This is fascinating, but (it's important to point out) still very much preliminary even for horses, and then applying any conclusions about foals to autism in human babies is another huge leap that may not pan out into useful information.

These kinds of articles bother me, not because I think the research isn't worthwhile -- it absolutely is! -- but article authors rarely tread lightly around the implications of these things on readers, and they need to.

There's a pretty strong movement out there for purely natural childbirth -- no c-sections except when desperately needed, home births if at all possible, no pain meds (in particular, no epidurals), midwives instead of doctors, crouching or hands-and-knees birth position instead of flat-on-the-back, no bottle/formula feeding whatsoever, etc..

There's a lot in here that's fairly well-supported, rationally and scientifically; but if I continue the list it commonly runs into "no vaccinations" and sometimes really dangerous choices, like treating potentially life-threatening complications with homeopathy instead of saying "time to call the ambulance".

There's a kernel of truth inside the distrust of highly-medicalized childbirth; see the bloody history of bad or fatal "best practices" from well-meaning scientists and doctors who didn't know what they didn't know.

But I'm very wary of feeding that distrust with non-information like this; it's too easy to jump to blaming autism on mothers who accepted (or requested) c-sections. Even though Brazil, for example, with a 46% c-section rate, doesn't seem to be overwhelmed with autism....

> There's a lot in here that's fairly well-supported, rationally and scientifically; but if I continue the list it commonly runs into "no vaccinations" and sometimes really dangerous choices, like treating potentially life-threatening complications with homeopathy instead of saying "time to call the ambulance".

It's called crank magnetism: Someone who believes one insane thing tends to believe others, as well.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crank_magnetism

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/06/28/crank-magnetism...

> Consistency be damned, they just want to see science with egg on its face so they can prove that they are being persecuted.

This doesn't feel like an accurate label, though.

The problem is that the "standard" medical childbirth has flaws that are only being addressed in a haphazard way, only in some places.

The "flat on her back" position is actually far from optimal for the mother (...it's optimal for the doctor to have a clear view; that's the reason). But it can still work; it's not a disastrous error.

There really are plenty of unneeded c-sections out there -- especially as the active doctor nears the end of his/her shift ("well, let's wrap this up!"). And a c-section is major abdominal surgery, so it poses a risk of complications that's non-negligible... but it's a quick, well-known procedure, so it's easier to deal with (for the doctors) than a prolonged labor that may require them to come running unexpectedly. And the surgery risk isn't disastrous, of course; I'm not sure the overall risk is really different from a vaginal birth. But a vaginal birth can go wrong in a wider variety of ways, so the doctors will generally prefer birth by surgery.

Breast-feeding vs. formula feeding has a lot of research around it as well; but it's still only partially understood. Breast milk contains the mother's antibodies, bacteria in it determine the baby's gut flora for the rest of its life, it changes based on various factors in the mother's life, it makes a high level of skin contact with the mother automatic (and I believe there's been research showing that's important; something about cortisol levels, and brain development?) -- things no formula can provide. To make the hospital birth seem still worse: having a c-section makes it much harder to avoid using formula (since the milk doesn't start easily without the birth trigger). BUT what kind of risk is actually involved, in using formula?

Again, if you could put numbers on this stuff, I suspect the real differences in the child's life are quite small, and very much overwhelmed as influences by life experience. Even if someone has a few more illnesses as a child... maybe this will mean they stay home with their grandmother more often, and form a powerful bond that dramatically affects their entire life.

The problem is that regular people see healthcare decisions like these as binary. Right decision vs. wrong decision. They don't really understand levels of risk, and the doctor doesn't talk in those terms either. Just "do this". Or sometimes a slightly passive-aggressive "well, it's up to you".

In those terms, the new parent-to-be sees 5-6 things in a row where the advice of the well-paid professional is the wrong thing, according to pretty reasonable logic.

It's not that hard to then convince them that maybe vaccines are also not a good thing, because the ground has been laid already. And sadly, there's lots & lots written by all kinds of people trying to convince you that vaccines are dangerous.

It kind of freaks me out, honestly, but I do see how people get there. It just takes this existing distrust (partly merited), a misunderstanding of basic statistics, and a handful of examples of autistic kids who started showing symptoms somewhere around the time of the vaccinations ('cause yeah, these things happen around the same time of life...).

