I totally agree with your post. I have a 7yo who has been diagnosed and another son 8 weeks. The stress I had throughout my pregnancy and still feel due to the blaming game is not productive to anyone. I am trying to enjoy my 8 week son but it's hard not to look at every move he makes and question myself as a mother.

I don't know how my 7yo ended up the way he is but regardless I would never swap him for any other child. I love him quirks and all. I think every parent asks this same question but in reality funding is better spent in finding ways to help our children live a better life.

@phantomFive@xanga - Maybe it's not something that can be solved.  Autism is something that happens, whether we like it or not.  I'd rather see these research efforts go toward something that will make life easier for these children, not drive the parents insane and scare them half to death.

@the_rocking_of_socks@xanga - @joyouswind@xanga - Chances are it can be solved.

@the_rocking_of_socks@xanga - The doctors are the ones out there doing the studies, because they think it can be cured (or prevented). If they didn't think so, they wouldn't be doing the studies.

Please don't be illogical.

please keep researching, dear researchers and ignore this ignorant posts. 

Thank you for this post....truth is, they have no idea what causes it, and only try to find links because of some things that these kids, or their moms' pregnancies, had in common.  Everyone has many things in common with others.  I could look back at things that "happened" with my son, my pregnancy, 26 years ago and say "Oh, that must be why the way he is the way he is!" just because some new article or research happens to point to that.  The truth is, I didn't do anything to cause anything during my pregnancy...only did what I was supposed to do to have a healthy baby, everything the doctors told me to do, the same as I did with my other two children.  One is on the ASD spectrum, the other two are not.  Go figure.  I think it just happens, and while they think there may be certain links, I tend to think that all kids are just different from birth - you can do all the same things during pregnancy and birth, raise the kids in the same house, same environment, same parents, same foods, whatever...and that is no guarantee that the kids will be anything alike, or that one will be troubled by one health problem or learning problem or another.  I do think that my first son's extremely long labor and difficult birth were the cause of some of his learning problems, but probably not all, and maybe not the ASD  - all my kids were huge and none were c-sections, and the other two are fine.  So yeah, I totally get what you're saying...and I don't think they'll ever find one thing that points to ASD that loving, caring mothers who are taking care of themselves and their babies during pregnancy and after birth can do any differently than they already are.

At this point, I kind of lost my ability to give a rat's ass about what causes autism. I just have to live with it. I agree that while the researchers are doing all they can, some theories just come out as ridiculous (my personal favorite being PETA's dumbasses saying milk causes autism.). But I wouldn't tell them to stop researching. Just to cut the crap. Be rational about it. I don't live near a highway, I was born at the right time, still got autism. Being over weight and drinking milk? That did nothing to the regular ones.

The world would be way better with less "anti-science" people around, you have to thank science for not having to be afraid of our kids having poliomyelitis and, perhaps, one day we won't have to be "afraid" of autism. Even if they find out that autism can't be cured, they will surely make us understand it more, and come out with totally new approaches on the education of autistic children.

Damn, we are almost having to thank them for making spinal damage healable. Alzheimer is far more understood than it was half a century ago.

If you have to blame anyone, blame the news media and all the scientifically unprepared people who choose how they will pass what scientists publish to the common public.

It was no "casual Joe" who found out what autism was, it were Kanner and Asperger, medical RESEARCHERS and SCIENTISTS. If not for them, we wouldn't even start to know that these people can have an independent and productive life.

You people HAVE to think about it before saying that professionals "don't know shit" or that they should "please stop" researching.

Go figure.  I think it just happens, and while they think there may be certain links, I tend to think that all kids are just different from birth - you can do all the same things during pregnancy and birth, raise the kids in the same house, same environment, same parents, same foods, whatever...and that is no guarantee that the kids will be anything alike, or that one will be troubled by one health problem or learning problem or another. 

I LOVE this!