness of your soul?

I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome despite I am not a bookish example of a person with that condition. My mother was more than a year older than my father. My mother was before her 23rd birthday when I was born. I weighted 2150 g (low birth weight) at birth and (probably) spent my first month after birth outside my home. I addition, I was emaciated newborn, my birth length was 53 cm (in Polish method of measure). It was well below 3rd percentile of birth length compared to weight. I had marked asymmetric hypotrophy. My sister weighted 2650 g and measured 53 cm and looks to be aucoroidal, brother weighted 3600 g and measured 57 cm and he looks to be NT. I am the first child of my parents. When I was conceived, they were not married. When my siblings were conceived, my parents were married. I had pneumonia or other significant health problem when I was about 10 months old. I heard that when I was very young (probably before my first birthday) I could not speak normally for two weeks.

I think that I fits better to the description of nonverbal learning disorder than to description of ASD. I was not diagnosed due to DSM-V, but due to ICD-10. I received official AS diagnosis when I was about 17 years old, they gave me it in special centre specialised in autism and similar disorders. When I was 23, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia-type disorder (F21 in ICD-10). I had OCD when I was about 12-15 years old and later (at first stage it was associated with controlling compulsions and magical thinking, later it was mainly religious OCD and scrupulosity). Brother of my father is PhD engineer, he probably received very good grades in school and, most importantly, on the studies. I have MSc degree (Polish: magister inżynier), but the degree course was not so "technical". In IQ test (Wechsler) I scored 22 points better in verbal part than in performance (VIQ 126, PIQ 104, it was 19.05.2016 or 26.05.2016 in day hospital).

So I think that my condition may not be genetic in etiology, but rather may be the result of prenatal insults and serious infection in infancy. I think that I do not belong to one spectrum with individuals described by Leo Kanner.