I stumbled across an old Wired article over the weekend, which talks about the proliferation of autism in the tech corridors of our country. The tech world is a perfect fit for the mildly autistic mind.
It’s a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics – coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours – are residing somewhere in Asperger’s domain.
However, this safe haven for logical nerds could be a breeding ground for more serious, delibitating cases of this disorder.
The chilling possibility is that what’s happening now is the first proof that the genes responsible for bestowing certain special gifts on slightly autistic adults – the very abilities that have made them dreamers and architects of our technological future – are capable of bringing a plague down on the best minds of the next generation. For parents employed in prominent IT firms here, the news of increased diagnoses of autism in their ranks is a confirmation of rumors that have quietly circulated for months. Every day, more and more of their coworkers are running into one another in the waiting rooms of local clinics, taking the first uncertain steps on a journey with their children that lasts for the rest of their lives.
In previous eras, even those who recognized early that autism might have a genetic underpinning considered it a disorder that only moved diagonally down branches of a family tree. Direct inheritance was almost out of the question, because autistic people rarely had children. The profoundly affected spent their lives in institutions, and those with Asperger’s syndrome tended to be loners. They were the strange uncle who droned on in a tuneless voice, tending his private logs of baseball statistics or military arcana; the cousin who never married, celibate by choice, fussy about the arrangement of her things, who spoke in a lexicon mined reading dictionaries cover to cover.
The old line “insanity is hereditary, you get it from your kids” has a twist in the autistic world. It has become commonplace for parents to diagnose themselves as having Asperger’s syndrome, or to pinpoint other relatives living on the spectrum, only after their own children have been diagnosed.
High tech hot spots like the Valley, and Route 128 outside of Boston, are a curious oxymoron: They’re fraternal associations of loners. In these places, if you’re a geek living in the high-functioning regions of the spectrum, your chances of meeting someone who shares your perseverating obsession (think Linux or Star Trek) are greatly expanded. As more women enter the IT workplace, guys who might never have had a prayer of finding a kindred spirit suddenly discover that she’s hacking Perl scripts in the next cubicle.
….Says Bryna Siegel, author of The World of the Autistic Child and director of the PDD clinic at UCSF, “In another historical time, these men would have become monks, developing new ink for early printing presses. Suddenly they’re making $150,000 a year with stock options. They’re reproducing at a much higher rate.”
Anyhow, fascinating article. Worth checking out.
Apt. 11d 
There have been slight reductions in cases since Thimerosal was removed from vaccines used in children to age 6. Oddly, Autism affects boys 3 to 4 times more often than girls and crosses all socio-economic lines. I just don’t buy the “it is a bunch of technical programming nerds procreating” as the cause. They would have to be conceiving mostly boys, which would cause a scientific study all on it’s own. Great blog though-
C
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There is no epidemeological evidence that the rate or the # of new diagnoses of autism has changed since the removal of thimerosol from childhood vaccines (Doja & Roberts, Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 2006).
Many genetically linked syndromes can have different frequencies in boys and girls (color blindness & hemophilia are the best known examples). The most common reason for skewed sex ratios is that the syndrome’s deficits lie on the X chromosome (of which girls have 2 and boys only 1 — paired with a Y). Scientists often hypothesize a genetic link because of a difference in frequency between boys & girls.
I too found the wired article fascinating (and anecdotally believe that aspberger’s like symptoms are present in among “geeks.”). But, it’s a Wired article, you know, not a scientific study. The science indicates that parents of children with autism are more likely to show certain traits (for example in visual perception), which supports a genetic link.
The “Geeks marrying geeks” reason for increased incidence of autism has a long ways to go before it has any sound science behind it. One of the really big problems with the theory is the general belief, among scientists, that there hasn’t been an increase in autism, only in its diagnosis. Kids we used to call “weird” are now diagnosed).
bj
PS: autism is not my research field, but I am interested in it as an example of a complex developmental disorder of cognition.
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So who ought Asperger’s people marry? ADHD people? go for a happy medium? John and Martha Mitchell the ideal couple?
