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Winding Up The Age of Autism Series
By Richard | July 19, 2007
Dan Olmsted has written a series of articles for UPI called The Age of Autism. He issued his 113th and final one today.
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The Age of Autism: The last word
Dan Olmsted | UPI
WASHINGTON, July 18 (UPI) — This is my 113th and final Age of Autism column. United Press International, which has been the hospitable home for this series, is restructuring, and I’m off to adventures as yet unknown — although I intend to keep my focus on autism and related issues.
Why? Because it is the story of a lifetime.
“Autism is currently, in our view, the most important and the fastest-evolving disorder in all of medical science and promises to remain so for the foreseeable future,” says Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Columbia University’s school of medicine.
Most mainstream experts believe autism is a genetic disorder that’s “increasing” only because of more sophisticated diagnoses. But based on my own reporting, I think autism is soaring due to environmental factors — in the sense of something coming from the outside in — and that genes play a mostly secondary role, perhaps creating a susceptibility to toxic exposures in certain children. As the saying goes: Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger. MORE
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