The most awesome Chelsea Zimmerman of Reflections of a Paralytic has put together another of our BioTalks, this time on prenatal genetic testing. Here is our chat about the issue:
If you have a suggestion about what you would like us to talk about next, let us know by leaving a comment!
This week marks seven years of blogging here at Mary Meets Dolly. Seven years is a long time. Not all of it has been a blast, I have to say, but I continue on in my mission to help everyday Catholics understand what is happening in the complex world of biotechnology. This lowly former lab rat has done her absolute best to interpret and inform those of us without MDs or PhDs whose eyes tend to roll back in our heads at the first mention of technical jargon. (It happens to me me so often that one might think I am battling a recurring zombie-viral outbreak.)
As always, all I ask from my readers are your continued prayers for me that my writing is inspired by the Holy Spirit and that I am guided by the will of Our Heavenly Father. In the Internet age, grace and charity are a virtues that are not only hard to find, but hard to maintain. Prayers for clarity, peace, and grace are always appreciated.
To celebrate seven years of writing, I am taking a vacation from blogging for a few weeks. Biotechnology really has not been a major issue in this election so I think now would be the perfect time to sit back and watch the political sparks fly from the sideline.
Over the last year there have been many headlines about the debate in the United Kingdom on whether to create embryos with three genetic parents. Now the debate has come to America where scientists in Oregon have created embryos that have genetic material from two women and one man.
Why would scientists want to engineer an embryo with the genetic material from three people? Because they say it will “prevent” the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Not all of our DNA that we inherit is in the nuclei of the egg and sperm that join at fertilization. In the cytoplasm of our mother’s egg are mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own DNA called mtDNA. We inherit our mtDNA only from our mother because sperm’s mitochondria are dumped at conception. There are genetic mutations that cause very serious disease found in mtDNA and a woman with a such a mutation cannot help but pass this mutation on to her children.
Oregon scientists created a dozen human embryos using a technique called “maternal spindle transfer” which removes the nucleus of an egg from a woman with mitochondrial disease and places it into a donor egg with normal mtDNA. That genetically modified egg is then fertilized with the father’s sperm and a genetically modified embryo is the result. An embryo with the genetic material from two women and one man.
This modification has implications not only for the embryo but for future generations that cannot help but inherit the modification making this what is called germ-line genetic engineering.
Transhumanists will tell you that the enhancements they propose for the human race will always be "optional." Freedom and choice are their mantra. Freedom to enhance ourselves and our offspring, or not. That is our choice.
In contrast, I have continually argued that transhumanism is by nature coercive. Once we begin to radically change our bodies and our genetics, everyone will have to follow suit or be left behind. Environmentalist Bill McKibben called it a"biological arms race" where no one will win and he points out that once we start upgrading our biology, some of us will naturally become outdated. Those "outdated" somebodies will be our children. McKibben warns parents, "The vision of one's child as a nearly useless copy of Windows 95 should make parents fight like hell to make sure we never get started down this path."
Even Ray Kurzweil, transhumanist extraordinaire, will hint at the fact that enhancements mean that the unenhanced will be left with little or no say in society. He writes, "And to the extent that there will be debate about the desirability of such augmentation, it's easy to predict who will win, since those with enhanced intelligence will be far better debaters."
And yet the pro-enhancement crowd continue to stick to the freedom mantra. Until now. Julian Savulescu, who argues for moral enhancements, enhancements with drugs or genetic engineering that would make us all more socially conscientious, says these kinds of enhancements should not be optional. They are required of all of us otherwise the human race is doomed. Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson, in Philosophy Now, are pushing enhancements not just for those who choose, but as an imperative for all:
Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson argue that artificial moral enhancement is now essential if humanity is to avoid catastrophe....
