Letter 3

Hello Reader,


My name is Arthur Kampmann and I am currently a sophomore at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Recently my writing class took a research assignment on, and I choose the topic of autism. My main reasoning for that is that my younger sister is autistic, and my thinking was that autism would be a topic that I would enjoy researching, and writing on. I learned many new facts about autism during this project. The question that I am posing is why is it that genetics, and birth complications have taken the back seat to the environment for the main cause of autism?

When autism research first came about in the mid seventies the doctors all believed that genetics were a leading factor to the cause of autism. The doctors were putting the blame on the parents saying that either they did not love their child enough or they were at fault for producing a autistic child. This turned out to be not the case ruling genetics out as a likely cause to autism, and birth complications took over for the main reason for autism to occur. My little sister is a case of birth complications, and that was because the doctor gave her a vaccine that was unsafe for my sister to receive at the time of her birth. I know now accidents such as this one do not occur as much, and they are linking autism to poor environment conditions. Now what I am asking you is why do you feel that the environment has taken over such a large role to producing autism? I am very confused on how that all works, and I would love to hear some form of explanation if at all possible. I thank you for your time, and am looking forward from hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Arthur Kampmann