I do not remember when I first became interested in “autism” but I suppose it was just a gradual increase over many decades of my fascination with juvenile mammal brain development. This probably goes back to when I was 18 years old or so. Perhaps earlier. No one ever talked about autism in the 1970s. You only heard about the youngsters who were deficient in the capacity to learn – in school. I got my high school “diploma” in June 1976. These youngsters were identified as having a well below average IQ. I don't recall how low, but pretty low. Like 70 or so. The average in the United States is of course about 100 – at that time. Now it is much lower because of the high percentage of dark-skinned immigrants in the United States. Namely mestizos, their average IQ is much lower than the average West European IQ. It might be as low as 85, perhaps lower.

I knew a guy when I was a teenager who had a pretty low IQ – so low that the US Marines rejected him when he sought to join after graduating from the private high school he went to. His father was a civil lawyer.

So you might say this was my “real life” introduction to autism. He was obviously shocked the Marines rejected him. I was not. In fact, I don't recall exactly what happened, but I think I might have warned him that it was not a good idea to try to join the Marines. I don't know what the threshold would have been for the Marines back then. I would imagine that 90 might have been the threshold. 90 and above and you were in – unless you were crazy in some way. So his IQ must have been in the 80s, very likely. Many of my acquaintances in high school went on to go to very selective and prestigious colleges, so I did not hang out with an ordinary crowd. Actually, I did not hang out with them, I just knew them through my classes.

The reason I mention this story, a real story, is because it intrigued me a lot. Perhaps this is the beginning of the autism phenomenon. I studied him, quite intensely. Observation. I was just asking a lot of questions. He had an older brother who was actually considered “retarded” – this is what they called low IQ in those days. His sisters were reasonably intelligent, and he had a younger brother. So it seemed it might be an X chromosome issue. The mother appeared a little odd, perhaps her IQ was not terribly high. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I would have to argue that it was an issue of the X chromosome. The female. This brain defect is carried by the mother – and it is passed to her sons. It is pretty much a male phenomenon. 4 out of 5 autistic children are boys. And the girls who are considered to have ASD (autism spectrum disorder) are usually quite masculine in appearance. They are females but they tend to resemble boys in many respects.

Autism is rampant today. Back in the 1970s it was considered pretty rare. “In 1970, the prevalence of autism was estimated to be around 1 in 10,000 children. This is significantly lower than the current prevalence, which is estimated to be 1 in 31 children. Earlier studies in the 1960s and 70s generally reported prevalence estimates between 2 to 4 cases per 10,000 children.”

So this is a very dramatic increase in autism. What exactly is autism? I will define it here, and my own definition will be deviating from the standard definition we hear today from child psychiatrists and psychologists. I always begin with a “working hypothesis” and I would consider my own definition to be pretty good. My best guess at this point is that my definition of autism is reasonably accurate. But of course I do not have any clinical experience.

So what is autism? It is an expression of unusual mammal brain development, and you might say that it is a much milder variation of what we have come to understand as “idiot savantism.” Now called savantism, because we do not want to be insulting and demeaning. And I approve of that. I strongly disapprove of the tendency to characterize youngsters as deficient in brain function. “Idiot savant: a person who has an exceptional aptitude in one particular field, such as music or mathematics, despite having significant impairment in other areas of intellectual or social functioning.”

There is an acknowledgment of a “spectrum” – because the human brain is very complex and the expression of cognition is multifaceted and extremely complex. The fact that this is a male phenomenon is fascinating, it indicates to me that autism must be mostly an issue of brain development. It can be attributed to genes of course, but brain development is to some extent guided by genes – at least this appears to be the case. Identical twins, males, will show this. If one is autistic there is a 30%-90% chance the other twin will be autistic. But I do not feel very persuaded that this is a fatalistic gene expression. I am presenting my thesis here that it is mostly a function of juvenile brain development. The trajectory of this development. And indeed, the explosion of autism in the past 45 years strongly suggests it is not genetic. How could it be? Genotypes do not change so dramatically in 45 years. Not possible. So it is a phenotype expression.

