Releasing today are articles focusing on a new study that supports the hypothesis that children of a mother with diabetes 1, rheumatoid arthritis or celiac disease are three times more likely to have autism.
These conjectures first emerged in Norman Geschwind and Albert Galaburda’s Cerebral Lateralization in 1987, and papers published earlier that decade. A number of studies have been published since, some supporting, some not supporting their hypothesis that there is a connection between cerebral lateralization, testosterone levels, and specific diseases and conditions.
What strikes me is the connection between this work and the recent conclusions formed by C. W. Kuzawa at Northwestern. The connection is, ontogeny is influenced by the environment. The mother predisposed to particular hormonal states by autoimmune diseases are vulnerable to specific environmental inflences.
The missing piece is what the nineteenth century evolutionary theorists called orthogenesis, or the particular ontogenetic evolutionary trajectories that might follow these kinds of hereditary plus environmental effects. Consider that autism is an evolutionary condition. Consider what might propel such changes, dynamics other than natural selection.
