This has been a question and concern of mine for several years now, but despite repeated Googling it was not until today that I finally found this 2013 article: Jennifer Margulis MEDICAL MYSTERY 04.29.13 4:45 AM ET Are Ultrasounds Causing Autism in Unborn Babies? "...there is mounting evidence that overexposure to sound wavesor perhaps exposure to sound waves at a critical time during fetal developmentis to blame for the astronomic rise in neurological disorders among Americas children. In 2006, Pasko Rakic, M.D., a neuroscientist at Yale University School of Medicine, found that prenatal exposure to ultrasound waves changed the way the neurons in mice distributed themselves in the brain. Rakic and his team do not fully understand what effect the brain cell migratory alteration might have on brain development and intelligence, but they noticed, rather alarmingly, that a smaller percentage of cells migrated to the upper cortical layers of the mouse brain and a larger percentage to the lower layers and white matter. At first reluctant to publish these results because they were preliminary and might discourage pregnant women from accepting medically necessary ultrasounds (the mice studies are part of a years-long double-blind experiment that is testing the effects of ultrasound on primate brains), Rakic decided the findings were too significant to ignore and concluded that all nonmedical use of ultrasound on pregnant women should be avoided. We should be using the same care with ultrasound as with X-rays, Rakic cautioned. Manuel Casanova, a neurologist who holds an endowed chair at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, is one medical doctor who is listening. Casanova contends that Rakics mice research helps confirm a disturbing hypothesis that he and his colleagues have been testing for the last three years: that ultrasound exposure is the main environmental factor contributing to the exponential rise in autism. " ... "Ultrasound waves, Casanova explains, are a form of energy known to deform cell membranes. In fact, in the early 1990s the FDA approved the use of ultrasound to treat bone fractures because ultrasound increases cell division. Some cells in the human body are more sensitive than others. Among the most sensitive cells? Those stem cells in the brain that divide and migrate. Casanovas hypothesis: Prolonged or inappropriate ultrasound exposure may actually trigger these cells to divide, migrate, and form too many minicolumns. They divide when theyre not supposed to and there are no inhibitory cells to contain them." The article goes on to explain how the difference in how and how many cells migrate could lead to many neurological abnormalities. ... "The ultrasounds done on pregnant women today use sound waves with eight times the intensity used before 1991. This time period roughly coincides with the alarming increase in the incidence of autism within our population." (all boldface mine) If you know anyone that's pregnant you may want to warn them about this. The full article includes more explanation regarding the neurology involved as well as the low level of training of many who utlize the ultrasound technology, and the (often financially-based) pressures on women to submit to the technology. http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/a...rasounds-causing-autism-in-unborn-babies.html I have found previous references to the mouse study, but they lacked the detail in this article. There are many financial and legal implications of this information, which may explain why it is getting obscured so easily, much as the concerns around cigarette smoking once were.
You know, it is very likely this theory is true, as ultrasound has already been proven to affect the brains in mice. Do you all think it is just fine and hunky dory to subject almost all children in our country to this procedure even if there is no real need for it? The medical profession always lags behind on issues like this. For years, pregnant women were told a few drinks a day wouldn't hurt the unborn. Then they finally admitted that there was a fetal alcohol syndrome. IMO they will keep quiet about this until the worst affected kids are too old to sue.
I knew I remembered replying to a thread on this same subject. . .didn't realize it was the same poster. http://www.politicalforum.com/member.php?u=61523 The original study not only doesn't cite anything to do with autism, it doesn't even cite any verifiable behavioral effects in mice in which they performed prolonged exposure to ultrasound waves.
Well before one can even raise the question one should have actual proof of its truth. Nothing there constitutes anything remotely resembling proof of the contention that it does more than discomfit rodents
Do we know what causes autism? Nope. Do we know what autism is? Kinda. Do we still have a long way to go before we figure it all out? Probably. Should we change our behavior now based on speculation? That depends on the risk. How many tens of thousands of children have had treatable conditions diagnosed and even mitigated in utero due to this technology? Should we toss them to chance to mitigate the strange idea that compression waves (sound) cause autism? Nah. I don't think so.
Anyone with a scientific background should be capable of understanding the significance of the mouse study. Anything that can change the way neurons are organized in the brain of anything has a good deal of potential to do the same in humans. Mice are often used in studies where it is unethical to use humans. In this case, though, humans are being unwittingly used without their consent as they are unborn at the time of exposure. They are not warning anyone about this either because they have not read the study or do not wish to believe it. The implications are obvious to anyone that understands the science.
