LAST month health officials in California announced two staggering pieces of news. The first was that the number of Californian children diagnosed with autism has nearly doubled in just four years. The second was that nobody knows why.
If ever confirmation were needed that we are in the midst of a deeply mysterious epidemic, this surely is it. Are genes involved? Almost certainly, but which genes, nobody can say – and a population’s genetic make-up does not change in four years, not even in California. Is there something in the water/air/food chain? Possibly, but experts have yet to form a…
