Published on 12, July, 2020
This unusual Psychology Today blog caught my attention:https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201709/can-vaccinations-cause-autism-in-dogs
"The fear that vaccines might cause autism started in 1998 in a study conducted by a British physician, Dr. Andrew Wakefield. In it he claimed that he had evidence which showed a link between autism and the widely used measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. His study was later determined to be fraudulent and was retracted by the journal that published it. Furthermore, as a consequence of this, Wakefield was stripped of his right to practice medicine in the United Kingdom. Since that time, 17 studies in 7 different countries, resulted in the gathering data from hundreds of thousands of children. All of these studies have shown that those receiving such vaccines were not more likely to develop autism than those who haven't received them." Quote from Stanley Coren PHD found in the 'Psychology Today' article, which is named in the original post (link above.)
It is not obvious to me why you have quoted the above text.
Hi Caretwo,
I am sorry! You are quite right, I should have added a note to explain myself better.
Your post grabbed my attention and I found the article very interesting. I pinged the quote from the article as a reply as, in my mind, I thought it had answered the title question of your post, i.e. Do vaccinations cause Autism in dogs. But I realise now that I did not communicate or explain this very well at all. Sorry.
So, I hope to now better explain my self; I don't personally believe that vaccines cause Autism, in dogs or humans. Which is why I replied by posting the quote from the article that supports this.
However, I do have an entirely open mind as to whether dogs (or any other animal) can be ND.
Really interesting discussion/post, thank you.
I am really hoping and looking forward to other peoples views on whether animals can be ND and how/why.
Do you believe animals can be ND?
Wow Oktanol,
That research is really great! Thank you for posting it.
It makes total sense to me that a great way of researching diversity would be to use an inherently and deeply social creature, such as Bees, who seemingly rely heavily on cooperation and a 'shared way of life' in order to survive.
So, if I have understood the research correctly, a genetic signature has been identified which relates to sociability, the ability to form sociological bonds, and that this gene has been found to be diverse/different in some of the Bees in the study?
That makes sense to me as I have always understood that humans are born with the inherent 'intentionality to relate' to one another; which is supportive too of our sociability being biologically driven. And therefore, if it is biological, there must (surely) always be room for diversity to occur in nature as ‘nature’ constantly diversifies in order to survive (Darwin.)
Which may all suggest that Neurodiversity can and does exist (relatively) within the animal/insect kingdom.
Wow, that's fantastic food for thought!
By:Shpigler, HY (Shpigler, Hagai Y.)[ 1 ] ; Saul, MC (Saul, Michael C.)[ 1 ] ; Corona, F (Corona, Frida)[ 1 ] ; Block, L (Block, Lindsey)[ 1 ] ; Ahmed, AC (Ahmed, Amy Cash)[ 1 ] ; Zhao, SD (Zhao, Sihai D.)[ 1,2 ] ; Robinson, GE (Robinson, Gene E.)[ 1,3,4 ]
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Volume: 114, Issue: 36, Pages: 9653-9658, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1708127114, Published: SEP 5 2017
Abstract
E. O. Wilson proposed in Sociobiology that similarities between human and animal societies reflect common mechanistic and evolutionary roots. When introduced in 1975, this controversial hypothesis was beyond science's ability to test. We used genomic analyses to determine whether superficial behavioral similarities in humans and the highly social honey bee reflect common molecular mechanisms. Here, we report that gene expression signatures for individual bees unresponsive to various salient social stimuli are significantly enriched for autism spectrum disorder-related genes. These signatures occur in the mushroom bodies, a high-level integration center of the insect brain. Furthermore, our finding of enrichment was unique to autism spectrum disorders; brain gene expression signatures from other honey bee behaviors do not show this enrichment, nor do datasets from other human behavioral and health conditions. These results demonstrate deep conservation for genes associated with a human social pathology and individual differences in insect social behavior, thus providing an example of how comparative genomics can be used to test sociobiological theory.
Guess with animals it's rather tricky to find out if for instance communication problems (which I'm sure do exist) are due to reduced intelligence or something else, they will just all appear a bit dumb. Or being overly sensitive - well, given that their senses are often so much better than ours, you would have to be sure that they have not had some bad experience and react overly sensitive because of that.Ranges of "normal" will also be very different from us and may be difficult to define (well, not that that's easy (or necessarily useful) for people). Someone told me that horses remember things very different from the way people do, so they may have seen lots of cars but if then a car stands somewhere in a new way it may freak them out, or many animals do get very used to routines and get stressed if something changes, but that's all not a sign of autism, even if some have more problems with this than others. Doing very repetitive movements in captive animals is a sign of them not being kept appropriately, in nature a more severly "autistic" animal would probably starve or be eaten quite quickly.
Thank you for explaining.
I am glad the post grabbed your attention. There have been quite a few views but not many replies.
It seems logical that animals can be neurologically diverse but I have no evidence to support that statement.