I have a little bit of mental frustration over "This thing is Linked to Autism" articles, for several reasons: -Autism is controversial. It has a disproportionate amount of pop science's attention for totally invalid reasons (e.g. "Mercury in vaccines Linked to Autism! Chelation Cures Autism! ABA Cures Autism!) -From what I understand, the most likely cause in the increase of autism diagnoses is an increase in autism diagnoses. A person may remember that less than ten years ago, the male/female ratio of autism diagnoses was 10 to 1. Now it's 4 to 1. That gap closes because more diagnosticians are perceiving female people with autism spectrum traits, probably not because Mercury Toxins are Targeting Our Girls. -As an autistic person I have this (possibly false) mental connotation between "This thing is possibly, we think, linked to autism?" and "Now that we can cure this thing, we can Cure Autism!" Curing autism is my Killer Gandhi Pill. I don't want to be cured. On the last point, let me clarify, I totally don't think that play_therapist (who I infer has a professional interest in autism) is trying to suggest that at all. I think the former two points still stand, though. I actually hope to write a discussion article on the problem with diagnosing certain ID/DDs (Intellectual Disorders and Developmental Disabilities,) in a scientific climate which has no objective means of diagnosis - and what an objective means would mean, given that eugenic attitudes towards disability are definitely not dead. This ties in. EDIT: Having re-read the article, I'm not so willing to say that it isn't leading into "How we can use this data to Cure Autism?" I will do talk, if I write a diagnosis article, about how the struggles involved with parenting autistics and being autistic are real, and I accept them, but also that I still cannot validate Curing something which is an intrinsic part of a person. A babyeater is a babyeater, not a human-typical entity hidden underneath the mea