Autism

                Before I begin my theory concerning the cause of autism, I would like to briefly discuss an issue that relates to evolution.

                DNA is a wonderful piece of evolution. It contains the blueprints for every part of a living entity. What it does not contain is the programming that is needed by the neural system to operate the entity. There is no programming that controls reflex actions. There is no programming that controls many of the functions of the body that are referred to as automatic such as the auto-immune system. Yet these functions have evolved also.

                There is a mechanism that allows a female’s programming to be downloaded to her offspring. For species that use eggs as the method to produce offspring, there is a structure that is part of the egg contents that contains the initial programming that is absorbed by the developing offspring. You can see that structure in the fine white filaments near the yolk of the egg. As species evolved to carry the unborn inside the female’s body, a neural connection was established that allowed for this basic programming to be downloaded directly to the growing entity.

                There are 3 items that need to be verified to answer the major cause of autism and related birth defects.

1. Does the umbilical cord blood flow get closed off during a fight-or-flight situation?
2. Is there a neural connection between the mother and fetus in the umbilical cord?
3. Could the human brain send a neural jolt to wake up the body’s extremities?

Does the umbilical cord blood flow get closed off during a fight-or-flight situation? When my son was three weeks old, his heart stopped beating. He was lying on a doctor’s examining table at the time. The doctors had inserted a camera in his groin and had threaded it into his heart. The doctors were examining his heart to determine what sort of surgery would be needed to fix a Tetralogy-of-Fallot birth defect. His heartbeat was not restored until after the camera had been removed. I am sure that chest compressions and oxygen were being administered. Probably not enough to prevent his brain from being deprived of oxygen for a period. He was analyzed at the age of 4 years to be borderline autistic.

It is a rare event that children that have died at a young age and been revived have some level of learning disabilities, but it does happen. It was at this point that I determined that autism was the result of the fetus being deprived of oxygen while in the womb.

One year after the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, a young man went to the site of the bombing with a backpack filled with a kitchen pot that contained shredded newspaper. It was determined later that he was the son of a woman who was an avid marathon runner and she had been competing in that marathon. As the police continued their investigation, they determined that the young man had a learning disability. His brother also had a learning disability. In thinking about that, I recalled an autobiography by a big game hunter in which he recounted that occasionally he would see wildebeest miscarry after being pursued by lions. The connection that I made is that a runner’s high experienced by runners after running an extended amount of time was like what was occurring during the fight-or-flight response among the pregnant wildebeest. After I made this connection, I did an internet search looking for events that were like what happened to wildebeest after being chased. I found two research studies. The first one related to a research project relating to wolves. The researchers noticed that pregnant caribou would occasionally miscarry after being pursued by wolves. The second research project was being done to determine how high helicopters needed to fly before they no longer spooked caribou. Those researchers also noted that some female caribou would miscarry after being spooked into running by the helicopters.

Based on these pieces of information, I concluded that something was happening in the female body that resulted in the death of the fetus. The conclusion I came to is that oxygen was being cut off to the fetus during the fight-or-flight event. This appears to be the result of evolution such that the survival of the female is more important to species survival than trying to preserve the life of the fetus. When you analyze prey being pursued by predators, the sequence of captured prey will be the old, injured and then pregnant females. Pregnant females will have a tremendous drain on their oxygen needs because of having to provide oxygen to the fetus. That female will have a greater chance of survival if her body shuts off the oxygen flow to the fetus. Her survival allows her to bear more calves in the next birth cycle. A determination of the cause of death in these fetuses would be beneficial. The likely cause is asphyxiation.

If my conclusions are correct, then the likely cause of layers of malformed brain cells is not mutation, but rather stunted growth brain cells. The question then becomes, what is causing the high frequency of children being born with autism and related birth defects (hearing, blindness, being mute, uncontrolled body motion). Obviously, women are not being pursued by predators. Women are being put into situations of fright. Fight-or-flight is misleading. Fright would be a better choice for describing what is happening with women. Fright situations can be triggered by something as simple as fear of giving a presentation before an audience. It can be triggered by watching a horror movie. The most likely is fear as a result of nightmares. Women have little protection from wrathful husbands. They have little protection from fear as a result of men walking out of a relationship with a woman they have impregnated.

A study was performed on the rate of autism in Somalia women who had emigrated to Sweden, Great Britain and the United States. The birth rate of autistic children in the women who emigrated was higher than those who remained in Somalia. Birth rate of autistic children increases during periods of financial instability, IE. Recessions. With the degradation of social morality, the incidence rate of autism has risen to 1 in 44 births. Autism is preventable, but this is going to require everyone being part of the solution. Women need to be treated as the core of the human species ability to survive.

Is there a neural connection between the mother and fetus in the umbilical cord? Of course, there is! What else could explain the postpartum expressions a woman feels after the birth of an infant. The brain is the core of every non-automatic function that occurs in a body. When a body gets damaged, the nerves at the location of the damage cannot express pain. The nerves at the location of the damage send a signal to the brain. The brain then takes the appropriate actions. First, it expresses the sense of pain, so the damaged person is aware that damage occurs. The brain then triggers the appropriate immune reaction needed to fix the damaged area. During the 8-9 months that a mother has the neural link with the infant, a rapport builds between the mother and fetus. Severing the connection would be like some of the feelings that are felt when someone has a limb amputated.

