Hey Dad and Stacie

You know I lurk on THAT OTHER board, though I don't post there. I saw in a message to autismas that, yes, certain disorders are genetic, Fragile X being one of them.

But I think genetic disorders are a perfect example of why you can work with the genes you get, instead of just rolling over and die (maybe an example autismas could get, but I might as well be realistic...).

Let's use PKU - change the diet, and the damage doesn't develop. In Fragile X, are we certain retardation is inevitable, or could it be that diet, meds or other interventions early on could avoid the inevitable or lessen it?

In autism, the underlying genes are guiding the way the child processing toxins, which affect sensory processing, etc. It's a spiral. Intervene and you change the course. It's not any less genetic in basis, but it's not that the genes cause autism necessarily, it's that the genes guide the processing that leads to autism.

Now, I'll go a step further and say that these genes aren't necessarily "damaged." Stacie, you said in a message to you-know-who something about genes being damaged. That may be true, but I don't think it's necessarily so. There is a wide range of "normal" in this world - if your child with metal sensitivity was born 300 years ago, his genes would be just fine because no one would be pumping toxins into him. So are his genes necessarily damaged, or are they normal genes that are being asked to do something G-d never intended them to do in the first place?

Let's take this to an extreme. A nuclear bomb goes off, almost everyone dies but a few survive. Something in their genes protected them from radiation. Would we say everyone else had defective genes? Well, for the situation, their genes weren't "good enough" but there wasn't anything wrong with them, was there.

As we continue to poison our children, we will continue to see more and more kids whose genes just aren't "good enough" to protect them, thus the rise in autism we have seen in the last decade. I think it's just plain wrong to even think about "fixing" genes that aren't broken but just aren't "good enough" to handle the manmade crap we have put into our children. Let's change the crap instead.