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Actually isn’t it true that in general right now the marriage market is unusually efficient? 100 years ago it was very common for up to 20% of the population to never marry. Some were geographically too distant from the marriage pool (especially problematic given that women tended to congregate in cities, while the single men had often stayed on the farm). It’s easy to forget that not so long ago, if you didn’t encounter someone in person, you’d never encounter them at all.
But these days people are more mobile, they’re easier to communicate with and find, than ever. So I would imagine that all kinds of self-sorting is happening … overly-focused geeks with overly-focused geeks, skateboarders with skateboarders, on and on it goes. I have a neighbor who chose her husband because they had both joined a dating service which sorted people by Myers-Briggs profile. Wow.
One side effect of this self-sorting that I’ve noticed: as a country we seem to be going back to the idea of families organized around trades. People come from “political families” or “academic families” or “musical families”. Two people passionate about a certain topic get together, thanks to the Internet. Their love for their hobby or job or whatever is reinforced by their mutual interest. If kids come along the kids are initiated in immediately. This is how you get kids going to their first White Sox game at 6 weeks old, or getting their first guitar at 3, or starting kindergarten already able to read chapter books. I know many computer people who get their kids computers before the kids are in school. My pastor sought out all kinds of kids’ Bibles for her three children. I’m sure we all know people like this.
This level of focus within a family (or, to put it another way, lack of diversity of thought within the family) can have some odd results. Like some of this asberger’s stuff … or a kid who’s winning national science competitions at 15 … or a kid who’s medaling in the olympics at 12 … it can go either way. I personally think it’s a combination of genetics, interest, and how our economy prizes specialization.
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I love the direction of the comments (i.e. recent trends in assortative mating). Jen mentions mobility & the communication (the same thing that let’s folks buy things on ebay that they would never have bought if they had to scour flea markets for them), and there’s also the widening of the options for women. For example, the women who now go to schools, where they meet their husbands, that they would not have been permitted to attend, a mere 50 years ago.
bj
PS: My husband & I, though geeks, are not computer people, and yet, we got our 4yo a computer of her own (because I can’t stand sharing mine). We haven’t given into her demand that the computer be hers alone (and not shared with her brother) even though we’ve been tempted.
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bj — why would the skewed ratios lead people to hypothesise a genetic component, given that boys are raised very differently than girls, and that disorders like autism which affect emotional connectness to others, etc, would seem prime candidates for being explained by those differences. Also, I understand that recent research suggests that autism is better dealt with when the children with it enjoy very stable environments; could (putative) increases in autism be connected to increases in geographic mobility, loosening of extended family ties, etc. Isn’t autism also skewed by class? (if so, that would be consistent with the “destabilised environments” hypothesis, since extended family ties are stronger in poor and working class than in middle and upper class families).
I ask out of curiosity and ignorance, not because I have an environmentalist agenda (though I suspect that’s my bias), but you seem to know what your talking about.
jen’s penultimate paragraph sounds true. It gives me the creeps.
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The Atlantic did a piece on this very subject about five years back.
I did a little bit of reading on autism and girls a month or so ago, and it’s well worth looking into. The thing is that autism in girls can be very different than in boys. For whatever reason, girls are much better at cloaking their differences and can “pass” through careful mimicry. There’s Psychology Today piece entitled “The Girl With a Boy’s Brain” that profiles one such very accomplished young woman.
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The Atlantic did a piece on this very subject about five years back.
I did a little bit of reading on autism and girls a month or so ago, and it’s well worth looking into. The thing is that autism in girls can be very different than in boys. For whatever reason, girls are much better at cloaking their differences and can “pass” through careful mimicry. There’s Psychology Today piece entitled “The Girl With a Boy’s Brain” that profiles one such very accomplished young woman.
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Speaking of hemophilia, as I read the article, I was thinking about that disability as I read this article. Didn’t European royalty have high rates of hemophilia as they became increasingly inbred over the years? Sure this is just a fun little Wired article, but the increase of disease and disabilities as likes marry likes has played out in other areas as well.
