They have proved that ASD is NOT - repeat NOT genetic.

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They have proved positively and absolutely that genetics is not the cause of ASD.
They have also proved absolutely and positively that it is not environment.
They have also proved absolutely and positively that whilst genetics does not cause ASD - it is very influential.

All of this by the study of identical twins - with (according to a report on https://sfari.org/ quite some time ago) shows that only 77% of identical twins are both on the austism spectrum.

77% says it is not genetic - too low.
77% says it is not environment - too high.
77% says that genetics is important but not the "IT" factor.

Now here is the question.

I heard this one figure and immediately went to the conclusion.
In my mind - we have a fact which is neither nature or nurture - so the theory of nature/nurture is wrong.
If the theory that nature /nurture is wrong - what is wrong with it?

And we have nature - genetics in identical twins - so we can study the genetics.
We can take one twin and put them somewhere else - say in an adoption and they will adapt to their environment - so that is proved.
But I immediately asked - who says that there are only these TWO factors? Could there be more?
77% says there has to be more.

It took me three seconds to go from 77% to "nature and nurture is a wrong idea - and to find the error in the logic.
There is at least ONE other factor besides nature and nurture involved in human development.

But these brilliant - learned - wonderful people (who know more that I will ever know) missed it. They waffle on about spontaneous mutations - subtle things in the environment and so on.
To them- there is ONLY nature and nurture.
So they have to explain ... and they cannot.

I do this so ... instinctively - that I cannot understand how others cannot do it.
Just as some of you can compose songs - write essays - do fantastic maths - and so on.
Personally I prefer the person who can make recipes with "add a pinch of ..." also instinctive. I think such a good cook would be worth their weight in gold.
But I have my own quirk.

Is there someone else like me who thinks in this quirky way? Experience in history shows that the ability is very rare. I am sure Einstein had it. And other equally brilliant scientists did not.
It is not intelligence - it is something else.

Anyway - the science remains conclusive.

ASD is not genetic.
Genetics plays an important part but it is not genetics.
The "IT" factor is neither genetic nor environment but something else.

Well I guess that leaves genetic mutation....which means they cannot get rid of us, because they can never entirely stop genes from randomly mutating to create individuals with autism. But I thought they found it is somewhat genetic in some cases like runs in some families...whereas in other cases its just a random genetic mutation that has nothing to do with parent/family genetics.


I know this is not absolute proof but I have been diagnosed as on the spectrum, and also have it confirmed I was born with some sort of genetic mutation....maybe that is the reason I have autism, maybe its just one factor of many. And its hardly ever nature vs. nurture, usually both play a role in things. In the case of autism one cannot be made autistic through conditioning, but having more stress or a negative social environment can bring out more severity of symptoms. Also some victims of child abuse end up developing autistic like characteristics, that aren't really autism but rather induced by the abuse.

Your flaw is in thinking of environment as just nurture. It could be literal things in the environment man made or natural. Nurture needs to be broadened to include peer pressure, economy etc. And there there are specific genes not gene that have been linked to autism. So what this and other studies suggest is interactions between genetic and environment with genetics the most important. Thus the theory growing in popularity of Autisms instead of Autism.

The flaw in your logic is that you failed to consider that it could be epigenetic which is still genetic.

There is no conclusive evidence of what causes ASDs.
No one has been able to find the cause.
Every month we get a new study that points the finger somewhere.

Though it has been shown that some kids do out grow Autism in their teen years due to puberty changes.
But they are in a very small minority.

Essentially our understanding and ability to know what each gene does, is preventing us from finding the root cause of many things.

I do honestly believe genetics is the root cause, but pollution and other chemicals we ingest contributes to it like it does other disorders and diseases.

I mean a lot of people wouldn't have asthma if they lived in rural areas where pollution is almost not existent.
Pollution doesn't cause asthma, but it can trigger it in those who have a pre disposition to it.

There has got to be something inherited in some way - autism does run in my family. My dad's side has far more of a share of autistic kids than the average.

Your link doesn't go to any page, just a website so I see nothing that proves anything.

The flaw in your thinking is the finite framework of either/or, ignoring confounding factors - especially epigenetics. However believe whatever you like, most of us do... PS: "they" can prove anything they want to, and "they" often do.. scientific proof is not black and white, it's subject to all sorts of errors which are well catalogued by the philosophy of science. The most common is probably experimental error. There are many many other kinds. This is why science uses superior analytic tools like meta-analysis, and other tools, to examine spurious or over-reaching claims which are not truly supported by evidence despite superficial appearances.

What are the rates in shared autism among fraternal twins? The best way to determine "how genetic" a condition may be is to compare shared autism rates between identical twins and fraternal twins.

