at CNN.

The article mentions an Autism bill which passed the Senate two weeks ago to increase funding for autism support services. I'm not a fan of big govt, but for parents of autistic kids, this is essential. Further, autism spectrum disorder is markedly increasing throughout the developed world for unknown reasons. So we need more services to cope with the huge increase of autistic kids. Perhaps if we have to strip funds from other endevours like AIDS and cancer it may be worth it; since treatment & research in autism is sorely lacking, whereas we know a ton about cancer and AIDS, and the treatments are already well established.

Makes sense to me...but no proof one way or the other.

Update: Time got ahold of the story and published their own take on it. They are sceptical, and so am I. The data aren't even published yet, and it's set to be presented at a conference next week (not in a peer-reviewed journal). Second, the data collection seems like bad science; they correlate autism rates, weather, and cable TV subscriptions. Huh? It doesn't sound like good science, but it still seems like an attractive hypothesis.

Autism has been showed to be genetically linked to increased paternal age by one study. Orac has a very good, detailed analysis.