I’m not sure about the findings that environment shapes autism. My friends with severel disabled kids certainly did nothing that made them sit in a corner and flap their hands. Maybe it plays out more in lighter varieties of autism.
We haven’t bought our kids computers, though we give them lots of access to ours. This isn’t why my kids are love computers and my friend’s kid wants nothing to do with them. My kids, especially the younger one, are hard-wired that way. Ian has been turning on the computer, clicking on the browser, finding his games on the favorite list and using a mouse since he was two years old. Was he hard-wired for that, because Steve and I share geeky qualities and are both Phds, as are my dad and my cousin? Should I urge my kids to marry bimbos and save our genetic code from inbreeding?
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send them to Hot Springs, Arkansas. That’s where John Mitchell found Martha.
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My trade (actuary) is another of the Asperger’s strongholds.
http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actuarial_discussion_forum/showthread.php?t=2095
http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actuarial_discussion_forum/showthread.php?t=16334
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This book argues that there is an “epidemic of discovery” of autism.
http://www.slate.com/id/2157496/
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I tend to think there’s an epidemic of diagnosis when it comes to the milder portions of the autistic spectrum. That concurs with other epidemics of diagnosis, for things like restless leg syndrome. 20 years ago that was just life. Now it’s a diagnosis.
But the harsher forms of autism, I’m not so sure. I know it’s just anecdotal, but I see a ton more autism stuff now than I ever did 20 years ago. As a child I never once met an autistic child, or a child with life-threatening nut allergies. Now as an adult I know several kids in both of these categories.
I personally am very suspicious of pollution.
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Sorry — my first statement that a “skewed sex ratio causes geneticists to suspect genes are involved” is a vast overstatement. If someone made that argument for the number of scientists at Harvard (yes, the Larry guy), I would only wish that I had the courage to run out in exasperation like Nancy Hopkins did.
I fell into a logical falacy in my statement. What I meant to say is that there are some genetic diseases (hemophila, color blindness, and others), where there are skewed sex ratios, and that skewed sex ratios do not argue _against_ a genetic explanation. It was wrong to translate that into the statement that a skewed ratio implies a genetic explanation.
There’s a paper out there that suggests that the genetic basis of autism might be different in boys and girls: Schellenberg et al, Molecular Psychiatry (2006). But, there’s also a paper that suggests that girl children might obtain protection from autism traits because of early environmental differences between girls and boys (Constantino, Arch Gen. Psychiatry, 2003).
bj
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I would note that in our modern society, there is (for better or for worse) a lot less cross-caste childbearing than there used to be.
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Well, they don’t have to marry bimbos. They just have to reproduce with emotionally aware, socially extroverted, polyglots with no obsessive tendencies.
I wonder if there’s a study out there that examines historical changes in personalities of human pairs? You could even try to do it as a simple project, using the Meyers-Brigg instrument, and administering it to parents of different ages. You’d have all kinds of confounds, but it would be an interesting undergraduate project. We’re basically predicting higher similarity in personalities in younger v older parents.
bj
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why would the skewed ratios lead people to hypothesise a genetic component, given that boys are raised very differently than girls, and that disorders like autism which affect emotional connectness to others, etc, would seem prime candidates for being explained by those differences.
Harry, my suspicion would be that autism is visible so early (what is it–6 months or so?) that nurture differences seem relatively unlikely to be the cause.
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There was a recent study saying that the older a man was, the more likely that his child would have autism. That suggests to me that autism probably has something to do with the Y chromosone.
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SamChevre: “Harry, my suspicion would be that autism is visible so early (what is it–6 months or so?) that nurture differences seem relatively unlikely to be the cause.”
No, autism is usually diagnosed much later than 6 mo, and leading experts suggest that you can’t rule out autism until children are 4+. There are folks who think they see early signs at 6 mo, but that’s definitely a research topic (not a clinical topic).
AmyP: “There was a recent study saying that the older a man was, the more likely that his child would have autism. That suggests to me that autism probably has something to do with the Y chromosone.”
