In a striking about face, Jennifer Margulis, wootastic journalist and homebirth advocate, has modified her stance that vaccines cause autism to embrace the idea that ultrasounds cause autism. It’s not surprising when you think about it because the vaccine autism claim has been thoroughly and exhaustively debunked vaccines and ultrasound are exactly alike: both are interventions and all homebirth advocates know that interventions are bad.
On her blog today, Margulis treats us to her special brand of smearing by insinuation “journalism” by posting her interview with Dr. Manuel Casanova, M.D., the Gottfried and Gisela Kolb Endowed Chair in Outpatient Psychiatry and a Professor of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at the University of Louisville. As far as I can determine, Dr. Casanova’s theory is this: ultrasound can affect cells, the brain is made of cells, ultrasound may affect the brain. How does he get from that to autism?
Through this absurd bit of deduction:
Those were my initial thoughts about why ultrasound could be of significance in terms of autism. Then the more you examine ultrasound and its epidemiology, the more proof you can draw of the same as a risk factor for autism. Populations within the United States that don’t use as much ultrasound are at a lower risk, like the Amish. The Somalis, where autism is practically unknown in their native countries, when they migrate to developed countries, they acquire a higher risk. This is not a property of being in this country. Somalis also acquired a higher risk for autism if they move to other developed nations. Obviously, in these new surroundings, they are receiving more ultrasounds.
Many people believe that because having a child with autism confers a greater risk for having a sibling similarly diagnosed, that this is a genetic condition. However, this could also be explained by ultrasound, as the mothers tend to go to the same OB-GYN practitioners…
Sorry, Jennifer Margulis and Dr. Casanova, it’s pretty clear that ultrasound doesn’t cause autism, attachment parenting causes autism.
Let’s face it, the the more you examine attachment parenting and its epidemiology, the more proof you can draw of the same as a risk factor for autism. Populations within the United States that don’t practice attachment parenting are at a lower risk, like the Amish. The Somalis, where autism is practically unknown in their native countries, when they migrate to developed countries, they acquire a higher risk. This is not a property of being in this country. Somalis also acquired a higher risk for autism if they move to other developed nations. Obviously, in these new surroundings, they are exposed to attachment parenting.
Many people believe that because having a child with autism confers a greater risk of having a sibling similarly diagnosed, that this is a genetic condition. However, this could also be explained by attachment parenting, because mothers who practice attachment parenting with one child tend to do so with their other children.
Consider the following graph that demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that attachment parenting causes autism by demonstrating the steep rise in autism prevalence that occurred following the publication of Dr. Sears’ exhortation to practice attachment parenting:
Need more proof? You can refer to my ground breaking post of November 2010 in which I first revealed that attachment parenting causes autism.
1. Both autism and attachment parenting have increased dramatically in the past two decades. The origin of the attachment parenting is credited to Dr. William Sears, who first mentioned it in his book in 1988. Studies show that in the VERY SAME YEAR, the incidence of autism began to rise dramatically. (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2010, 44 (6), pp 2112–2118).
2. Regardless of who practices attachment parenting or how they define it, no one can deny that the practice of attachment parenting ALWAYS precedes the diagnosis. There are no known cases in which attachment parenting practices began after autism was diagnosed.
3. The purported mechanism is thought to be the sensory deprivation caused by baby wearing and extended breastfeeding. During the critical early months and years, when babies should be learning about the world and making millions of neuronal connections, babies exposed to AP are deprived of contact with the outside world (many are constantly carried in a position where they can see nothing but the surface of the mother’s clothing) and their exposure to other individuals such as fathers, grandparents and childcare workers is severely limited.
4. No one has EVER shown that attachment parenting does not cause autism.
5. Even those who strongly reject the notion that attachment parenting causes autism acknowledge that there are MANY children raised with attachment parenting who are subsequently diagnosed with autism.
6. Many of those who deny a link between attachment parenting and autism stand to lose money if attachment parenting is shown to be harmful. Authors, lactation consultants, and sling manufacturers, among others, have a strong economic motivation for discouraging investigation of this link.
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Those who have read this far have probably figured out that this is a satire. I’m satirizing the “thinking” of wootastic “journalists” like Margulis. The purpose of the satire is to demonstrate that what seems to Margulis to be compelling “reasoning” is nothing more than nonsense, and logical fallacies.
I’ve tried to highlight the major rhetorical gambits of the claim that ultrasound causes autism. Number 1 is the claim that because both ultrasound use and autism have risen in recent decades, ultrasound must cause autism. That claim is foolish as can be seen when the same observation is made about attachment parenting and autism. Just because the incidence of two phenomena rise at the same time does not mean that one caused the other.
Number 2 is the temporal connection. Prenatal ultrasound precedes the observation of autistic symptoms, but a lot of things precede the observation of autistic symptoms. That’s because those symptoms typically do not appear until the early toddler years and anything that takes place earlier (like attachment parenting practices or prenatal ultrasound) will precede the observation of symptoms.
Number 3 invokes a spurious mechanism of action. It is certainly plausible, but no evidence is presented that it actually occurs.
Number 4 is the “argument from ignorance.” The argument from ignorance dares the opponent to prove a negative and when a negative cannot be proven (since that is a logical impossibility in most cases), the conclusion is proclaimed that this “shows” that ultrasound causes autism.
Number 5 is the “fallacy of the lonely fact.” Since some children have developed autism after their parents practiced attachment parenting, the conclusion is drawn that large numbers of children will develop autism after their parents practice attachment parenting.
Number 6 is the conspiracy theory that undergirds almost every attempt to defend vaccine rejectionism. But when the same “reasoning” is applied to attachment parenting, it is easy to see that the conspiracy theory does not have much explanatory power. There is ALWAYS someone who stands to benefit from any recommendation or practice. That does not mean that those who benefit are actively hiding information on harms and risks from everyone else.
True to the principles of wootastic “journalism”, Margulis concludes the post with the seemingly innocuous call for “more research.” But we cannot and should not waste time “researching” connections that have no basis in science. If we did, we could spend a lot of time “researching” whether the moon is made of green cheese or whether clouds are made of marshmallows. The call for “more research” is just away to add gravitas to what are often ridiculous claims. We do not need to “research” every wacky idea that vaccine rejectionists devise and our refusal to “research” those ideas without basis in science or logic is not a sign that someone is hiding something.
The key point is that what passes for “reasoning” among wootastic journalists like Margulis is not reasoning at all. It is nothing more than wild accusations, logical fallacies and conspiracy theories. There is no more reason to take seriously the idea that ultrasounds cause autism than there is to take seriously the idea that attachment parenting causes autism.