I love when someone makes sanctimonious statements about science they haven't read, barely understand, and cannot competently support. This specific study, like all studies, are but a drop of water in an ocean of information. If you simply extract a drop from the ocean, that does not give comprehension of what the entire ocean is like, or how that ocean functions. The significance of this study is but a tiny step along a long journey of discovery, and I can't say for sure if it's a step forward, or a step backward. No one person can. That, indeed, is the purpose of science. Now I read this study. You can read it here: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full#T1 Since you failed to link it. Pay close attention to their data. Not only did they track fewer cells in their controls which can effect their results, but they found that the effect was not significant at all in exposures that are typical to a prenatal exam. It's not until they add in exposures as much as 12 - 35 minute sessions in 2 days that they are able to generate a significant p value. 7 hours of exposure over 2 days is a highly unlikely treatment scenario to say the least. This is somewhat akin to submersing a baby in milk for a day and coming to the conclusion that milk is bad for you. Natural human biological process changes the way neurons are organized. The conclusion of this study is: "The effect appears very minor when exposure rates are low. We can't control for the effect that the stress of the test itself could have an effect in the mothers. We don't know the mechanics of the effect but we have some guesses, the scale difference in human anatomy and mouse anatomy could play a role, and finally: So I suggest you work a little harder to understand the science. Because while the implications might be obvious to someone that understands the science, you're obviously leaping to conclusions that aren't supported by the science.
If anything I'd postulate that bad diets, lack of exercise, and too much time spent playing video games or watching TV contributes to a rise in mental illness among today's youth. People aren't biologically developed for sitting on their butts most of the day taking in massive amounts of digital over-stimulation, and binging on processed foods like Cheetos and sodas - for most of history people have been physically and socially active in an in-person environment, and biologically people haven't changed very much on the evolutionary timeline from 50,000 years ago,despite radical environmental changes. Much as tigers which are removed for the wild and placed in tiny zoo cages are more unhappy and dysfunctional, humans which are forced into unnatural environments which they aren't biologically adapted to thrive in will be less functional as well. More Facebook use correlates with higher levels of depression for example
Retained (uninhibited) primitive sensory reflexes can cause all kinds of developmental issues that we see diagnosed as spectrum disorders. Some of these neuro developmental delays can be put back on track with appropriate therapies, and there's lot of evidence based support for the idea that these issues can related to stress, diet, exercise, environment, etc, so I don't think you're that far off base, Spacecricket.
http://www.brainbalancecenters.com/blog/2014/09/retained-primitive-reflexes-sign-brain-imbalance/ Certainly fetal development could play a role in the development of autism, (we don't know all the factors that play a role in autism) but we do have a good deal of study of the symptoms and mitigation of those symptoms.
Why are we seeing more cases of autism? 2 reasons really better diagnostic tools and to there's nothing quite like a new psychological disorder that is poorly understood and often poorly defined for garnering a crap load of the sort of diagnoses that run along the line of: Well I don't know what his/her problem is but it seems sort of like this.
Yes. If you change the definition of autism to something much more broader than it used to be, then guess what? More cases of autism. Autism is now some catch-all category that includes autism and many other disorders that weren't given a name until it was thrown into this category.
Ironically in my attempt to research the paper discussed in this thread I found numerous papers that study ultrasonic communication in mice, including one that finds that mice with reduced ultrasonic vocalizations tend to show spectrum behaviors. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047712/ So mice that are exposed to high doses and durations of ultrasound show signs of altered neuron transport, but mice with reduced capacity to create ultrasound show signs of spectrum disorders. Hows that for the exact opposite?
I still consider it a viable hypothesis, and one that should be checked out. It would be quite simple to quantify the amount of ultrasound a group of infants received and compare that to the rates of autism. I believe there is an obvious legal and financial motivation in the medical field not to do this.
Yes ultra sound is the cause of Autism... Forget the billions of tons of toxins we have pumped into our environment over the past hundred years, forget the mercury, forget the lead, forget the pesticides and the herbicides, forget the DDT, forget the atomic fallout from nuclear testing and power plant leaks, forget the poisons in the water and in the food, forget the massive increase in infant vaccinations laced with mercury preservatives, forget all the effects these poisons have on our DNA....... the real cause of Autism is Ultra Sound..... We are a nation of idiots.
It never existed except in the minds of idiots. There was a theory that the mercury in vaccinations in addition to the heavy metal poisoning of a hundred years of lead in gasoline and mercury emission's from coal burning power plants, was too much for infants and that their brain development was altered by the bombardment of heavy metals from several sources including vaccinations. But that theory went right over the heads of the knuckle dragging masses.
IMHO, the real cause of the rise of autism is the easier standard by which autism is diagnosed today, compared to 25 years ago. When I was taking special education classes as part of my master's in education in 1990, pretty much autistic people were so badly disabled, that they could not communicate with the outside world. Most were either institutionalized, or pretty close to being institutionalized. SInce then, we have much milder disabilities being considered as part of the spectrum, namely Asperger's syndrome. Most Asperger's kids, 30 years ago, would have been labeled wierd, but not considered to have a disability or disorder. Now they are autistic. Here is the timeline for Autism. The rise of autism parallels the widening of the "autistic spectrum" and the giving of federal funds to treat autism. http://www.parents.com/health/autism/history-of-autism/ - - - Updated - - - 1987, they changed the definition. 1991, schools recognized autism as a special education category. That said, I could see how ultrasound could be related to autism. It could be that kids with genetic tendencies towards autism have bad reactions to ultrasound, which could exacerbate the autism. I know that a lot of autistic kids have problems with sensory overload, and often wear headphones to calm down.
