Children of parents in technical jobs at higher risk for autism | Hacker News Reader

Children of parents in technical jobs at higher risk for autism

uth.edu

24 pointsekm214 comments

AFAIK there is a well-known correlation between father's age and autism risk. People who spend a longer time in education tend to marry and have children later. It's not surprising that the effect is stronger for doctors, who take several years to go through med school, specialization, residency etc., than for engineers, who can often find a good job with just a BSc.

  AFAIK there is a well-known correlation between father's age and autism risk.

This is correct, here's a source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3645857/

"Fathers who worked in engineering were two times as likely to have a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Those who worked in finance were four times more likely and those who worked in health care occupations were six times more likely to have a child on the autism spectrum."

it looks like is the other way around, i don't get it.

"There was no association with a mother’s occupation. However, children who had both parents in technical fields were at a higher risk of having a more severe form of autism."

I haven't seen the paper, but presumably the authors used a binary definition of "technical", which I suspect actually means "job that requires higher education", which might also correlate with "job in which fathers tend to have children later".

Couldn't a partial explanation for this be that those in higher paying jobs (i.e engineering) are more likely to take their children to specialists to be diagnosed?

Exactly...engineers & finance I could maybe see doing the semi autism thing, but when the article claim docs have a even higher rate...no way. Docs are patient facing..there is no way that flies under the radar. There has to be some other factor interfering (like your theory).

> Docs are patient facing..

And expected to maintain a certain degree of clinical detachment. If they were basing their parenting relationship on doctor-patient relationships, I'd not be surprised if they had a high rate of autism in their kids.

Not that I'm saying they do, just that if that were the line of logic one were to go down.

The two most cited correlation points are age of parents and propensity to bring children to doctors.

It's a very short article. I wasn't able to figure out whether the "higher risk" might just be higher rates of diagnosis. Tech worker parents are probably more affluent than the average and can afford better healthcare. This might also be why parents in finance and health occupations have even higher "risk."

It would only be a partial explanation, though, since the mother's career by itself doesn't appear to have the same relationship.

Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt established an extremely pronounced correlation between a pregnant mom's night-time wireless exposure (2.4 GHz = cordless, Wi-Fi, cell phones as well as microwave ovens) and incidence of autism.

Heavy Wi-Fi/smartphone data use has some serious negative effects that have been documented, but aren't popular!

Dietrich Klinghardt is not necessarily the most credible source of information.

See, e.g., http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/26/your-friday-dos... for some critical commentary (from a source consistently critical of all That Sort Of Thing; read with appropriate caution if your general opinion of "energy medicine", "integrative medicine", kinesiology, homeopathy, etc., is more positive).

So, when Klinghardt established this extremely pronounced correlation, where did he publish the results and by whom have they been checked?

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