More about autism. Click on link for the entire article.Could there be something to this strange piece of statistical derring-do? It's not impossible, but it would take a lot more research to tease out its true significance. Meanwhile, it's hard to say just what these correlations measure. "You have to be very definitive about what you are looking at," says Vanderbilt University geneticist Pat Levitt. "How do you know, for instance, that it's not mold or mildew in the counties that have a lot of rain?" How do you know, for that matter, that as counties get more cable access, they don't also get more pediatricians scanning for autism? Easterbrook, though intrigued by the study, concedes that it could be indoor air quality rather than television that has a bearing on the development of autism. On a more biological level there's this problem, says Drexel Univeristy epidemiologist Craig Newschaffer: "They ignore the reasonable body of evidence that suggest that the pathologic process behind autism probably starts in utero" — i.e., long before a baby is born.
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