The geneticist feels for parents who seek causes for their children’s autism in vaccinations. Unfortunately, no evidence yet supports the theory.

Question: Do you believe that rnenvironmental factors such asrnvaccines increase the autism rate?

Michael Wigler: Well, any genetic disorder rnis an interactionrnwith the environment.  So, I don’trnexclude environment.  I just don’trnsee yet any strong evidence for a particular environmental factor.  I think that one could do studies.  Forrn example, one could go to third world countries and do a study and ask rnis the rate of autism there the same asrnit is in the developed countries. rnNo one has done a study, that I know of, of that type, but it rncertainlyrncould be done.  That would answerrnthat question. 

But certainly anything to have to do with the rndevelopment ofrnan organism has an environmental component to it, but you can only studyrn thatrnwhen there’s some evidence which enables you to isolate that rnenvironmentalrncomponent.  I think the vaccinernstudies have been now largely discredited.  They rntook mercury out of the vaccines and the rates ofrnautism didn’t change.  And now ofrnthe 12 authors of the original paper that got some people very excited, Irn thinkrn11 of those 12 authors have now withdrawn their backing for that paper rnand thernmethods used in that paper are really in doubt.  

So, I don’t take it as there being any evidence rnthatrnvaccines are such an environmental factor.  It’s rnunfortunate that at the age at which parents begin tornrecognize autism in their children often correlates with the age at rnwhich theyrnreceive vaccinations.  That’s anrnunfortunate thing. 

Therern is arnportion of autism, probably the majority of autism that you can detect rnit veryrnearly once the child is... almost after the child is born. rn Many parents of autistic children sayrnthey could tell very early on that there was something wrong with theirrnchild.  There are about a quarterrnof the cases of autism where it looks like the child, in the parents’ rnopinion,rnhas been developing normally and then, to their mind, suddenly goes off rncourse.  And I think at least five percent ofrncases, it’s been very well documented that actually, a child has begun rnto loserngains that they have made.  So,rnthere is this component that’s very tragic when a parent feels relieved rnthatrnthey’ve gotten through, and I think every parent who has a child suffersrn throughrnnightmares that, you know, hoping that their child will be healthy and rnthey give birth to a healthy child and then at age two or three, the rnchild suddenlyrnstops developing.  That’s a tragedyrnof horrendous proportions, and it’s natural for the parents of such rnchildren tornlook around for the possible causes; something external. 

However, it should be borne in mind that our brainsrncontinuously are developing at that age, and it is well-known that therern arerngenetic defects whose onsets can occur at almost any particular age.  For example, there is a class ofrndisorders that are called Storage Disorders where the child develops rnnormally,rnbut because of the buildup of some compound due to the faulty metabolismrn ofrnsome essential thing that they eat every day, builds up to a point and rnthenrnbegins to poison the brain.  And inrnthese cases, the child will develop normally up to a certain age, and rnthen willrnoften regress and sometimes will die. rnSo, the idea that you can’t have sudden onset of an illness when rnthernchild is two or three is just wrong. 

If there were a clear environmental signal, for rnexample,rnsonograms, or too much television, or vaccinations, that would be rnsomethingrnthat one could study, but in the absence of evidence for that, you have rnto askrnyourself, well what should we be looking for?  Shouldrn it be the plastic in bottles?  And I don’t think rnwe can do that in ourrnculture.  I don’t think we can lookrnfor these possible environmental insults. rnThere are just far too many. rnBut if you go to a place like Nepal, or Mongolia, or someplace rnwhosernenvironment is completely different, they don’t have television, they rnstillrnhave grandmothers raising the children, they don’t get sonograms.  You could begin to tease out and dornwhat epidemiologists do.  They gornand do cultural comparisons.  So,rnfor example, cultural comparisons have told us the incidences of breast rncancerrnin Japan is one-third the rate of the incidences of breast cancer in rnAmerica,rnand when Japanese women grow up in America, their rate of breast cancer rnis thernsame is American women.  Okay.  Yourn can say, the environment possiblyrnincluding culture in some way, because the rate, or the age on which yournundergo puberty is relevant to breast cancer.  Hasrn a study like that been done for autism?  No.  That’s where you would start.  Andrn none of that’s been done as far as I know.

Recorded April 12, 2010