I’ve always interpreted that study to mean that men who reproduce at older ages were geeks who didn’t marry until they were old. But, I’ll admit, that’s not the official explanation. The report comes from a study of Israeli draft records, and shows a 5X increased risk of autism among children of fathers older than 40 compared to those with fathers under 30 (Reichenberg et al, Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2006). My interpretation is that in this sample,social characteristics of men who reproduce after age 40 v before age 30 are different (i.e. share overlap with the autism phenotype). But, the interpretation depends on additional info about birth order, which wasn’t available in the study.
bj
PS: I love pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed
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From upthread: “I know it’s just anecdotal, but I see a ton more autism stuff now than I ever did 20 years ago.”
My son was diagnosed 12 years ago; in a meeting shortly thereafter, our SPED director said something to our autism specialist that I’ll never forget: “I’ve been involved in Special Ed Admin since the early 70s, and I only saw three or four kids with autism during that time, and all were profoundly autistic. Now I have between 20 and 30 preschoolers coming into the system this year, milder but unable to function in a regular classroom. What is going on?” The autism specialist had no answer.
I think the answer is probably multifactorial, a combination of genetics and environmental issues, and I think there is something to the hypothesis put forward in Wired.
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Would clearly autistic children have been institutionalized back in the 70s, rather than growing up at home and going to standard public schools?
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Certainly a few were pre-1975, especially if they were severely disabled in other ways (for example, unable to perform daily living skills). Some still are.
But when IDEA was passed in 1975, schools became responsible for educating them within the system or funding an alternate placement (which might be an institution). In other words, they were *in* the school system one way or another, and visible to special ed administration.
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I was fascinated and a little disturbed by one of the subthemes of this Wired article. The author makes the case that the kind of smarts that thrive in the modern society are the smarts that come out of the autistic mind — single minded focus on topics, visual perceptiveness, solitary discipline. The high tech world rewards these characteristics. Other types of smarts — verbal and social accuity, creativity, emotional sensitivity — are less valued. He imagines a world where the former disabled are now super abled and become the new elites. I’m not sure if that is true or not, but it was interesting.
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I’m a computer geek with a bad habit of putting my foot in my mouth. My husband has two degrees in rocket science, but is wonderfully type-B and social, although one of his sisters and all of her children are depressives, and he’s had a bout himself brought on by OCD (his mom was rather a nervous type and I guess it wasn’t just being a tiny person in a world bigger than she was.)
My half-brother on my mom’s side has Tourettes. Mom’s brother is basically indigent, barely made it out of high school and failed at job after job, but heaven knows there was no decent diagnosis of anything in the 50s and 60s. I’m guessing learning disabled at the very least. He also doesn’t have the greatest social skills in the world…
#1-Son would probably avoid a diagnosis of Aspergers by thismuch, or maybe they’d confirm it. Whenever one of his teachers used to call / email with a polite version of “what is up with him?” I point them to the “handling Asperger’s kids” page in the Special School District manual, which I found by accident while volunteering in the school library when he was in 5th grade and spells out all the things we had to learn the hard way. But a diagnosis wouldn’t really change his life for the better, so we don’t bother.
#2-Son has a neurologist-given diagnosis of hyperlexia, not to mention being hypotonic and having lousy motor skills. The child taught himself to read at four, although he couldn’t put together a verbal sentence of more than two words on his own. He’s 14 1/2 now and just this year doing a lot of conversation-initiation.
Do I believe that autism-spectrum disorder is inherited? Hell, yes. I’m pretty sure that my brother and my sons are part of the reason my two sisters on Mom’s side have decided not to have kids. And I’m pretty sure neither of my sons will even get married, and I think Daughter’s already sworn off having kids herself at the ripe old age of 12. Living your entire life in Casa Autism will do that to you, and we have two very mild cases here!
I know, I know, why did I have kids? I almost didn’t. My little sisters on my mom’s side are much younger than I am, and I spent my teens raising them with my mom after their dad left. But I had a great-aunt pass away when I was about 25, the first relative to do so, and I started feeling my mortality. Also, when I decided to have kids I knew my brother had Tourettes but I didn’t connect the dots to my uncle. And none of the depression stuff on my husband’s side, except for his sister, had cropped up yet.
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