My wife and I opted for a home birth for a variety of reasons. In our own little anecdotal way we saw this play out. The midwives themselves were amazing, highly trained, professional, compassionate, etc. But the other couples in our pre-natal class definitely included some ((I don't have a polite word for this))

So in each session there would be discussion about some aspect of the process. As soon as something like Vitamin K shots came up we started hearing "Is this really necessary, I don't want any needles being stuck in my baby".

I am not good at not rolling my eyes

FWIW one of our main reasons for choosing homebirth was that we knew all of the very small number of people in the apartment at the time, and the common agenda held by everyone present revolved around my wife and daughter, not insurance, hospital policy, malpractice, etc.

I have plenty of similar stories.

It's been a frustrating experience; I know parents who've had really intelligent, insightful advice about nonviolent ways to raise kids, and deal with difficult situations.

But I just can't spend too much time with them, because it's hard to carry on when the topic of conversation turns to toxins, or homeopathy, or whatever.

On the other hand, I'd rather hang out with them than (for example) the woman who told a group that she wasn't even going to try nursing, because her breasts were for her husband. WTF.

You are 100% spot on with this comment. In this day and age of click-bait titles and buzzfeed articles, it is unfortunately becoming more and more prevalent.

maybe the type of people that go along with the homeopathic novac etc etc are not the type of people that give birth to autistic kids.

i find it hard to see how they can control for factors like that, in studies like this. another example being longevity and alcohol intake - where the type of people who intake more alcohol are more social.

how can you control for another more important factor, that you aren't aware of?

the researchers as you put it: "didn't know what they didn't know".

"Autism" is probably like "cancer" in that it is likely a series of pathologies with similar presentation rather than one specific disease.

It wouldn't surprise me if neurosteroids and neurohormones are involved, as they're the next frontier in psychopharmacology. They affect the brain further up the metabolic chain, so they don't have the nasty rebound effects of monkeying around with neurotransmitters directly.

> "Autism" is probably like "cancer" in that it is likely a series of pathologies

Why "probably"? What evidence is there for that one way or another?

To assume that autism is a single disorder is to get the scientific method backwards. There's no proven underlying cause, just symptoms that vary greatly from individual to individual. What evidence is there that autism is a single disorder with a single underlying cause?

I guess that's true, but Occam's Razor applies too. I'm not claiming anything either way.

This reminds me of the "rebirthing" movement, sometimes used as demonic exorcism. As a parent of an autistic child,I can certainly attest to feeling line she is possessed.

A lot of empirical data says that heavy blankets and pressure help sooth many such children, although in our case it just pisses her off...

It may be important to note that "dummy" foals display those symptoms at birth. It's my understanding that autism typically does not become apparent until months later. If birth conditions are to blame, it may be difficult to counteract their effects when those are hidden for so long.

Foals are far more developed at birth than humans. I looked up the timeline for human development, and it appears that autism starts to become apparent around (or a little after) the time that humans reach parity with the physical development of a newborn foal.

It's pretty clear that normal foals are far ahead of normal human infants in musculoskeletal terms, but they're about even in terms of breathing, nursing, digestion, etc. (And human infants are far more effective at vocalization.) The sort of comparison you make reminds of the flawed concept of "dog years": there are no linear relations here. Anyway, the most troublesome symptom of a "dummy" foal is that it doesn't nurse properly. I haven't heard that about autistic children.

To begin with, the etiology and pathogenesis of autism are still far from fully understood. There are no objective diagnostic criteria, like e.g. biomarkers. Given this state of affairs it's impossible to know if any particular animal model of autism is correct. Additionally there are plenty of reasons to be cautious about drawing far-reaching conclusions about a complex pervasive neurodevelopmental human condition based on a study of a nonhuman animal. For reasons frequently related to funding it's popular to proclaim that a finding has or soon will have great importance to the understanding of autism, especially with more funding to the reporting team.

Reminds me of Temple Grandin's hug machine [0]. I wonder if there's a connection?

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hug_machine

It also reminds me of "soothe rocking" in autistic children, which frequently involves tightly constricting the knees up against the chest with both arms, creating pressure.

This reminded me of the Swedish study that noticed a correlation (they were very clear about this!) between vinyl flooring and autism in their data:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/link-between-autis...

That was way back in 2009, and I never heard anything more about it. Searching for information in later years yields an echo chamber of stupidity, so I wonder if anyone else has heard of actual research into the topic?

I did a quick search and came up with this review: http://www.cppah.com/article/S1538-5442%2814%2900074-1/abstr...

It must be the MMR vaccine all these horses get /s

Or maybe they should go gluten free

Well I guess that explains the My Little Pony phenomenon.