Using the same thoughts, can’t I say that we’re slowly breeding intelligence and responsiblity out of humanity?
See, because the most responsible people (and IMO intelligent) are those who know where babies come from. As such, they use methods to prevent those babies in most typical cases (after all, how many people reading this board were actually completely planned pregnancies?).
So, the people NOT having kids due to the availability of birth control are those
who are responsible adults who understand the consequencs of an hour or two of carnal delights.
On the other hand, those more likely to reproduce are those who are too stupid (babies are found in cabbage patches!), too irresponsible (don’t worry, baby, I’ll pull out at the last moment), or too convinced of their own specialhoodliness (It can’t happen to ME).
Then again, looking around at the world I see, I may have just convinced myself that the article was actually correct.
Well, it was the vaccine conspiricy theorists (always another vaccine on a grassy knoll) that I was referencing when I said that this hypothesis is better than others that get more press. Short version: the only evidence that the anti immunization crowd ever had is that diagnosed autism is up and something must be causing it - prove it isn’t the shots. It’s been proven now. Not the shots.
I think the most rational explanation for the “epidemic” of autism is better screening and diagnoses. A higher number of children are labeled as autistic… this doesn’t mean that a greater percentage of children actually have autism.
Considering the source (rotten.com) it is sensitive to a Leo Buscaglia-ish extreme. If you haven’t been to other parts of the site I’d recommend against it. I have a pretty strong stomach and some of their pictures still haunt me.
Anyone interested in the current state of immunization-autism allegations can look at the cdc website .
Funny thing about the thimerosol accusation - it has been out of routine shots for something like four years now. If it was at all etiologic then one would be seeing a drop-off of new cases. Hasn’t happened.
The pity is that so much good research money has been diverted to defending good medicine against bad science instead of getting at real root causes and more effective early identification and intervention.
I didn’t look at the rotten.com article but probably it was a joke (no doctor would want a name change if they were serious). Still the underlaying point is still a reasonable thought. Autism is mainly genetic and the brain differences begin in utero. The genes that contribute only do so in combination; no single gene variant is causitive. The variant forms of the individual genes may have benign or even beneficial effects for some in isolation of being combined with other alleles. Just contributing to that broad autistic phenotype which may have some processing advantages in certain feilds. If circumstances exist that make it more likely for those genes to come together in combination, then more auitsm would result. A tech-focused world and the tools to find others with the same narrow range of interests would result in such a situation if those aspects of the broad autistic phenotype have a genetic basis as one reasonable presumes they do. If one believes that there really is much more autism.
Once again, a series of informative and topical posts from DSeid. Thanks!
(For anyone still hanging around and interested in the earlier brief sidetrack, Skeptical Inquirer has a good article on vaccine paranoia in general–it’s amazingly common–on the web.)
This guy has a new neighbor, and is talking to him to get to know him. So he asks him what he does for a living and gets back the response, “I teach deductive reasoning at the local college.”
“Deductive reasoning? What’s that?” asks the guy.
“Well… For instance, I see that you have a doghouse in your yard. From this I can deduce that you have a dog. From this, I can tell that you probably have children. If you have children, then you must have a wife. And so I know you are a heterosexual.”
The guy just looks at him and goes “Wow, that was amazing. You’re right!”
And then they continue to talk about various other things.
That night the guy goes to a bar to meet up with one of his friends, and ends up telling the friend about his new neighbor.
“Deductive reasoning? What’s that?” asks the friends.
“Well, do you have a doghouse in your yard?”
“No.”
“…Fag.”