Modern technology provides us with many means to cause our downfall, and our natural moral psychology does not provide us with the means to prevent it. The moral enhancement of humankind is necessary for there to be a way out of this predicament. If we are to avoid catastrophe by misguided employment of our power, we need to be morally motivated to a higher degree (as well as adequately informed about relevant facts). A stronger focus on moral education could go some way to achieving this, but as already remarked, this method has had only modest success during the last couple of millennia. Our growing knowledge of biology, especially genetics and neurobiology, could deliver additional moral enhancement, such as drugs or genetic modifications, or devices to augment moral education.
The enhancement of mankind is NECESSARY. Education is not enough. We MUST use invasive techniques to mess with our biology to make us better animals. Forget changing the way we think...we must change the hardware with which we think. Once we accept radically changing our biology to solve problems, then making it compulsory isn't so far a leap.
When academics in their ivory towers speak, we lowly masses better listen. As Wesley J. Smith points out what begins as discussions among academics, sometimes becomes policy for the masses. There is no ambiguity here. The academics are saying enhance or perish. Not much of a choice.
Fame Daddy, the company that says it was going to begin selling celebrity sperm to desperate couples, is a comedy hoax. YAAAYYY! Gotta love those Brits lampooning society's crass commercialization of procreation. From Time:
A British television network admitted Thursday that it fell for an actor pretending to be the CEO of Fame Daddy, allegedly a soon-to-be-launched paternity matching service that claims to have “scoured the globe” for well-known celebrities that have “agreed to share their genetic inheritance for the benefit of our clients…and mankind.”
ITV’s This Morning apologized to viewers after hosting a man named Dan Richards, who claimed to be the group’s marketing director, according to the BBC. The network now said that it appears Richards is a paid actor and that the company is nothing but a hoax....
According to The Independent, the whole thing was actually a promotion for a TV comedy show. “Fame Daddy is not a real organisation,” read a statement published in The Telegraph (which also fell for the hoax) by a company called 2LE Media. ”In fact it’s entirely made up, and is part of a satirical comedy / entertainment programme that we are producing for Channel 4,” the statement said.
It think it says a lot about how society views children that many of us, the British media and myself included, found this credible.
Here is a tongue-in-cheek commercial for Fame Daddy. (Did I mention how much I love British humour?)
The Church warned us if we separated procreation from the physical act of love between a husband and wife, children would become commodities, man-made objects to be ordered from a menu to satisfy the whim of the parents. As William E. May so eloquently wrote:
"When a child is begotten through the conjugal act, he comes to be as a gift from God, a gift crowning the spouse's mutual gift of themsleves to each other. When a child is 'produced' it comes to be, not as a gift from God, which in truth it is, but as a product of human control."
And here is yet another in a long line of "services" the fertility industry is willing to provide to make children even more a product to order to specifications. A company called Fame Daddy is poised to provide women with sperm from famous men at a premium price. From The Telegraph:
Fame Daddy will offer would-be-mothers “top quality celebrity surrogate fathers” when it launches next February, according to Dan Richards, its chief executive.
Prices will start at £15,000 for a premium sperm service from the clinic.
The company’s website, which launched last week, claims that women can pick from a range of celebrated high-achievers when picking a prospective father for their offspring. The identities of each high-flying father will kept secret as the donors have been guaranteed anonymity. The men will also be required to sign a legal waiver of their rights to access to the child.
However would-be mothers using the Fame Daddy clinic will be able to identify their area of achievement and other personal attributes.
They can choose from donor dads who have excelled in a range of fields including sport, entertainment and business. The website lists a range of “sample profiles” of typical sperm donors, including an Oscar-winning actor, a member of the House of Lords and an ex-Premiership footballer.
Now Fame Daddy is not exactly up an running yet, so here is hoping this venture never gets off the ground. I am not normally one to hope that an entrepreneur fails, but when they say something like this, I can't help myself:
"To be able to harvest potential from the global gene pool, rather than from the more limited selection of the men she comes into direct contact with, is a major evolutionary leap for women."