The concordance of autism spectrum amongst identical twins is ~0.9, indicating a strong genetic basis of autism.

The question that comes into my mind was actually very different.

if there are identical twins - and one has ASD and the other has not - what problems does the NT twin have? Almost identical hardware ....

Instead of looking at the ASD - look at the other.
Nobody seems to have done this.

It gets worse. On the original data for Autism - way before higher functioning autism - the correlation was about 20% in identical twins.
When they changed the definition of ASD - the original figure jumped to 88% on that small sample.
So we could have one identical twin with higher functioning autism, one with lower functioning autism - one hyper-reactive to sound, another to touch ... and they are equated ... BY THE EXPERIMENTERS as identical.

Wow.

It used to be thought that identical twins were 100% identical. That idea is no longer so emphatic - identical twins (for example) have different finger prints; and it is now known that one 'identical' may undergo epigenetic changes that the other is not subject to, for reasons which are not yet fully clear. Some are known - one twin, for example, may be more securely attached to the placenta than the other, and this affects their separate in utero development.

So the old rigid thinking about "completely identical" twins is changing to something far more mysterious and flexible - still in very early stages because epigenetics is a very new area of science.

On a sidenote, I have developed a need for source-checking (but google's working to invalidate that)
and attributed that in a way to being aspie, I am a bit disappointed that's actually not very much a aspie thing, I see here much 'discussing' just for the (nts') sake of endlessly discussing for the sake of not having to learn, but having battles to fight.
Real studies mostly come in pdf format, and this is a foundation with a mission that needs to make reasons for moneyspending.

There does not need to be only 1 thing causing autism, but for some reason you think there does. That is logic error 1.
Knowledge error 1 is that 'hardware' isn't hardwired, it changes all the time. eg: You're hungry? That means a physical thing changed within your body from when you weren't hungry. (Hardware is in '' because there are multiple different uses for the term hardware, and the biological definition isn't he common one)
Logic error and knowledge error 2 is that 'identical twins' are not actually 'identical'. You are confused because you're thinking "identical means identical" and then seeing this thing that shows they aren't identical. This is a paradox, so I would hope that you can see that you're just equating 2 instances of the word 'identical' as being (no pun intended ), identical, when they are not actually identical in meaning here. Note how I've put '' around 'identical twins', because you seem to not be thinking of it as 1 term but rather 2, when you should be thinking of it as 1.

'Identical twins' share the same DNA, that is all. Their presented genetics will not be identical, and differences will exist between them right from the start of 2 separate eggs which means that even as fetuses, their environments are slightly different from each other. Environment can actually change gene expression. A lot of our genes actually seem to be dormant, meaning non-existent, at any given point in time. Basically, having 2 people with the same genes does not mean that even their genes are working in the same way.

I think the issue here is the assumption that "not always entirely genetic" is the same as "not genetic". Anything with such a strong genetic component *is* genetic.

I think I prefer the original medical theory that the brain is not a computer.

it was a marvellous theory - and almost everything that was postulated has now been accepted as fact. But there was an area of the theory which - though in some ways accepted - has been utterly ignored. It was how the brain programs itself.

For some reason - brain programming has been ignored for the measurable. Brain hardware.
But it was the potential in brain programming which was highlighted as the greatest potential breakthrough.
One of the comments by the researchers was that if the theory was correct - there was no such thing as a purely logical though or a purely emotional thought but every thought was a mixture of them both.

I can - sort of - understand why they ignored brain programming. It would not be seen as "science" but as "psychology."

It has been a rather useful field of study.

Do you know that with identical twins, one can be right handed and one left? One can use left foot as their "reach foot" and the other the right foot. And it is NOT related to the reach hand.

With the right theory - and this is the right theory, you can change your reach hand, your reach leg.
it is not cognitive training - it is brain programming pathways.

It is not epigenetics.

They did not (alas) explore the link between genetics and brain programming. I had to do that myself. It is set in evolution. And primitive drives.

Things like sexual orientation, ASD and several mental illnesses are very likely to be brain programming problems. It is an entire science field which is going to give lots of answers.

But they have ignored the field for twenty years and will hardly listen to me.

BTW - if you look up nature/nurture - they are trying to set aside the theory on the grounds of epigenetics.
So it is a very ... besieged theory.

Now - care to look again?
It is not genetics ... 77%
It is not environment ... 77%
It is related to genetics - because it is the way genetics sets us up to program our own brain. But it is actually a programming path.

The genetics sets up a potential and a desire which is a bit hard to achieve and the way we program our brain is "to use another part of the brain instead." Except we only do it in 77% of the cases.