Myths around Causes of Autism [Autism Acceptance Campaign 2021 - Day 8]

It is 8th day today of my Autism Acceptance campaign.  There are lot of misconceptions about causes of autism.  Today I will touch upon few myths associated with causes of autism.   Myths crop up when something is not well understood.  Autism is still not well understood.  There are many theories float around causes of autism.

In the 1940s and 50s there was an assumption that autism was caused by emotionally distant to ‘cold’ parents.  When Leo Kanner first identified autism in 1943, he noted the lack of warmth among the parents of autistic children.  This led to naming the mothers as ‘refrigerator mothers’.  Don’t know why mothers alone were qualified with ‘refrigerator’.  Possibly this might be the first myth around autism.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, and colleagues published a paper that described 8 children whose first symptoms of autism appeared within one month after receiving MMR vaccine.  From these observations Wakefield postulated MMR vaccine caused intestinal inflammation that led to translocation of usually non-permeable peptides to the bloodstream and, subsequently, to the brain, where they affected development.  He connected this to autism.  Claims of a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism have been extensively investigated.  None of these studies could establish any connection.  This also turned out to be a myth around causes of autism.

There was a belief that “ONLY environmental factors are responsible for autism”.  Extensive studies were conducted to understand this.  The largest study of its kind, involving more than 2 million people across five countries, finds that environmental causes are responsible for just 20% of the risk.  The myth “ONLY environmental factors are responsible for autism” also got bust. 

Fourth major myth on causes of autism was ‘Maternal Factors’.  Maternal factors included mother’s weight, mode or timing of delivery, or nutrient intake during pregnancy etc.  Scientific studies proved this also wrong.  So the fourth myth also got bust.

Dr. Rajith Kumar, a Kerala teacher who thinks women who wear jeans give birth to autistic children.  This disgusting myth was being propagated through 100s of stage and media talks by him.  He started spreading this myth just 3 to 4 years back.  It is unfortunate to see that this person got celebrity status and have huge fan following, may be because of many such senseless actions. 

As one understands better about autism, the walk towards Acceptance becomes shorter and easier.  The objective of this post is to bring out some myths about causes of autism.  Next we will look at some of the theories / facts on causes of autism.