The way of thinking about Autism should be like the way we think about human language. Yes, the ability to speak, or rather our abilities to acquire and learn a

The way of thinking about Autism should be like the way we think about human language. Yes, the ability to speak, or rather our abilities to acquire and learn a language are, of course, inherited, but when there is no one to speak to a child, or a child refused or unable to participate, or there are other obstacles in the environment, after passing a certain age he will never speak at all. It seems that autism has the same pattern. It has genetic aspect and environmental aspect and one of personal experience and amount of practice, so no one could identify all the factors, leave alone find a "single cause". Of course, it is genes, for, say 80% (which is rather a flawed mental construct), like it is in everything else - height or IQ, for example (why should it be different?), but the rest 20% are, of course, not mere "air pollution". It is the same meme-nonsense (with which we're bombarded daily by mainstream media) as to say, "look, children in a toxic environments have worse grades and misbehave more". OK, perhaps they are, but this is an "empty message", a "meme" based on a naive common-sense. Correlation does not imply causation, and even if this factor is a "valid" one, its actual implication is infinitesimally small - it, perhaps, contributes to "stress" or states related to "depression" (which is another meme). Most of these meme-studies are just misuse of statistical tools together with a confirmation and self-serving biases. People construct statistical "evidences" for their own flawed constructs, instead of methodically removing everything "mental" and see what remains.