Aspies For Freedom

And the genoicide begins.

I wonder if we're the last generation?

*sigh*

Sorry, I'm being fatalist. I don't mean to sound so depressing. I just hate the idea that people will do what they do when the genetic tests come back and say a kid is going to have down syndrome... go straight to the abortion clinic.

It isn't fair when innocent kids are aborted just because they're different.

The Down Syndrome is being diagnosed for years and still there are mothers who accept children with it. So, if the same practice goes with autism, it won't mean there will be no autistics at all.

Alex--yes. Some mothers would still have autistic children. Thank God for them.

According to Wikipedia, the number of women who have Down Syndrome babies rather than abort them is around 10%:
"A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated." (Here is the original reference.)

These numbers may be skewed towards a greater percentage because many women choose not to have amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling done (these two tests are both done to obtain fetal genetic material) because of the potential for fetal injury or death. These same women are often of the opinion that, "If my baby has Down syndrome, I'll carry it to term anyway; so why should I have the test in the first place if it'll endanger my child?"

If anyone has data on the number of women who do not undergo prenatal genetic testing, and on the number of Down Syndrome babies born to such women, please post it here.

Correction: The above should read,

"The number of women whose fetuses are diagnosed as having Down syndrome, who choose to have their babies rather than abort them, is around 10%."

No data on how many women choose not to have prenatal genetic testing.

Count me in as well.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na...es19m.html

Study locates possible autism gene
By Warren King
Seattle Times medical reporter

A gene that may affect a child's chances of having autism has been identified by University of Washington scientists and other members of an international research team.

In the largest genetic study ever of the disease, the team also found the area of a chromosome where another possible autism gene is located.

The discoveries further establish basic concepts about the cause of the devastating disease and offer new hope for developing treatments.

"This isn't the end, but it's a major first step. ... And it's one of the few times almost everyone in the field is trying to work together," said Gerard Schellenberg, a UW geneticist working at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Seattle and a lead scientist in the project.

More than 120 scientists from 19 countries in North America and Europe in the "Autism Genome Project" worked on the new research reported in today's online edition of the journal Nature Genetics.

The new findings "show the power of this kind of collaboration for making progress," said Geraldine Dawson, director of the UW Autism Center and also a lead investigator.

The investigators worked with nearly 1,200 families that had two or more children with autism, including 200 families mostly from the Northwest. The number of participants was unprecedented and required years of recruitment. Many came from the Northwest because the UW is very active in autism research.

Dawson said further research could identify specific genetic markers that would enable diagnosis of autism at birth. Babies could then begin treatment immediately to promote normal development of the brain.

The Autism Genome Project is a collaboration by scientists at 50 institutions. It was financed by the National Institutes of Health and Autism Speaks, a private organization that raises money for research.

People with autism have difficulty relating to others, have language deficiencies and may have significant mental impairment. Others with any of several "autism spectrum disorders" have similar difficulties in varying degrees.



In early February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new 14-state study suggested autism spectrum disorder could be present in as many as one in 150 children.

Dawson said it's believed that genetics plays a significant role in the majority of autism cases. If one child in a family has the disease, a sibling has a 5 percent risk of having it. An identical twin of someone with autism has a 60 percent chance of having all aspects of the disease and a 90 percent risk of having some of them, such as a language deficiency or problems with social interaction.

Scientists suspect 40 to 50 genes may be linked to autism, including four or five that are more likely than others to play a part in the disease.

The Autism Genome Project identified one gene, "neurexin 1," and an area of chromosome 11 with another gene, both of which were found in many of the participating families.

"These two genetic sites are the best we've seen as [possible] autism genes," Schellenberg said.

Neurexin 1 is associated with the release of glutamate, a chemical that allows brain cells to send impulses to one another. The substance plays an important role in early development of the brain and had previously been implicated in autism.

Glutamate is "critical in the development of learning and in forming memories, and if you have a disruption in the [glutamate system], you have a problem," Dawson explained.

The scientists don't know yet how the chromosome 11 region is involved in autism. Pinpointing a specific gene in the region that is linked to the disease is the object of the next phase of the research, which will begin soon.

Families participating in the recent phase will continue in the project. They spend many hours at the UW and other institutions undergoing tests and interviews.

"I am so impressed with their dedication," said Dawson, who has worked with hundreds at the UW. "They have a great commitment in wanting to understand the cause of autism and to help other families in the future through this research."

Warren King: 206-464-2247 or wking@seattletimes.com
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I'll try and get hold of the Nature Genetics paper.  I'm really curious.

The human species should never play around around with any form of genetic, even if they think it will make things "better". Genes are one of the most important things in the universe and beyond, and they want to remove them? That's stupid!

So have the so called "pro-choice" people among us changed their views to "pro-life"? Ending legalized abortion will be the only way to stop this.

I retrieved the paper and read it quickly, not carefully.  It's mighty dense.  They did a genome scan on members of over a thousand families in which at least 2 people were defined as being autistic, and they analyzed the data in various ways.  For example, distinguishing families where females had autism from ones with just males, distinguishing those of European ancestry (which was most of the families) from those not, etc. They only found one genomic region that seemed believably statistically significant--i.e. the one from chromosome 11.  The reqion they identify (11p11-13) is pretty big.  Interestingly (I looked this up separately--didn't see it discussed in the paper), the chr11 region is what's called a "gene desert", meaning that there are very few known genes mapped to that region.  They will probably have a pretty hard time narrowing down the region.  They found some other "suggestive" regions, but not really high numbers for any of them.

They described one situation (which was interesting to me) where two siblings had a deletion in one copy of a gene (neurexin 1) (Note: you inherit two copies--one from each parent) but neither parent had the deletion, suggesting something really  odd happened during those fertilizations--don't know how you'd explain this--e.g. how or why it would happen twice.  

Anyways....they don't have any clear-cut functional explanation, and the studies will have to be replicated in lots more families.  

As more information emerges about the large number of variations among the genomes of individual people it will become apparent that nobody has the "perfect" genome.  Everyone will turn out to have some deleterious variations and some advantageous variations.  There will be lots of ethical debates forthcoming, I believe.

I have to read the paper more carefully.
Callista--I'm assuming that they looked at the genetic data for both the autistic and non-autistic members of the families in their study. There are data from the "HapMap" project that give sequence variation frequencies in several populations.

Bohemian--microdeletions in chromosomes are probably a lot more common than people have previously thought. Figuring out which of these have various types of functional implications will probably take decades of research.

I saw this on CBC on Sunday. Except for the pro-cure slant to the piece, I was happy to see people finally out there debunking the other theories. However, I fear for the future. Sure, not everyone will choose to abort, but many will. I'm pro-choice in many ways, but not when it comes to aborting based on simple genes. Why don't we find a way to cure everyone with blue eyes? What has me most depressed about this is the email I recieved from my mother-in-law yesterday. She is one of the very few people supporting my self-discovery. Or, I thought she was. She believes I "have" it, but I didn't know until yesterday that she believes it's a disease. She seemed so ecstatic about the idea of genetic treatments, and a possible cure someday.

No I don't well rather I don't really care about it. I'm just stating what I believe to be a fact not taking any kind of moral stance.  I've read articles that say legalized abortion has actually decreased the crime rate today. Stating this insn't an indicator of being for or against it.

People secretly abort girls in China and India because they rather want a boy. Either because you can only have one child in China and the males are those who continue the family or because you have to give money when a daughter marry in India.

Yes this is a fact but stating it doesn't mean you are against or for abortion.