Autism Linked to College-Educated Parents
A recent posting by Josh Clark (Discovery News), NEWS: Autism Clusters Tied to College-Educated Parents, describes a recent epidemiological study by the University of California, Davis, that found clusters of autism in regions of Southern California with high concentrations of highly educated parents.
The study by Dr. Karla Van Meter, published in the journal Autism Research, examined the birth records for 2.4 million California births between 1996 and 2000, 10,000 of whom were later diagnosed with autism. Van Meter and colleagues found a difference in the rate of autism in areas of highly educated parents to be almost double that of nearby areas with lower levels of parental education. They also found that the prevalence of autism increased with the amount of education.
There is still considerable debate about the causes of autism. While, there is no logical