Evolutionary leap for women? Seriously? Ordering famous sperm from some celebrity chaser and raising a child to never know his or her father? I call that a step backward, not forward, for both her AND the child. And what happens when the child is not a rock star or star footballer or billionaire banker? Does mom get to sue for a "defective product"?Evolutionary leap indeed. Hat Tip:Matt Swaim
As a former California girl, I am aware that my state of origin is full of contradictions like women who are on the Pill eating nothing but organically grown produce.
Back in 2004 Californians overwhelmingly voted with Prop 71 to publicly fund embryonic stem cell research with billions of dollars because they were told that cures would come. Monies from Prop 73 were going to go fund what everyone was calling the best, most promising line of research: therapeutic cloning. Therapeutic cloning would create a cloned embryo through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) and then destroy that embryo for his or her stem cells. Those stem cells, Californians were told, were going to cure disease. So Californians were cool (whether they realized it or not) with creating genetically-modified human clones (the clones would have mitochondrial DNA from the woman whose egg was used in the cloning process) for medicinal purposes.
Fast forward to 2012 and now California is voting on Prop 37. So while the idea of treating patients with stem cells from cloned embryos was acceptable to CA residents, eating food from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) is not.
Last week I wrote about some pro-life objections to induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology. Yes there are some objections surrounding iPSCs but I hold that iPSCs themselves are not inherently immoral. Cell lines of illicit origin have been used in developing this technology (and unfortunately are used ubiquitously in many areas of research), and it is the use of those cell line to which we should object, not the iPSCs themselves. I will continue to object to the use of HEK 293 and other cell lines that originated with elective abortion when I am aware of their use.
In that piece I used an analogy to vaccines that are produced in cell lines of illicit origin where I did not articulate well enough. I wrote:
The objection of course is that by using HEK 293 to grow virus used in the technique, all iPSC research is morally tainted. To some extent that is true for early research, but scientists are getting away from using viruses for the reprogramming, so iPSC research can be free of this particular stain. Analogously, vaccinations are commonly grown in 2 cell lines derived decades ago from aborted fetuses. Since no new abortions are needed to keep these cell lines going and vaccines are generally seen as vastly improving public health, Catholics can vaccinate their children if they ask for alternatives and voice their objections.
It is my opinion that the same applies here. I object to the use of HEK 293 for research period. Please, scientists, find a suitable alternative. That being said, it is possible that iPSCs in the future can be free from any moral taint coming from DNA or cell lines derived from illicit origin.
Readers have taken that to mean that the researchers are not morally responsible for using HEK 293. That is not at all what I meant. I was arguing from the pro-lifer's prospective, not from the scientists' perspective. What I meant was that while we pro-lifers find vaccines a moral good, we object to the use of cell lines of illicit origin in their production. I should have been more clear that I meant that while many pro-lifers believe that iPSC technology is a moral good, we object to the use of cell lines of illicit origin to produce viruses used in the process.
I apologize for any confusion I have caused. Researchers are responsible for finding alternatives to cell line of illicit origin in their research. Period.
I believe iPSC technology itself is something we can support with the understanding that its history is not perfect and we pro-lifers still have work to do pressuring researchers to abandon cell lines of illicit origin in all their research, not just with iPSCs. iPSCs give scientists the opportunity to work with embryonic-like cells without destroying embryos. That gives me hope for the future of stem cell research.
There has been a lot of talk about Dr. Yamanaka and his work on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) since he won the Nobel Prize earlier this week. There have been some rumblings that pro-lifers should not be so happy about iPSCs since they are not "100% pro-life."
Before I list the objections that some pro-lifers are having with this new technology, let me give you a quick refresher on what iPSCs are and how they are made. Pluripotent cells are cells that can become most or all of the 200 cell types of the body, but they cannot become other tissues like placenta. So pluripotent cells, alone without further manipulation, cannot implant and grow into a fetus, baby etc.
