<story><title>An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jdietrich</author><text>The autoimmune hypothesis is yet another autism hypothesis that is advanced primarily by parents, because it offers more hope than a neurological etiology. A lot of people hold strongly to the hope that autism is just a set of symptoms that are triggered by something tangible and readily treatable like a nutritional deficiency or a food allergy, rather than a permanent difference in brain structure. The available evidence points very clearly in one direction - genetics.&lt;p&gt;It also bears repeating that what we call &quot;severe autism&quot; is really &quot;some amount of autism comorbid with very low IQ&quot;. Autism is routinely overdiagnosed in preference to a more accurate diagnosis of intellectual disability because parents prefer it, again because it offers more hope, largely due to the popular trope of the autistic savant.&lt;p&gt;Parents of severely disabled children naturally hold out for any source of hope and I don&apos;t judge them for that in any way, but we can&apos;t let that get in the way of the science that really is their child&apos;s best hope. There is no evidence for the hygiene hypothesis.</text></comment>
<story><title>An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jmillikin</author><text>Does anyone have references to studies regarding this? The author has a long history of advocating a link between parasite load and auto-immune disease (c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29wwln-essay-t.html?_r=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29wwln-essay-t.ht...&lt;/a&gt; from 2008), and since the Wakefield scandal I&apos;m generally skeptical of non-journal articles attempting to link autism and inflammation.&lt;p&gt;The article is advertisement for the author&apos;s book, and I can&apos;t find any indication that the author has an educational background in biology. Based on his book&apos;s Amazon page, he&apos;s a journalist.</text></comment>