What is Autism? The Crohn’s — Autism Connection.

In the last 6 years spent researching Crohn’s disease I have come across peer-reviewed medical research connecting inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis — and autism.  Interestingly, it seems as if children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are more likely than their peers to also have formal diagnoses and prescriptions to treat IBD.  Possibly, the diseased bowel of IBD sufferers lets through neurotoxins that poison the brain causing autism and ASD.

Another study suggests that mothers with autoimmune disease disproportionately produce offspring with ASD, specifically autistic male offspring, while female fetuses of autoimmune mothers die.  The idea there appears to be that autoimmune mothers produce anti-brain antibodies that attack the proteins in the brains of the developing fetus; for some reason, the male fetuses live and are born brain-damaged (read: autistic) while the female fetuses of autoimmune mothers are spontaneously aborted.  Of course, female autistics and ASD sufferers do exist, but where do they come from?  Not from autoimmune mothers apparently.  This in-utero brain damage is a similar (but not identical) mechanism to that which is thought to cause brain damage from neurotoxins poisioning the brains of bowel-compromised IBD patients.  And even though female fetuses are normally hardier than males, according to the linked study, female fetuses that are poisoned this way tend not to survive.

It has also been suggested, but is impossible to prove, that autistic behaviors somehow contribute to development of IBD through “picky eating” or other actions that alter the diet or other environmental factors of autistic children compared to their peers.

It is difficult to draw conclusions from the evidence that IBD and ASD are correlated, but it provides good food for thought.  And in the food-for-thought vein, for those who are interested, I would like to suggest another avenue of inquiry: the possibility of a shared characteristic and common denominator of IBD and ASD as diseases of malabsorption.  Specifically, that IBD prevents absorption and assimilation of nutrients from food, while ASD prevents absorption and assimilation of social and developmental norms.

For those who are interested in what is known and/or knowable about autism and the correlation between IBD and ASD, you may wish to stop reading here and start Googling.  For my purposes, I wish to postulate the following extremely offensive and decidedly original idea for those who are interested in that, and while there is certainly room for improvement and/or expounding, the following is as fleshed-out as I am currently able to offer.

To reiterate, while the “leaky gut” and resulting Crohn’s-related brain damage hypothesis are mere speculation, we know that in the case of IBD, the diseased bowel is incapable of properly digesting and assimilating nutrients from food where IBD sufferers are often malnourished and require supplements, special or restricted diets or even tube-feeding or intravenous nutrition to prevent or reverse malnutrition, wasting and starvation.  Could autism be similarly seen as a disease of social malabsorption, where people on the autism spectrum seem rather impervious to social dictates and are unable to comply with established social and developmental norms even in the face of severe punishment for their deviance?  Yes, I think autism can in fact be reasonably seen as a deficit of socialization and I do not think that observation in itself is very controversial at all.  But let’s go further.

Here, I would also suggest that male autistics, being unable to absorb and assimilate the social dictates of their culture, are basically the developmental runts and social deviants we observe them to be because males in general have no internal moral code or developmental path and absolutely rely on social dictates including laws and other norms to modify and direct their socialization and development.  And that this male lack is evident especially when compared to the rather obvious internal moral code and developmental path possessed by girls, including ASD girls.  And that is the offensive part of my working theory, even though radical feminists have been observing and discussing that aspect of maleness (and femaleness) for decades by now and have yet to be proven wrong.  Clearly, males make social norms, including but not limited to allegedly generally-applicable criminal and civil laws to police themselves and male behavior specifically where females simply do not seem prone to violating others either criminally or civilly in the first place.

And if males in general have no internal moral code or developmental path, and if autistic males in particular are unable to absorb social and developmental cues and norms from their environment, that means autistic males would be unable to get these things from anywhere, and this is in fact what we see — nothing seems to help and male autistics are frequently severely disabled from their autism both socially and developmentally, especially when compared to ASD girls.

Whereas ASD girls are similarly unable to absorb and assimilate social and developmental norms from their environment, but considering that social and developmental norms in a female-hating patriarchal culture dictate that girls be (for example) stupid, boring, deferential, petty, and whatnot, it seems as if ASD girls could simply turn out to be interesting (and moral, and developed) people, especially if females in general do possess an internal moral code and developmental path and do not require external guidance and policing as males do.  Is this in fact what we see in ASD girls?  I think it is, and the above-linked article illustrates the differences between ASD girls and boys where ASD boys are frequently extremely socially and developmentally disabled and ASD girls almost exclusively are not.  This is in fact evidence that females are guided internally and males are not.  Of course it is only evidence and not proof.  But let’s go further.

In my research into Crohn’s and other autoimmune diseases, I have seen it suggested that autism is actually an autoimmune disease in itself, and that autoimmune diseases (including autism) are caused by environmental pollution including man-made radioactive contamination.  This pollution hypothesis seems to be rather accepted in fact although the exact mechanism of injury has not been identified as yet (see the internal links in the above-linked article).  I proposed in that article that autoimmune diseases are not in fact the body going haywire and attacking healthy tissue, but rather that our current state of extreme environmental toxicity has caused our tissues to not be healthy at all, and that our immune systems are attacking “us” because we are in fact thoroughly diseased at this point perhaps due to radiation in particular.  And interestingly, in the case of Crohn’s specifically, as a disease of malabsorption, if our bodies are increasingly preventing the uptake of nutrients (and pollutants) from our food, that would seem to be adaptive rather than pathological.

And so would autism seem to be adaptive rather than pathological, if our social norms have gotten to the point that this kind of extreme environmental abuse, pollution and toxicity has been allowed to happen in the first place.  Do you see what I am saying?  Operating on the assumption that bodies and minds do not in fact “just go haywire” and that bodies and minds do what they are intended to do, I have to assume that autism, like Crohn’s, is probably either protective, adaptive or both and that is the best I have been able to come up with as to why people particularly in so-called developed countries would be suddenly unable to absorb the extremely sick norms of their culture — because those norms are killing us, including human habitat and the entire natural world.  And for the past 70 years, for which time we have been living in a post-nuclear world full of man-made nuclear contamination that none of us can escape, autoimmune diseases, including Crohn’s disease, have become rampant especially among women.

Autism has become rampant as well, mostly affecting males, but if males are biologically and socially redundant (and they are) we needn’t even consider male autism to consider what autism means — perhaps the most only important facet of autism is female autism, where females are increasingly unable to absorb the stunting and disabling social norms of the necrophilic culture that created man-made nuclear in the first place and where socially-deviant females, driven by their innately female internal social and developmental cues that are observably biophilic, are humanity’s last, best and only hope to survive.*

Is that what autism is, and is that what Crohn’s and autism have in common — are they both autoimmune diseases caused by environmental pollution?  Furthermore, could they even be adaptive responses to prevent absorbing (essentially) environmental and social toxins?  I don’t know, but the connection, I think, is there to be made — one of possibly many connections between Crohn’s and autism, where the fact that there is a connection, some kind of connection, is becoming increasingly accepted (even though most autoimmune patients are female, and most autistics are male).  << Pay attention to the parenthetical there, it seems important.

*If we must consider the males, and I do not think that’s required because redundant, I suppose the significance of male autism could be to get large numbers of males the hell out of the way (and maybe even to stop them reproducing) and the sheer number of helmet-wearing male autistics who literally cannot function above the social and developmental level of toddlers would seem to be consistent with that, although the number of less-disabled male autistics in lucrative and influential STEM occupations (including nuclear!) might cancel any such social, environmental and reproductive benefits out.  But again, male autistics really may be beside the point.