Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now

la6479

THis is where rubber meets the road. Show me how AI can make life easier for autistic people and their caregivers , mentally challenged people and their caregiver and I will believe in the promise of AI.

NamlchakKhandro

I think Claude is not autistic enough

lioeters

What kind of vibeslop title is that, it's triggering my 'tism.

mlboss

> Autism is genetic. You’re born autistic and you’re autistic for life. Most autistic people are autistic because of genes they got from their parents. This is why autism often runs in families. Much less commonly, other factors can play a role, but usually in combination with genes from parents. There isn’t a single ‘autism gene’. Thousands of genes combine to make a person autistic. Scientists have identified many of these genes, but they think there are still many more to find. And there is no genetic test for autism. We don't fully understand how genes combine to make a person autistic. It is complex and no simple test can give an accurate answer. Genetic testing cannot predict whether a child will be autistic or not, and it can’t be used to diagnose someone as autistic. Autism is genetic but we cannot do genetic testing and prove that you have autism. Seems like a very circular reasoning.

profsummergig

So many misconceptions in this writeup. Here's one: even if it were genetic, there could be triggering environmental factors that trigger the onset of autism (I'm just giving a hypothetical example, not making a claim here).

zug_zug

I feel like this is a willfully confusing article. So autism may involve disrupted genetics, but you may not have inherited those genes from your parents, they may be what are called "de novo mutations" which are mutations to the sperm or egg cells in the parent. This is evidenced by autism being more prevalent when the parents are older and those mutations are more common. Also it clearly must be to some degree mutations if you believe the rates are going up, which even the government is no longer disputing (though that may not be conclusive proof, to me it seems evidence leans to more likely than not currently). De novo mutations can also be caused by environmental factors, this is very well established and called "genotoxicity"[1] and certainly some people have been exposed to known genotoxic chemicals to varying degrees over time (formaldehyde) and who knows what undiscovered ones there are, newer standards of pesticide testing are starting to look for reproductive health effects but many chemicals that have been in use for a long time haven't been held to the highest standard. Another reason you might think it would be "de novo" mutations is that this could be any sorts of random errors in the genome. If autism is an umbrella label for various genome errors (which it very well may be, since it correlates with other conditions very often), that may explain why it's so hard to pin down a few genes and why symptom expression varies so drastically. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotoxicity

erelong

"They think" autism is genetic and that would be fine as a title, but they have not proven it is (only or even mostly) genetic > We don't fully understand how genes combine to make a person autistic.

threethirtytwo

If you read the article it says they don’t know what genes influences autism. That means they don’t know. They established correlation but not causation. Could be the causative factor is environmental and genes simply makes a person more vulnerable to that causative factor.

LoganDark

I would encourage anyone interested in autism to take a look at this paper, "Decomposition of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism reveals underlying genetic programs": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02224-z It's, I believe, the peer-reviewed version of this preprint from a couple years ago, "Decomposition of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism reveals distinct and coherent genetic programs": https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.15.24312078v... Essentially, there are four types of autism! I think they deserve to be known more individually rather than having only one "autistic spectrum". Ever since seeing the preprint I've practiced telling the different types apart, it's been very interesting.

treebeard901

It's an evolutionary trait that is in response to increasing use of electronics and computers. As being good with technology is a larger part of survival of the fittest, the autism traits will only increase along with it.