I've been hearing lately more and more about another unproven cause of autism.  

Since the vaccine-link was discredited, it seems people are once more grasping at straws, and this latest one is about how a person's smoking may cause autism in their children.  Not side-stream smoke, but that the chemicals in the cigarettes may damage the individual's DNA and cause them to have autistic offspring.  

Personally, I think it's a load of old dingoes kidneys, but I've known people who swear that's the reason for the rise in autism, because more and more people are smoking.  

What do others think of this?  Did/do your parents smoke?  For the record, mine never did.  

Alison

Mom never did, so did Dad....

Both my parents smoked. My father smoked 2 packs a day before I was born. My mother didn't smoke when she was pregnant. My father quit when I was a baby, my mother quit when I was a toddler.

Fewer and fewer people are smoking in the USA, and, to hear the scare-mongers tell it we're up to our umbilici in autistic babies. Both my parents smoked like chimneys, drank like fishes, swore like navvies (I hope I'm using that word right; "dingoes kidneys" inspired me), and my father brought home mercury for me to play with (you can rub mercury on a cent and pass it as a dime). Damn! I think you can catch autism from anything!
Just feeling my happy aspieness this fine morning.

Surely fewer people smoke now than in previous generations, and smoking in pregnancy is much less common than it was.

Neither.  Ever.

When one cash scam fails, you start another.

So the next (expensive, of course) "therapy" can be implemented, for example...

But as there is no clear etiology for AS and no clear confirmation of its genetic origins (this is the current PoV among French specialists, your information may be different), people can jump in with nearly anything they will think of...  

This post was last modified: 01-18-2011 08:37 PM by ScottishWildcat.

Mine do, unsure if they did, but probably.

Heh morty, you must be an old fart, playing around with Hg like that...fun stuff isn't it?
There is another near trick you can pull with it too, albeit insanely destructive in the right/wrong hands.

Simply allow some metallic Hg to come into contact with, and remain in contact with an object made of aluminium, aluminium is incredibly reactive, surprisingly, the only reason it doesn't crumble away to powder in the air, is that it almost immediately forms a thin surface layer of oxide (Al2O3) which protects it from further attack.

Amalgamation with mercury destroys that passivating surface film, allowing air to get to it and slowly eat away at it until the entire lot crumbles (bear in mind the result is to a degree, toxic waste, and has to be dumped as such, although one doesn't need much Hg to pull this one off)

Gallium though, or gallium alloys, as some remain liquid at a wider temperature range than pure Ga, will do so far more effectively, with the advantage that gallium isn't highly toxic. Wets metal (and glass), better than Hg will, and with a smear here and there can be used to destroy even quite large aluminium objects/structures.

I am jealous of your knowledge of Chemistry.

Its an autie thing really.

Helpful too, when one is on a really crappy income, to have some skills to fall back on.

I may have used to wrong word... Envy would have been more appropriate.

My special interests is / was neurobiology but I was also quite interested in microbiology, chemistry and physics. ah! the past...

None of them have been of any real use though except for teaching teachers

Cognitive neuroscience is my area of interest really, although biochem also, and along with it, org.chem, botany, mycology.

Going to be teaching myself the basics of genetic engineering when I have time also, although to be able to learn that properly, I need to finish work on a nootropic agent I am part-way through preparing.

I hope you aren't planning on using an aluminium-mercury amalgam ie as a reducing agent from imine to amine. Its toxic and there are better ones available.

My mother used to smoke, although supposedly not when she was pregnant with me.  It would really surprise me if smoking causes autism for the reasons that are cited here, since the DNA would have to be mutated in the reproductive system for it to be passed on to the offspring, and the most severe damage caused by tobacco is generally in the lungs.