Back 7 years ago, in 2018, Oxford University Press sent me [unsolicited] a review copy of a book they just published on autism. The Politics of Autism by Ms Bryna Siegel, PhD. She worked at UCSF with children, she's a developmental psychologist. She's retired now. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably in San Francisco. I asked Oxford University Press to put me in touch with her, and they did. I called her, and she agreed to meet, this was 2018. I took along my oldest son, Christophe. We spent several hours with Bryna discussing her book and autism. Ms Siegel is very frank and a meticulous researcher. She clearly has made a tremendous effort to put together all the important and relevant facts and information about autism in 274 pages. It is a little overwhelming, but we have to realize that she intends to be exhaustive. Her concern for the children she has seen is evident on every page. She is a mother, so she is not lacking empathy.

I plan on writing up a review of Siegel's book, I just have been so busy lately with other pressing matters. There is no question that you should get a copy of her book if you are serious about understanding autism – they call it ASD, autism spectrum disorder. Weird brains, brains that do not conform to what we think is normal. Weird – meaning they do not fall within one standard deviation from the mean. Let's call it 70%, these are the brains that are considered normal. Whatever normal is. This is a reference book, you do not read it to gain an understanding of autism. You occasionally pick it up and peruse it to see if you can understand autism.

I am 7 years late in addressing this brain phenomenon and Siegel's book, and this is embarrassing of course. There are however a few reasons for this. I rebuilt my home on the Pacific Ocean. I rebuilt my media business, I now have 5 web sites. I got cancer [but it now appears to be gone]. So I am a cancer survivor. My web site [worldaffairsmonthly.com] in 2013 or so was hacked and destroyed. I have some fanatical and criminal enemies, it seems.

I am usually pretty conscientious about these kinds of things. Bryna Siegel is a sincere woman, and what's interesting is that I found her to be a little masculine in some respects. But that's not surprising. She might have the X chromosome with autism on it. She does not say that she has a male child, at least I do not recall. All I'm saying is that this might be personal for her – to some degree.

As far as intervention is concerned, I think most if not all the professionals would agree that there is not much value in the current effort at intervention. If they are honest, they would admit this. Autism is clearly a disability, a very interesting and in fact seriously disabling disability. But as I have said, it is unusual juvenile mammal brain development. I just published an interview with my friend Mr Glen Elliott MD PhD. May 14, 2025 at bottleneckanimal.com. We discuss autism. Glen and Bryna are close friends and colleagues, they were both at UCSF.

Some months ago Glen Elliott and I were talking and texting each other and I told him that I had identified 8 variables which I would argue possibly explain the explosion of autism. And I do not use hyperbole when I say explosion. It is a veritable epidemic. Elliott offered a 9th variable, which you will see below.

1+ conception is taking place at a much more advanced age, particularly for males; ages 30-40 is not uncommon, even for the middle of the socioeconomic scale; autism would appear to be at a much higher prevalence for children born to higher income families, they have typically waited longer to have children; degraded sperm; also the eggs might be affected, degraded; I understand that autism is rampant in the San Francisco Bay Area, where couples are much older when having children.

2+ there is a marked increase in the effort to "normalize" the behavior of children; there is less and less tolerance of "neurodivergent" children; there is less and less tolerance of children who are eccentric and with below average IQs, but who might have other interesting aptitudes and talents.

3+ there is also the fact that schools are featuring many more children with immigrant backgrounds; mestizos for example are a huge presence in CA schools and their IQs are typically well below average, as are other children who are not of European genetic origin.

4+ I have long argued that “autism” is largely a function of development in the early years of the development of the mammal brain, the human mammal; mothers are almost always working and not present and this I believe is the principal problem; children are anxious, they are in day care facilities, their mothers absent for long periods of time; infants and young children are terrified and anxious; this will undoubtedly have a significant impact on juvenile brain development.

