Child autism link to pet shampoo

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Interesting article in the Telegraph today...

Child autism link to pet shampoo

considering my parents always washed our dogs with soap...it's not a foolproof answer..

i never knew i was whased whith pet shampoo as kid

I was already quite weird long before we got our first pet. And we didn't wash him with pet shampoo. We just hosed him down occasionally when he got too filthy.

Wow, what's next?

That's like this kid we sold some gerbils to...he said they had to get rid of them because their urine is unsafe to digest... o_O

it sounds like a conspiracy from pets,set off some autism rumours about pet shampoo and no one will buy it=no more human baths for pets.

I read the same research in New Scientist - it said mothers who have an autistic child, were twice as likely to wash their dog with pyrethrin containing anti-flea shampoo before their child was born.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrethrin

Only the week before, I read that mothers who have an autistic child are twice as likely to have a preexisting mental disorder - OCD, schizophrenia, personality disorder etc. But the same was not true for fathers.

Thus, you can't say that the shampoos are definitely causing children's autism, instead it is possible that mothers of autistic children behave a little differently, perhaps their increased tendency to OCD means they are twice as likely to clean their dirty flea ridden Mut.

Also, maybe pet ownership rate is higher amongst parents of autistic children, since 20% of parents are on the broader autism phenotype (BAP), many can't make friends as easily as other parents, so they have a dog as a friend.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/c8335p8754477331/ - The broader autism phenotype

A another interesting thing was said a few months ago. They found that older fathers had more autistic children, they blamed damaged DNA caused by older age. But maybe its due to Aspie fathers, who get married later because of poor social skills, and they pass on their autistic genes.

I would agree that it's probably a pet ownership rate instead of a pet shampoo rate that is correlated in this study. From what I've seen online people with autism generally gravitate more towards animals than people, especially in the case of cats.

Next they'll be saying cats cause autism, because journalists are pretty dumb about reading research studies and tend to label every link as causation. But I think that's one of the reasons more people should actually learn to read science journals instead of filtering every study through Yahoo or MSN.

Wikipedia:

National Pesticide Information Center:



So this stuff wouldn't even actually kill a flea, nor is it easily absborbed through the skin, but in pet shampoo, seeps into the mother's body and causes autism. Hmm.

I used to pick Chrysanthemums for my mom, from a bush in our yard as a child. (gasp!) Except I was already kindergarten age then, and that wasn't the house my family lived in when I was born. (nuts! still no connection! curses!)

This theory sounds even less plausible than the vaccine nonsense. And it's based on information collected after the fact by new mothers who are supposed to be able to recall every single chemical they were exposed to for most of the past year? I couldn't give you a complete list of the chemicals I've been exposed to in the past week. I'm not even buying this as entertainment.

I just amended the Wiki page on Pyrethrins to make it NPOV (neutral).

The Wiki page previously said that mothers who used Pyrethrin containing dog shampoo were twice as likely to have autistic children - taken from the Daily Telegraph.

It never said that!

They only observed that mothers of autistic children were twice as likely to report using Pyrethrins containing dog shampoo, in the months before their autistic child was born. It was just a correlation (reporters nowadays are not thought skeptical thinking or the scientific method, they did journalism in Arts & Humanities, thus allot of rubbish science is published in papers, TV etc.)

I agree that the behaviors of parents of autistic children are not identical to parents of non-autistic kids - as their 2 fold increased risk mental disorders attests.

I can't add the increased pet ownership rate (I would like to) without a independent reference, otherwise its original research.

Interesting. That chemical is also used to treat reptile mites. I had to use it to get rid of my snake's mites last year, and I still have a bunch of it lying around my house. I'm not concerned about it, though.

This is a joke right? *adds to the list of insane Autism cause theories*

Being shy causes autism

Autism is like cancer - everything causes it.

I gave my dog a bath about 1 hour ago. I feel like stimming already, so I think the shampoo has taken effect

They're resorting to Weekly World News-like Autism panic.