Before Dr. Yamanaka's work, scientists would get pluripotent stem cells from the inner stem cell mass of an embryo. Dr. Yamanaka, realizing that we cannot continue to destroy embryos for stem cells, envisioned a way to reprogram an adult cell back to a pluripotent state. Yamanaka used a virus to deliver pieces of genetic material into an adult cell that "rebooted" that cell back to pluripotency so it can be coaxed into becoming another of the body's cell types. Now scientists can take a skin cell, reprogram it and then grow lung tissue, neurons, or other tissue they want to study. Induced pluripotent stem cells are an alternative to cloning because you get stem cells that are a genetic match to a patient, but without creating and destroying a cloned human embryo.
So what are some of the pro-life objections I have been reading? First, there is a concern that iPSCs are dangerous because it is possible they can be used for cloning purposes. The concern stems from work where scientists, testing the pluripotency of the cells, were able to grow a mouse from just iPSCs suggesting that induced pluripotent stem cells are just like cloning, on their own able to produce a human being. But looking closer you find that the scientists had to manipulate some of the iPSCs with something called tetraploid complementation, so that the iPSCs could become the extra-embryo tissues like placenta. So while cloning creates a complete human embryo capable, at least some percentage of the time, of implanting in a uterus and continuing to grow, reprogramming adult cells back to pluripotency (upon my reading) only creates stem cells, not a complete organism.
Second, there is an objection that the viruses used for the reprogramming were grown in a cell-line called HEK 293. Cell line HEK 293 was derived from the kidney tissue of a boy aborted in the 1970s. HEK stands for "human embryonic kidney." The HEK 293 line was subsequently genetically engineered with viral DNA and is now available for sale from a common chemical supply. While I have never personally worked with HEK 293, I understand that this cell line is commonly used just about everywhere, which of course does not negate the ethical implications, but does shed some light on why HEK 293 was used in developing iPSCs.
The objection of course is that by using HEK 293 to grow virus used in the technique, all iPSC research is morally tainted. To some extent that is true for early research, but scientists are trying to get away from using viruses for the reprogramming, so iPSC research can be free of this particular stain. Analogously, vaccinations are commonly grown in 2 cell lines derived decades ago from aborted fetuses. Since no new abortions are needed to keep these cell lines going and vaccines are generally seen as vastly improving public health, Catholics can vaccinate their children if they ask for alternatives and voice their objections.
It is my opinion that the same applies here. I object to the use of HEK 293 for research period. Please, scientists, find a suitable alternative. That being said, it is possible that iPSCs in the future can be free from any moral taint coming from DNA or cell lines derived from illicit origin.
Another objection is the iPSCs are just like embryonic stem cells and so are no good for treating patients. It is true that because iPSCs are pluripotent like embryonic stem cells they will likely have many of the same safety issues for transplantation. More research is needed. What iPSCs are good for is creating model tissues for scientists to use to study disease progression and treatment. As I have written before, previous to iPSCs, scientists would have to create a mouse or other animal that exhibited the symptoms of a human disease that they were interested in studying. Now they can take a skin cell from a person with a disease, reprogram that cell back to a pluripotent state, and then differentiate them into cells of interest whether they be neurons or fat cells. iPSCs can continue to grow in culture and be frozen giving researchers a nearly limitless supply of diseased cells to work on. This is especially useful in brain disorders because isolating neurons from the brain of a patient is dangerous. Scientists can use the iPSCs to generate tissue used for testing new drugs or other methodologies in the fight against disease.
Another objection is that iPSCs have been used to generate gametes for IVF in animal models. This is true. Scientists have created mouse egg and sperm with this technology and then used them to create mice. Some pundits are talking about using this technique to allow gay couples to have genetically related children. I see this as a problem not with iPSC technology per se, but as a problem with the fertility industry that has an anything goes attitude toward procreation. Get the fertility industry under control with some regulations prohibiting genetically modifying or manipulating gametes and embryos and this objection evaporates.