Though the rapport that is built up between the mother and fetus is a good thing, that is not the main purpose of that link. The main purpose of that link is to monitor the life/death state of the fetus. When the umbilical link is closed off during the fight-or-flight situation, the fetus may die. When the fight-or-flight state ends and the female calms down, the brain has time to check the fetus’ life or death state.

Could the human brain send a neurological jolt to wake up the body’s extremities? I want to bring my own life experience into the narrative. I have a compressed disk where my sciatic nerve leaves the spinal nerve. It got bad at one point. I was feeling multiple locations of pain in my legs. One night I suddenly found myself awake. I had no idea why, but then a few seconds later I found out why. A sharp jolt of pain struck my ankle. This occurred with regularity every 11-12 seconds, for a couple minutes, while I was trying to figure out why. I knew that it probably was a result of my sciatic nerve condition, so it was a matter of what I could do to eliminate the pain. I figured that the pain was probably the result of my brain not getting any nerve response from my foot. The only action that made sense was to move my foot around, let my brain know that it was still a functional part of my body. I started moving my foot around and the measure of the jolts of pain began to decrease. After 4-5 abating jolts, the jolts stopped.

Back to the mother and fetus and what happens after the brain determines there might be a problem with the fetus. The brain starts sending nerve jolts to the infant through the umbilical cord, much like the electric jolts administered to a person who medics are trying to revive. After a fight-or-flight event which usually resolves in 10-20 minutes, the infant has not been dead so long that this method of reviving the infant will not work. That does not mean that nerve growth in the fetus’ brain hasn’t been affected. It has, those nerve cells will have a stunted growth and will never be as effective as normal brain cells.

There is a flip side to autism and that is individuals of high intelligence. This is from my own life experience. My mother had 5 pregnancies. My sister was born first in 1944. The war was on and my father was stationed on Midway as airplane mechanic which Japan was trying to take control of. I am sure that my mother had restless nights. My sister was of average intelligence with difficulties in math. I was born 13 months later, shortly after the end of WW2. I am sure that my mother was euphoric. I have above average intelligence, in fact high enough to qualify for MENSA. After my father came back from the war, she realized how bad a mistake she made marrying my father. Before he married my mother, he had a life planned out that included marrying a woman he had went to school with. Social morality of the time required that he marry my mother after he made her pregnant. He was angry that he was stuck in a life which he had not planned for, and he blamed my mother for being in that position. He never used hitting as a way of expressing his anger, but was very good at using words and tone to express himself. There was an incident when I was probably about 2 and half. We were at the kitchen table having supper. My mother served a form of polenta which I had not eaten before, and it had a texture that made me throw up. My father forced me to eat what I threw up and he did not allow my mother to intervene. My mother had 2 pregnancies after I was born. The first was twins that died in the womb. The second, a girl, died at birth. After that, my brother was born. He was of average intelligence with good mechanical abilities but a poor social ability.

As long as we are talking about the brain and how it becomes what it becomes, let’s take a moment to discuss what the brain is and how it works. The brain is a very efficient computing organism. There are different parts of the brain that handle the different tasks in the body and is programmable. The base of the brain, the first part of the brain that develops, is devoted to the task of monitoring signals from the body and taking action when something occurs. An example of this is when something occurs that cuts the body. The signal from the cut is received by the brain. The first thing is a reactive move to get away from what caused the injury. The second thing to happen is to trigger the immune system to release white blood cells to combat any potential bacteria that might infect the cut. The brain will also trigger an event that will cause the area around the cut to heat up. This process is designed to weaken the bacteria infestation making it easier for the white blood cells to do their work.

In addition to the internal events that the brain handles, there is the input from our senses (hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching) that are automatic but need programming to translate into useful input. That programming might be as simple as relating a color to a name or more complex as in translating what we sense into a moral context.

The programming that our brain receives begins before we are born. The mother might have calming feelings when she hears music. The fetus may sense that music and will feel its mother’s mood regarding that music. This could be what steers some children to pursue music careers. Whatever the mother feels in life is shared with the yet to be born fetus. Maybe the fetus doesn’t know what is causing its mother to feel fear, but the fetus gets the fear feedback. The fetus also feels when the mother is feeling good. The dominant feelings that the mother feels while pregnant will also dominate the baby after it is born.

Our DNA is a fantastic piece of blueprinting. It has instructions of what to build, when to build and where to build. What it does not have is the programming that controls how the different parts are designed to work together. With a neural connection between the fetus and the mother, her programming for functions like auto activity (immune system, instinctive behavior, etc.) can be downloaded.

Even issues of sexual identity can be influenced by what the mother is thinking. Before she has an ultrasound of her infant, she may be identifying the unborn to be of a particular sex which is not the sex of the fetus. This interaction may well influence what the sexual identity of the child will be.

Phillip Paulson

12380 Goodhue St. NE

Blaine, MN 55449

Home – (763) 767-8462

Cell – (763) 248-3307

Paulsonpop2@outlook.com

Retired