When my first child was born in 1976, one or two children per every ten thousand born was diagnosed with autism.
Today, one in one hundred and sixty-six children born are diagnosed with autism. That's right. One in one hundred and sixty-six children born are diagnosed with autism.
Now let's be clear- diagnosis is far more accurate than it used to be. There is a huge spectrum of autistic "disorders". And it may be that the rate of diagnosis is not as alarming as it seems, given that the weird kid in your third grade class may have been in one of those autistic spectrums which today would be diagnosed but then was merely labeled odd.
BUT, there is no doubt that it's on the rise and there have been no definite answers as to why the disorder is becoming more and more prevalent.
I've been wondering if there could be a possible link between the now-common use of sonograms in pregnancy and this terrifying trend. I'm not alone in this. Google autism and sonograms and you get something like 65,000 possible hits. There has actually been one small study done on mice by the Yale school of medicine in 2006 which showed that yes, there seemed to be some correlation between the prenatal exposure to ultra-sound waves and autistic-like changes in the mice brains. But it wasn't definitive.
Studies.
We need more studies aimed in this direction I think.
I mean- consider the fact that we are regularly bombarding developing brains and neurological systems with sound waves which cause not only loud sounds within the uterus but also heat. Pregnant women are advised NOT to get overheated in hot tubs and saunas because they know that this can have adverse effects on their developing fetuses. So I'm asking why sonograms are so routinely used in the prenatal care of women? There is no real proof that the use of these routine sonograms contributes to any actual better outcome for the baby at all. I am not talking here about using them judiciously for a diagnostic tool when problems are suspected. I am talking about using them as just a regular part of every pregnant woman's care. We have all gotten to the place where we take for granted that a pregnant woman knows the sex of her child long before birth. And with these new 3-D sonograms, you can tell which side of the family the child takes after while it's still in the womb. "Oh look, Frank, she has your nose! We better start saving for plastic surgery now."
Frankly, I think these sonograms are creepy and weird and almost an invasion of privacy and when done purely to satisfy the parents' curiosity, to give them a prenatal portrait of their child before it is born, is flat damn wrong. Because we don't know what all these sound waves are doing to these babies as they rock and move and swim within their mother's womb.
We know that babies will move away from the sonographer's transducer if possible. This alone seems to indicate that the heat and what one article I read called "jarring vibrations" could be causing discomfort in the child.
I don't know. They do so many things now to pregnant women both prenatally and in labor which no scientific studies have proven to actually produce healthier babies. Here in the US where childbirth is handled in a highly technological way, our infant mortality rate is higher than 36 other countries. This is out of 195, total. Certainly not the worst, by any means, but certainly not the best, either.
I am not suggesting that we go back to the days of old when women squatted in a field and delivered their young (would that it were so simple!) but I am suggesting that we don't have all the answers and I'm also saying- we aren't even asking the right questions.
In the meantime, I am hoping that Lily, who is at the moment interested in a midwife-assisted birth center birth, will avoid getting sonograms if possible.
It is only human and natural that we want to know the sex of our unborn child. It is only human and natural to wonder what that child looks like, to see if he or she has all those fingers and toes and it is so very reassuring to hear and see that little heart beating, those fingers fluttering.
But until we know for sure what the technology which allows us to see all of these things is doing to the child, I don't think we should be using it without a very good reason.
I have no doubt that my grandbaby will be beautiful. I don't need a creepy prenatal picture of him or her to know that. And although it would be convenient to know whether we're buying clothes for a girl or a boy, it is much better to my mind not to mess around with that beautiful child's brain or nervous system.
I am not a doctor, I do not play one on television, but I am someone who wonders. And this is what I'm wondering today. Autism, ADD, ADHD, and a whole lot of other things are showing up in numbers that have never shown up before. And they are showing up as the technology of ultrasound is being used as it never has before. Plain and simple common sense say we should consider these technologies in response to these growing neurological problems.
All I'm saying is, humans simply did not evolve being exposed to sound waves in the uterus and perhaps for a good reason. Could we please explore this possibility?