Stepping back and looking at the big picture, iPSCs I believe are something pro-lifes can be happy about with the knowledge that their history is not perfect. Remember that before iPSC technology, the talk was of nothing other than destroying IVF embryos and creating and destroying embryos through cloning as the "best" ways to develop stem cell cures. Now there is an alternative developed directly as a way to avoid creating and destroying embryos. Which is why moral theologian Father Thomas Berg said the work of Dr. Yamanaka helped to “put human embryonic stem-cell research largely out of business.”
I think that is reason to celebrate.
Clarification:
In the above piece I used an analogy to vaccines that are produced in cell lines of illicit origin where I did not articulate well enough. I wrote:
The objection of course is that by using HEK 293 to grow virus used in the technique, all iPSC research is morally tainted. To some extent that is true for early research, but scientists are getting away from using viruses for the reprogramming, so iPSC research can be free of this particular stain. Analogously, vaccinations are commonly grown in 2 cell lines derived decades ago from aborted fetuses. Since no new abortions are needed to keep these cell lines going and vaccines are generally seen as vastly improving public health, Catholics can vaccinate their children if they ask for alternatives and voice their objections.
It is my opinion that the same applies here. I object to the use of HEK 293 for research period. Please, scientists, find a suitable alternative. That being said, it is possible that iPSCs in the future can be free from any moral taint coming from DNA or cell lines derived from illicit origin.
Readers have taken that to mean that the researchers are not morally responsible for using HEK 293. That is not at all what I meant. I was arguing from the pro-lifer's prospective, not from the scientists' perspective. What I meant was that while we pro-lifers find vaccines a moral good, we object to the use of cell lines of illicit origin in their production. I should have been more clear that I meant that while many pro-lifers believe that iPSC technology is a moral good, we object to the use of cell lines of illicit origin to produce viruses used in the process.
I apologize for any confusion I have caused. Researchers are responsible for finding alternatives to cell line of illicit origin in their research. Period.
I believe iPSC technology itself is something we can support with the understanding that its history is not perfect and we pro-lifers still have work to do pressuring researchers to abandon cell lines of illicit origin in all their research, not just with iPSCs. iPSCs give scientists the opportunity to work with embryonic-like cells without destroying embryos. That gives me hope for the future of stem cell research.
The man that envisioned a better way than destroying human embryos to get embryonic-like stem cells has won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka developed the technique to take an adult cell and reprogram it to an embryonic-like state as a way to avoid the destruction of human embryos. Dr. Yamanka's reprogrammed adult cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and have become a boon for the stem cell field allowing researchers to create new pluripotent stem cell lines for study without creating or destroying embryos.
In the New York Times, Dr. Yamanaka stated, “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters, I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”
Induced pluripotent stem cells are the perfect alternative to therapeutic cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). SCNT creates a cloned embryo that would be destroyed for the pluripotent stem cells inside. Many scientists have called SCNT "the most promising" way to make pluripotent stem cells because it would create embryonic stem cells that are a genetic match to a patient. The problem with SCNT is that to make pluripotent stem cells that are a genetic match, human eggs are needed and a cloned embryo is created and destroyed. Induced pluripotent stem cells also creates pluripotent stem cells that are a genetic match to a patient because the reprogrammed adult cell is from the patient. But iPSCs technology does not require eggs or cloned embryos to do it.
And now iPSCs are coming into their own proving that ethics and science make good partners. Researchers are finding that iPSCs are great for creating models of disease. Previously, scientists would have to create a mouse or other animal that exhibited the symptoms of a human disease that they were interested in studying. Now they can take a skin cell from a person with a disease, reprogram that cell back to a pluripotent state, and then differentiate them into cells of interest whether they be neurons or fat cells. iPSCs can continue to grow in culture and be frozen giving researchers a nearly limitless supply of diseased cells to work on. This is especially useful in brain disorders because isolating neurons from the brain of a patient is dangerous.
The Scientist reports on the award shared with Dr. John Gurdon:
John B. Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan have won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for finding that cells of an adult organism—once thought be terminally locked into their developed state—can start anew. The discoveries, awarded the prize this morning (October 8th) by The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, have ignited research in areas ranging from cloning to cancer treatment.
