The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism

The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism delves deep into the triggers of autism from both a genetic and an environmental angle to reveal what the research shows causes autism and how genetic predispositions and environmental factors combine to trigger the condition.

To make this groundbreaking volume, James Lyons-Weiler poured through the last fifty years of published research on autism, exploring subjects such as genetic variation, mechanisms of neurotoxicity of metals and pesticides, and their central and combined roles in causing autism.

Lyons-Weiler provides a major overview of all aspects of the condition of autism, reviews changes in diagnoses and treatments, and explains how genetic information can be used to tailor design routes to effective treatments of the symptoms of autism. He also presents useful forward-looking suggestions on how to design future studies to facilitate the discovery of biomarkers for autism risk and to classify the full range of autism spectrum disorders.

Autism is considered one of the most mystifying conditions of our day, and alarmed scientists, doctors, politicians, and parents are desperately trying to understand why the condition is on the rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that in the 1970s and 1980s about one in every two thousand children had autism and today one in 150 eight-year-olds in the United States has it. Other numbers are much higher; a National Health Interview Survey of parents suggests that one in forty-five American children has autism.

While most autism researchers focus on either environmental or genetic causes of autism, Lyons-Weiler recognizes that it’s necessary to look at how the two factors combine to fully understand the condition and to finally put its rate on the decrease.

James Lyons-Weiler is the president and CEO of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, an advocacy group that pushes for accuracy and integrity in science and for biomedical researchers to put people’s health before profits. An established academic and researcher, he has a bachelor’s degree in biology, a master’s degree in zoology, a PhD in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology, and a postdoctoral in computational molecular biology; and he’s the author ofEbola: An Evolving Story and Cures vs. Profits. Lyons-Weiler lives in Pittsburgh, PA.