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There must be a reason?

JT

When I think about evolution, I'm a true idealist. I think, there isn't really ever a reason that something was created in nature by mistake...

So what is the point of autism? Do you think it's the next wave of evolution? Do you think we are, over time, returning our species to more sensitive ways of our paleolithic ancestry, through shere necessity? 

Parents

  • You know the sickle  cell anaemia gene is recessive? One copy of the gene doesn’t give you the disease. You need two for that. But one copy does give you a slight resistance to malaria.

    autism is probably polygenic. It’s not one gene but combinations of genes that give you autism. Intelligence is also partly genetic and polygenic and research suggest there is a significant overlap between autism genes and genes that contribute to high intelligence.

    so natural selection for intelligence is probably increasing the number of autism genes in the gene pool.

    Here’s a stupidly over simplified example. Say hyper intelligence requires the red and blue gene. And autism requires the green and blue gene. Well even if autism is negatively selected for there will still be a big positive selection on the blue gene. And the green gene won’t die out because unless the blue gene becomes almost uniform there will be plenty of non autistic green gene carriers.

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  • You know the sickle  cell anaemia gene is recessive? One copy of the gene doesn’t give you the disease. You need two for that. But one copy does give you a slight resistance to malaria.

    autism is probably polygenic. It’s not one gene but combinations of genes that give you autism. Intelligence is also partly genetic and polygenic and research suggest there is a significant overlap between autism genes and genes that contribute to high intelligence.

    so natural selection for intelligence is probably increasing the number of autism genes in the gene pool.

    Here’s a stupidly over simplified example. Say hyper intelligence requires the red and blue gene. And autism requires the green and blue gene. Well even if autism is negatively selected for there will still be a big positive selection on the blue gene. And the green gene won’t die out because unless the blue gene becomes almost uniform there will be plenty of non autistic green gene carriers.

Children
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