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Asked by hannahh1011 to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 19 Jun 2013.
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Christina Pagel answered on 19 Jun 2013:
Hi Hannah,
Autism isn’t 100% genetic, but it definitely has a genetic element to it (so that it tends to reappear in families)… They think that genes that make autism more likely might have survived (from an evolutionary point of view) because people with some autistic traits (but who aren’t autistic) often do really well in life because they tend to be very intelligent, focused and analytical.
what other factors might trigger or cause autism is still hotly debated!
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Steven Gardner answered on 20 Jun 2013:
Yeah people don’t really know what causes autism, one thing we know definitely doesn’t though is being vaccinated. That hoax was the result of fictitious and unethical research and has been proven wrong many times. So if you see that written anywhere, don’t believe it!
Comments
hannahh1011 commented on :
Thank you both!
spacenut1982 commented on :
Even if it was genetic you would need to “get” the recessive gene, scientists work out the probability of people getting it by what they call “punnet squares” which is just a table with different letters depending on what gene it is, a recessive gene is represented by a lowercase, dominant by an uppercase, so for example to get whatever if is you may need to get say both recessive genes ( this would be represented as to lowercase letters e.g bb) they then work out the number of possible combinations, then the probability of getting the disease or condition, sorry if that was a little confusing, you can view a proper explanation here
hannahh1011 commented on :
Thank you, this helped!