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10 Weirdest Things Linked To Autism

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Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

I write about autism a lot. Much of what I write has to do with autism-related research, and I keep tabs on what comes down the pipeline every day–because a new autism finding turns up every day. Some of it seems pretty reasonable, but a few things I’ve seen linked to autism–always a mathematical relationship, never a causative one–just leave a reader thinking, “Eh?,” possibly with a little stereotypical head-scratching added in. Or maybe the occasional throwing of items within reach.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated quite a list. Here are the 10 weirdest–and in some cases, most dangerous–factors I’ve seen linked to autism.

1. No worms. Without question, my all-time favorite autism-linked factor has to be “an absence of worms.” It’s a wriggly hypothesis that lacks even a correlation to drive it, but it sure did get a lot of attention. I can confirm anecdatally that I’ve never heard of an autistic person who had worms, but I also haven’t known non-autistic people who have, either.

2. Lyme disease. This idea, also lacking a correlation as a hypothetical springboard, fails in any number of ways, most of which consist of having no evidence base. It first hit the radar via a local Fox Fox news channel, and it’s got a lot of die-hard fans who periodically pop up to defend it. [Disclosure: I am a volunteer editor at the linked site.]

3. Relative finger length. According to my own relative finger lengths, I am either male or a lesbian. I am neither. Of course, at the link, we’re promised that our finger lengths will also predict our tendency to develop cancer. Cancer, autism, homosexuality–hey, there, one of the 10 signs of pseudoscience!

4. Too much money. Counts us out. Of course, what the study really indicates is that having resources–like money–means readier access to services and diagnostic testing.

5. An amino acid. I think. I’ll quote myself on this one: “You know that modern art that you stare at, trying to figure out why it’s supposed to be art? This is the science version of that.”

6. Too much air pollution. A.k.a, “living near a freeway.” Has anyone checked for super-double-plus-high autism prevalence in the nations of the world with the worst air pollution, like Iran, Mongolia, India, China, or Pakistan? Or noticed that in the US, pollution’s actually decreasing?

7. Too much androgen. Not as in “in the womb,” but just a presumption of an overwhelming amount of androgen that at least one delicensed doctor (it’s kind of trendy in the world of autism pseudoscience to be delicensed) tried to parlay into a patented treatment that involved using a chemical castration agent on children without medical indication.

8. The Internet. It was a completely ridiculous thing to say, but it sure did start an entertaining Internet meme: I point to Baroness Greenfield, I point to viral memes. That’s all.

9. Vaccines. It’s dead, Jim. Stop flogging the poor, dead hypothesis. Let’s just bury it in a simple, private ceremony.

10. Mothers. Not that mothers are necessarily strange, but everything we do seems to be linked to autism: Having children close together, having them in a certain order, being a certain age, having antibodies, having children in summer, having wombs and gestating embryonic and fetal humans in them, using Clomid, IVF, terbutaline, or labor induction, being pregnant near freeways, donating bad mitochondria to offspring, partnering with older fathers, passing genes to our children, eating, treating depression, getting an infection during pregnancy, including the flu, not getting an infection, being depressed, or behaving like refrigerators.

The list of maternal factors linked to autism is actually much longer than this, so I thought I’d just say “Mothers” and leave it at that. So from now on, instead of elaborating on new research findings, the news media can simply write, “We point to mothers, we point to autism. That’s all.” Don’t worry. It’ll be OK. We’re pretty used to it.

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  • Emily, this is hilarious! I remember reading once that “excessive hygiene” could contribute to autism. Crazy people out there!

  • Eileen

    Perhaps you need to read some science literature on the interactions of the human Microbiome
    and how it effects us all, but most particularly children with autism.

    Particularly relevant to this discussion is the work undertaken by Harvard University, Columbia University and Caltech (California Institute of Technology).

    Treatment options for children in considerable chronic pain from gastrointestinal disorders that drives neurological function ie Autism might be a matter of some ‘hilarity’ but others such as myself take it quite seriously.

  • Emily Willingham Emily Willingham, Contributor 1 year ago

    Why, I have a child with considerable chronic pain from GI disorders!

  • .. and your point Emily ?

  • Please take your time. I wouldn’t want you stymied by your own commentary.

  • Anne Dachel Anne Dachel 1 year ago

    It should bother EVERYONE that this is where we’re at. After twenty years of ever-increasing autism rates, officials still haven’t learned anything for sure—except that their ever-expanding vaccine program isn’t to blame. They seem happy to leave autism as a perpetual mystery. News reports regularly tell us that autism has no known cause or cure. There’s nothing a mainstream doctor can tell a new mother whose baby was born healthy and is developing normally so that her child doesn’t suddenly lose learned skills and regress into autism by age two.

    All those studies? Millions of dollars in grant money have gone into this dead-end research designed to make it look like the medical community really cares about what’s happening to our children. Moms with bad genes and moms who make bad choices will continue to take the blame. There is no urgency. The medical community still can’t figure out how much of the increase (or if any of it) is real.

    Autism’s nothing more than a medical curiosity that we have all the time in the world to figure out. Officially, it’s never even been called a crisis. “Serious health carel concern” is the strongest language used for a disorder affecting two percent of our children.

    Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism

  • Emily Willingham Emily Willingham, Contributor 1 year ago

    I’m glad you agree that the vaccine studies, in retrospect, were millions of dollars expended on “dead-end research.” That said, in reality, the maternal factors–well, some of them–could be relevant, but that leaves the question of what exactly one would do with the information.

    I’m looking at my boy right now, and I don’t think “crisis.” Your mileage may vary.

  • Anne Dachel Anne Dachel 1 year ago

    Speaking of STUDIES, the easy way to show vaccines have nothing to do with autism would be to conduct a simple study comparing the autism rates in fully vaccinated and never vaccinated children. If one in every 50 never vaccinated kids has autism, the proof would be there for all to see.

    With so many parents now too afraid to vaccinate, the study group is out there. Officials do retrospective studies like this all the time, but they refuse to call for one that could settle the most heated controversy in pediatric medicine.


    Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism

  • Anne Dachel Anne Dachel 1 year ago

    “I’m glad you agree that the vaccine studies, in retrospect, were millions of dollars expended on ‘dead-end research.’”

    I will certainly agree that the government’s epidemiological studies—all of which came with ties to the vaccine industry and all showing no link–can legitimately be called ‘dead-end research.’” These studies are famous for being easily flawed and the results manipulated.

    The research that is constantly ignored is the science that could stop the epidemic.



    Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism

  • Emily Willingham Emily Willingham, Contributor 1 year ago

    That study has been done, but your group dissmisses it because the sixth author on it is a criminal, even though the database registry information is available, none of the other half-dozen or so authors have removed their names from the work, and the journals that have published the papers have not retracted them. It was a study involving a huge number of people. It was pretty definitive. What I love–and it bears repeating–is how you’ll dismiss this study and the CDC, yet religiously cite the CDC’s 1 in 50 number, derived from some very fuzzy data collection.

  • chavisory chavisory 1 year ago