5+ "retardation" is what we used to call it, now it is given a more palatable name, it's called autism; Glen Elliott MD PhD mentioned this to my son Christophe and I when we met him for more than 2 hours in his office in Palo Alto in July 2018. Bryna Siegel also told me this, this was her opinion; parents have serious concerns and these concerns need to be allayed as much as possible; this is certainly normal.

6+ there is evidence that vaccines when administered to infants can cause inflammation in the brain, which can last up to weeks even months; perhaps the percentage of infants who have this inflammation reaction is small, but it is still significant; vaccines like this were not administered to infants in the 1970s.

7+ there is an unmistakable trend in treating autism as a way to make money; earning income for health care professionals; there is an effort to offer a "treatment" to the children, which of course means that an income stream will be generated, a business is created, the autism treatment business; it is an incentive to find autism in children and treat it.

8+ more than 40 years ago children would play in the classroom; they would be goofing around even when lessons and instruction were taking place; now this is not at all the case, we see children placed in a very strict regimen, they are not allowed to play, and they are punished if they play; this may be the principal cause of autism in my opinion; the child brain is not playing and this is resulting in an increasing underdevelopment of the brain in children; I am not saying there is no genetic element, just that there is a strong epigenetic element; I was friends with Edward O Wilson, an important contributor to the epigenetic theory; consider my theory on the function of play in the developing mammal brain; the play function augments the sleep function in the juvenile mammal brain.

“Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression (how genes are used) that occur without alterations to the DNA sequence. These changes are often influenced by environmental factors and can impact development, disease, and even inheritance. Epigenetic changes do not change the underlying DNA code, but rather modify how the DNA is packaged and read.”

9+ [Glen Elliott MD PhD adds a 9th variable] ASD has become a “popular” diagnosis with professionals and parents alike. There well may be individuals who diagnose their children or themselves as having ASD who do not. To my knowledge, no systematic effort has been made to ascertain false positives at various ages and sites of care such as mental health facilities or educational ones.

[June 7, 2025: Last night I was thinking over my autism theory, and I realized that I would have to make an adjustment to the theory.

10+ actually, I am adding a 10th variable – but this is the foundational variable. The 9 variables arise from this foundational variable. I will have to closely examine the data, but it seems pretty obvious that starting around 1945 or so the number of infants dying at childbirth and immediately following childbirth began to fall pretty sharply. So let's call it 40 years – from 1945 to 1985 – that we have reduced the death rate of infants. Up until age 5 or so. This means we are saving huge numbers of children – and genes – from perishing. Natural forces are not taking them out of the gene pool. What I am arguing here is that genetic diversity has been increasing dramatically since 1945. This is the ultimate cause of autism, I believe. In fact, based on my theory here, I predict that autism will continue to increase in prevalence, indeed it may even accelerate quite a bit. In another 25 years there will be perhaps as many as 1 out of 10 boys with autism. This is genetic diversity, and in some respects it is desirable. It precedes the bottleneck, and the bottleneck is when genetic diversity is cut back sharply. Put simply, the build out of genetic diversity is very strong, and goes on for a long time; but at some point it cannot continue and a bottleneck then sharply reduces this explosion of genetic diversity. I have published down below my text messages with Glen Elliott MD PhD. He had asked me what the 10th was, and so I answered him.]

So you can soon expect from me a review of Siegel's book The Politics of Autism.

I also publish down below as an image my writing about my friend Stuart Brown MD, you will see him mentioned in a May 2013 article in World Affairs Monthly. He and I independently developed the theory of the function of play. He believes play is important in an adult, I totally disagree. If play is present in an adult, and it is often in males, then it is evidence the brain is under-performing and even dysfunctional. Play is present only in the juvenile mammal brain. Brown has refused to do an interview, although I did interview him in 2013. I will republish this interview as soon as possible. 

I will also soon publish here at bottleneckanimal.com an article on the function of religious belief in the human mammal brain. Several weeks ago I realized what the likely purpose of religious belief is. I predict there will be consternation and astonishment when I publish this article.