Hi, newbie here...
I was so annoyed by this claim on the front page that I had to jump in and say something.
Evidence Against X-linkage as a Major Cause of Autism
Since it is a known fact that more males have autism than females, researchers believed that autism might be associated with a non-working gene on the X chromosome. Recent data for our group and others have shown that it is unlikely that a gene on the X chromosome causes the majority of cases of autism.
How do we know this? By studying many different families in which more than one member has autism, or a variant of autism such as Asperger’s syndrome or PDD, we have seen that in a number of families the "gene" is passed through the father to a male child with autism. Since a father transmits an X chromosome only to his daughters and not his sons, the "gene" cannot be on the X chromosome in these families.
Cuccaro M.L., Wolpert C.M., McClintock D.E., Abramson R., Beaty L.M., Storoschuk S., Zimmerman A., Frye V., Porter N., Cook E., Stevenson R., DeLong G.R., Wright H.H., Pericak-Vance, M.A. Familial aggregation in autism: Evidence against X-linkage as a major genetic etiology. American Society of Human Genetics 1996.
Hallmayer J., Spiker D., Lotspeich L., McMahon W.M., Petersen P.B., Nicholas P., Pingree C., Ciaranello R.D. Male-to male transmission in extended pedigrees with multiple cases of autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics. 67:13-18, 1996.
It is NOT a known fact. It is FAR FROM a known fact. Either this is sloppy reportage or the site is deliberately propagating misinformation. Such a pity - this site has damaged it's credibility for me at least.
Research into Aspergers particularly is in its infancy. It's becoming more and more observed that females present in quite different ways from males with AS. There are, as researchers are now finding, several different loci for autistic genes, many of which work in combination with each other and/or environmental factors. No doubt, as time goes by, more chromosomal loci will be found. It's likely that more and more of these gene expressions will be more subtle than the extreme autistic presentation with which we commonly associate 'ASDs'. Thus it simply is not true to claim that more males than females are on the spectrum.
I do not think is so much ignorance, as political posturing among researchers.
... what was it on the front page of? Who wrote it?