The Age of Autism: The Amish Anomaly

The Washington Post is asking why is Autism not as common in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Amish community as it is in the rest of the US:

Part 1:

Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder.

I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed, and the very few I have identified raise some very interesting questions about some widely held views on autism.

The mainstream scientific consensus says autism is a complex genetic disorder, one that has been around for millennia at roughly the same prevalence. That prevalence is now considered to be 1 in every 166 children born in the United States.

Applying that model to Lancaster County, there ought to be 130 Amish men, women and children here with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

...

So far, from sources inside and outside the Amish community, I have identified three Amish residents of Lancaster County who apparently have full-syndrome autism, all of them children.

Part 2 discusses what he learned about the three children:

It was stunning that Julia Inion, the first autistic Amish person I could find, turned out to be adopted -- from another country, no less... Julia's vaccinations in China -- all given in one day at about age 15 months -- may well have contained thimerosal; the United States had stopped using it by the time she was born, but other countries with millions to vaccinate had not.

via Angie Carlson who added: "At least one of the other two children had received vaccinations."

Posted by Dane on May 06, 2005 | 0 Comments

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