“Gurdon and Yamanaka fundamentally changed the way we all think about the specialized state of cells,” George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at the Harvard Medical School, wrote in an email to The Scientist. “Collectively they taught us that the identity of a cell can be re-engineered—that an adult cell can be reverted to its embryonic state. This paradigm-shifting concept has opened up whole new avenues of research."
...Since the discovery, other scientists have generated iPS cells from humans—a feat which some argue reduces the need for controversial and difficult to acquire embryonic stem cells. These iPS cells allow researchers to study disease and development in the lab by, for example, generating disease models from the skin of patients with neurodegenerative disorders. The cells are also showing promise for cell replacement therapies to treat various illnesses.
“Induced pluripotent stem cells have already begun to revolutionize medicine,” Paul Fairchild, director of the Oxford Stem Cell Institute, said in an email. They provide “much-needed models of rare and complex disease states while providing sources of cells that may one day be used to replace those that are either worn out or compromised by degenerative diseases.”
All of the cells in our body have all the same DNA in the nucleus. So what makes a heart cell a heart cell and a muscle cell a muscle cell? The different cell types in our bodies express different genes which give them their unique characteristics. Scientists are discovering that by introducing certain factors , they can reprogram a cell into a different kind of cell.
Researchers in Germany have taken brain cells, called a pericytes, and reprogrammed them into neurons that successfully carried electrical impulses. Neurons are those long funny-shaped cells that are the building blocks of the nervous system. This announcement that scientists are able to take existing cells in the brain and coax them to become neurons is terrific news for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s where neurons are lost at an accelerated rate.
Scientists in New Zealand have used cloning and other genetic engineering techniques to create Daisy, a cow that produces milk low in β-lactoglobulin protein which is the cause of some milk allergies. From Fox News:
People allergic to whey may be able to drink newly engineered milk without the unpleasant digestive consequences, according to research released Monday. A team of New Zealand researchers genetically engineered a cow named Daisy to produce milk free of β-lactoglobulin protein that can cause allergic skin, digestive and respiratory reactions predominantly in infants. "Since the protein is not produced in human milk, it's not surprising that this protein may be recognized as a foreign protein in infants and cause allergies," study author and scientist at AgResearch in New Zealand Stefan Wagner told LiveScience. Studies show that about 1 in 12 infants develops an allergic response to whey, but most infants are able to outgrow their allergy.
But before those with a milk allergy rejoice, a lot of safety testing must be done. And they must ask themselves if they would drink the milk from a genetically-engineered cow, that strangely was born missing a tail:
Daisy was born unable to produce the major allergen in whey, but also born four weeks prematurely, and, to the surprise of researchers, without a tail.
"We do have evidence that suggests that the lacking tail is due to an epigenetic defect (that affects gene expression rather than the genes themselves), and we believe it is not related to the genetic modification of the calf, but this must be backed up by more results," Wagner said.
The other day the doorbell rang. Upon opening the door, I found two adorable girls, around age ten, asking me to support their cause by purchasing raffle tickets or magazines or some such. I quickly and forcefully said, "NO THANK-YOU!" and shut my cheery red door before they could even show disappointment.
This was out of character for me. I am usually the first to fork over whatever cash I have in my wallet to whatever good cause is placed in front of me. I always try and be as generous with my money as I possibly can be, which usually leaves me with no cash to give my teenager when she needs gas in her car. I tell you this not because I am patting myself on the back, but to illustrate the oddity of my behavior.
So why did I slam the door in the faces of two cute and innocent girls? They were raising money for the local public school.
Here I go jumping into the fray. I told myself I would never do it, and here I go. I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked about autism and vaccines, especially vaccines made with cells that originated with an aborted baby.
I have always answered these questions privately, never discussing them on this blog, because I know my opinions would certainly be misunderstood and misrepresented. I am not a doctor, I am not an expert on autism, I have never conducted research on autism and so my opinion has always been my opinion and I have kept it to myself.
