"Americans Don't Want to Hear That Their Lifestyle Choices May Have Deleterious Effects On Their Children" Flea blogspot
There's a 5-year old I know from our neighborhood playground. I know only two things about her: Her father was 84 when she was born, and she is profoundly autistic.
I know that anectdotes are meaningless and data are everything, but I couldn't help think of this precious little girl when I read of this study in the Archives in General Psychiatry.
Abraham Reichenberg and others at Mount Sinai in New York looked at the medical records of 300,000 17-year olds in Israel in the 1980's. They found that risk of autism among the patients directly correlated with paternal age, even after adjusting for year of birth, socioeconomic status, and maternal age. Overall, the risk of autism was 5.75 times greater among children born to men aged 40 to 49, compared with those born to men under 30. Maternal age was not associated with autism after normalizing for paternal age.
Data are everything, but I can't help wondering what this study will do to the conversation about autism.
My guess is it will do nothing. Could delayed parenthood be partly responsible for the "autism epidemic"? Americans don't want to hear that their lifestyle choices may have deleterious effects on their children. My guess is that some folks will shun this data as vigorously they shun the data that demonstrate, convincingly, that vaccines do not cause autism.
Posted by Flea at 5:38 PM
Labels: Flea Blogspot
posted by concerned heart @ 11:22 AM
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2 Comments:
Who knew Flea was both educated and wise?
I think he's right that people are in such denial that they'll do anything not to blame themselves. Even one of the older parents on Oprah's recent autism show went off about evil vaccines after a guest MD/autism specialist discredited the bunk theory. But not one person brought up parental age.
It's so irresponsible! And Oprah's first show about autism probably went down that way because it's easy to see that the parents couldn't handle the intimation that there's no one left to lash out at; every person on that stage had eyes that were too sad--y'know, behind their crow's feet.
The only people left for them to lash out at are those who wasted opportunities to educate the public about advanced paternal age--the very people they have now become, ironically.
Come on, in all their obsessive personal research and hours of reading, their hang-dog faces never came across this solid theory? Or when they did find it, did they gloss over it, collectively shudder, brush it off as they glanced over at their middle-aged husbands, pushing the images of the old dads at their support groups out of their minds?
They had the opportunity to educate the public from a platform that happens to be an enormously successful show with a massive international audience. Their suffering is terrible, but denying other people preventative knowledge because they already need a cure is childishly selfish.
I actually clicked the link to Flea's blog and now see that it's not the Chili Peppers guy, but some pediatrician. D'oh! Anyway, my opinion still stands.
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