Comments on: Genetics and Environment (And GMOs)

By: Debra

Debra — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:43:37 +0000

Have you reflected on the possibility that framing this debate in terms of external poisons is another manifestation of Cartesian dualism ?
“Environmental factors” does not simply mean the QUANTIFIABLE, VISIBLE, external causes, it also means the intangible processes that cannot be measured, or evaluated in any scientific manner. For which the very idea of “proof” is not appropriate.
And it is not a question of either/or. Not psychological (what the hell does that mean, anyway, when you read Carnegie’s example of the guy who died of cold in a refrigerator wagon whose refrigeration system was not working…) OR physical.
Phrasing in the either/or manner reflects the Cartesian mind/body dualism which is taking our civilization down.
I find it very sad how much American society is desperately obsessed with “poisons”.
(Please note that LIKE FREUD, I do not discount the influence of mercury, or other nasty products of civilization that we constantly congratulate ourselves on knowing how to/being able to “create”. But our cheap relief in being able to point a finger at something measurable quickly blots out our consciousness that there might be other shadowy forces at work that we do not, and can not understand. The… “psychological” that gets shoved under the rug as fast as it appears.)
If American society goes down, it will succumb to… PARANOIA before anything else.
The art of TAKING YOURSELF DOWN…
When you have no other viable enemies (and no more faith in yourself…) you become your own worst enemy.
This behavior seems to dominate the American ethos, and has for a long time now.
Is it a form of retribution for the…evils of colonization ?
Talion law in its most grisly form ? Maybe.
Speaking as someone who has a shred of experience on this subject, I think that we will never “know” what “causes” “madness”.
Knowing what causes madness is about on the same plane as being able to prove or disprove the existence of God.
At its most basic level, madness is what confronts the social body with what it considers to be alien to it/us.
Unacceptable. Not human. What WE don’t want to be/become.
A frontier. A line that separates some of us from the others.
And the frontier keeps shifting all the time… It is very, very present in the U.S. at this time.
American medecine/psychiatry, etc has shrunk to become ridiculously reductionist. (In the 70′s, my Daddy was a sophisticated M.D. He would have been horrified to “learn” what is passing for “proven science” these days in the States.)
While empire keeps mushrooming ?
Maybe there is some relationship there…

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 01 May 2012 07:28:27 +0000

Unfortunately, someone I know who has an autistic child has shown no interest in the physical (environmental toxification) roots of it or in potential dietary mitigation of the symptoms.

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 01 May 2012 07:26:10 +0000

Those are contributing factors as well, for many diseases. It all contributes to eroding our physical and mental health. But there’s ample evidence that the primary environmental factors, which are therefore the primary cause of the manifestation of the condition, are physical poisons.

By: Tao Jonesing

Tao Jonesing — Tue, 01 May 2012 02:28:13 +0000

autism is a form of asociality

Uh, no. You seem tp assume that autism is purely psychological, but in many (if not most or all) cases it has physiological origins. The case made in Mark’s book is that mercury is a toxin that induces psychological effects, and one illustration of this phenomenon is the so-called madness caused by syphilis. They argue that the use of mercury to treat syphilis is what caused the madness, not the disease itself.

By: Debra

Debra — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:19:52 +0000

What I find fascinating is how we manage to forget what we’ve known for ages from one generation to the next… Pretty depressing, when you come to think of it..
Is it because “modern” man is so tuned into the Internet, and hopping around in fast cars, and/or in jet planes that he doesn’t have the time to learn what was already known under Louis XIV (re environmental factors working together synchronically with genetic ones)… ?
For autism…
While lots of people may be focusing on vaccines, and toxins, a little tour of a local bus will show you lots of young mothers with babies in strollers, mothers whose eyes are trained on their cell phones while junior stares vacantly into space…little relation, little physical contact, for example.
That kind of activity doesn’t exactly make for warm, loving, physical human beings… Lots of those young mothers are only reproducing what they already received from THEIR mothers, too. (And I’m not pointing any fingers, either.)
Personally, speaking as someone who would probably be diagnosed with a mild form of autism in that land of milk of honey where you’re living, that land where people are slotted off into little boxes at birth, with corresponding pills to swallow, I think that as a species we are becoming more asocial all the time.
After all… autism is a form of asociality. Withdrawing from relationships with other human beings.
“We” are less and less gifted at relationships, and living WITH other people with each day that passes.
That doesn’t bother me a lot…I prefer my own company to most of the company I see around me at this time.
Another of my favorite hypotheses : when you study rat colonies, there is a certain critical population mass at which their societies begin to implode : delinquance and crime explode, and antisocial behavior mushrooms. Just like.. US ?
Given our concentration in the megapoles, and the lack of sensory stimulation we are currently cultivating, autism is a somewhat.. logical MASS outcome.
A social/political phenomenon, more than a medical one.
We are very neotonic as a species. Influenceable, and malleable.
And we are definitely our own worst enemies at this time…

By: Tao Jonesing

Tao Jonesing — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:01:41 +0000

Specifically, the use of mercury in industry and in vaccines.

By: Russ

Russ — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:06:09 +0000

By man-made, meaning from diet, vaccines, and similar things?

By: Tao Jonesing

Tao Jonesing — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:34:50 +0000

A friend of mine is very active in asserting that autism is man-made. He runs a blog http://www.ageofautism.com/ and wrote a book about it that I found pretty compelling:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Autism-Medicine-Man-Made/dp/B0055X6B9G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335753012&sr=8-1