So what do I say when people ask me if I think vaccinations cause autism? I say, in my very, very humble opinion, that I think it is too early to tell and it would be unwise to jump on that bandwagon without more evidence. Just because A seems to be link with B, does not mean that A causes B. It could be that B causes A. There could be another unknown factor C that, unseen, is the real cause of A. A being correlated with B is not good enough to prove that A causes B. As one very astute and funny man pointed out, just because you see tall people play basketball does not mean that playing basketball makes you tall.
Why do I say that faced with data that autism is on a dramatic rise? Because, while autism diagnosis is on the rise, I am not sure that cases of autism are on the rise. Thirty years ago my little brother was demonstrating some pretty bizarre behavior. Our general practitioner was no help. Today even a lay person could have looked at my brother and diagnosed obsessive-compulsive behavior, but back then it was a mystery. To some extent I think the same thing is happening with autism, especially the mild cases. Thankfully, autism awareness has increased greatly, but that means more children are likely to be diagnosed. Is it possible that the increase in autism is an increase in diagnoses and not cases? It could be.
What about the argument that children with autism are normal until they get vaccinations and then they suddenly show symptoms? Here I can only rely on my experience testing for a "Pervasive Developmental Disorder" (often known as "Autism Spectrum Disorder") called Rett Syndrome. In Rett Syndrome, a girl (boys usually do not survive Retts) seems normal in her development until about 12 to 18 months. Then she regresses and loses the ability to speak or walk. We know that Rett Syndrome, in a majority of cases, has a genetic component, a mutation in an important gene on the X chromosome, that she had well before her symptoms began. But without this information would it not be easy to assume that the shots she got at the doctor caused her regression? It might.
It is my non-expert opinion that autism is complex. So complex that the cause it not likely as simple as a vaccination. I have always had the opinion there is a genetic component that, like in Rett Syndrome, may begin to show itself around the age of 2.
That being said, Australian researchers announced they have developed a test for several genetic markers associated with autism, giving them, they say, the ability to predict autism 70% of the time. From Disability Scoop:
Genetic testing for autism is one step closer to reality, researchers say, a development which may open the door for earlier diagnosis.
In a study published this week in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Australian researchers report that they’ve developed a genetic test that can predict autism with more than 70 percent accuracy among people of central European descent. Further testing in other ethnic groups is ongoing.
The test is based on data from more than 3,300 Americans with autism and over 4,000 of their relatives. Researchers identified hundreds of genetic markers that are associated with an autism diagnosis or are known to protect people from developing the disorder. They then compared the number of risk markers versus protective markers present in an individual to assess their likelihood of having autism.
“This test could assist in the early detection of the condition in babies and children and help in the early management of those who become diagnosed,” said Stan Skafidas of the University of Melbourne who led the study. “It would be particularly relevant for families who have a history of autism or related conditions such as Asperger’s syndrome.”
Scientists said the promising findings may lead to earlier autism diagnosis and intervention, which could reduce the disorder’s long-term behavioral and cognitive effects.
Currently, autism diagnosis is based on clinical observation alone. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children be screened for the developmental disorder at 18 months, but a National Institute of Mental Health survey released earlier this year found that most kids are not diagnosed until after age 5.
Does this prove autism has a sole genetic cause? No because again, genetic markers correlated to autism does not mean these genetic variations cause autism, they are just associated with autism. There still maybe an unidentified environmental component. That component maybe vaccination sensitivity. Again, I think it is too early to tell and more research is needed taking into account a possible genetic predisposition.
But I think the good news here is that researchers are on the trail of autism and will hopefully soon capture and wrangle this monster to the ground.
The man that envisioned a better way than destroying human embryos to get embryonic-like stem cells has won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka developed the technique to take an adult cell and reprogram it to an embryonic-like state as a way to avoid the destruction of human embryos. Dr. Yamanka's reprogrammed adult cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and have become a boon for the stem cell field allowing researchers to create new pluripotent stem cell lines for study without creating or destroying embryos. 
