Amish anomaly

The term Amish anomaly was coined by Dan Olmsted, who asserted that he could only find three Amish autistics after searching in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and that two of them were vaccinated.[1]

Background

In his columns, Olmsted quoted Dr. Frank Noonan as saying, "You'll find all the other stuff, but we don't find the autism. We're right in the heart of Amish country and seeing none, and that's just the way it is."[2]

Criticism

Ken Reibel, of the blog Autism News Beat stated that, "The idea that the Amish do not vaccinate their children is untrue.” Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at the CSC, when contacted by Reibel, said that Olmsted never visited the CSC or spent much time in Lancaster County.[3]

Further criticism of Olmsted's reporting comes from David N. Brown, who states that "In March 2006, Drs. Kevin Strauss, Holmes Morton and others documented 9 autistic Amish children, which could raise the autism rate of the Lancaster Amish community Olmsted supposedly investigated to almost 1/5,000 which is still a fraction of the US average of 1/68 [4][5][6] The statement that autism doesn't exist in Amish populations generally is an exaggeration, though the rate is a small fraction of that in the surrounding population.[7][8][9]

Vaccination rates in Amish communities

A 2007 study in the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics on an Amish population in Holmes County, Ohio found that 60% had vaccinated at least some of their children, and 68% had given all their children at least 1 vaccination.[10]

Similarly, a 2006 study by researchers from the CDC, based on a survey sent to residents of the largest Amish community in Illinois, concluded that the Amish may not object to vaccines very often, and that when they do so, it may not be for religious reasons.[11]

Amish incidence of measles

In 2014, a measles outbreak with more than 360 cases, started after Amish travelers to the Philippines contracted measles that year and returned home to rural Knox County. From there, the highly contagious disease spread quickly because of a lower rate of vaccination among the Amish. The county had 54 cases of measles and one hospitalization. Most of its Amish were already vaccinated before the outbreak. The disease was introduced by three unvaccinated missionaries, who had traveled to Philippines (which was itself experiencing a major outbreak).[12]

Alternative explanations

There are alternative explanations for the low Autism/ASD rates in the Amish communities. Autism is thought to have many genetic or epigenetic correlations.[13] If prevalence of ASDs did vary in a relatively isolated, closed population such as Amish communities, it could be explained by gene pool variations compared the general population. Similarly to Amish having statistically higher rates of some conditions (such as dwarfism, Angelman syndrome and metabolic disorders), they could also be expected to have lower rates of some others.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Schulman, Daniel (June 2005). "Drug Test". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on 2007-04-07. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
  2. ↑ Olmsted, Dan (28 July 2006). "The Age of Autism: 'Amish' bill introduced". United Press International. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
  3. ↑ Reibel, Ken (30 January 2008). "Autism and the Amish". Autism News Beat. Archived from the original on 2013-06-27. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
  4. ↑ http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/news2014-autism-rates.htm
  5. ↑ Olmsted Lied, People Laughed: The "Amish Anomaly" hoax
  6. ↑ Strauss, K. A.; Puffenberger, E. G.; Huentelman, M. J.; Gottlieb, S.; Dobrin, S. E.; Parod, J. M.; Stephan, D. A.; Morton, D. H. (2006). "Recessive Symptomatic Focal Epilepsy and Mutant Contactin-Associated Protein-like 2". New England Journal of Medicine. 354 (13): 1370–1377. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa052773. PMID 16571880.
  7. ↑ Puffenberger, EG; Jinks, RN; Wang, H; Xin, B; Fiorentini, C; Sherman, EA; Degrazio, D; Shaw, C; Sougnez, C; Cibulskis, K; Gabriel, S; Kelley, RI; Morton, DH; Strauss, KA (Dec 2012). "A homozygous missense mutation in HERC2 associated with global developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder". Human Mutation. 33 (12): 1639–1646. doi:10.1002/humu.22237. PMID 23065719.
  8. ↑ Jackman, C; Horn, ND; Molleston, JP; Sokol, DK (Apr 2009). "Gene associated with seizures, autism, and hepatomegaly in an Amish girl". Pediatric Neurology. 40 (4): 310–313. doi:10.1016/j.pediatrneurol.2008.10.013. PMID 19302947.
  9. ↑ Alarcón, Maricela; Abrahams, Brett S.; Stone, Jennifer L.; Duvall, Jacqueline A.; Perederiy, Julia V.; Bomar, Jamee M.; Sebat, Jonathan; Wigler, Michael; Martin, Christa L.; Ledbetter, David H.; Nelson, Stanley F.; Cantor, Rita M.; Geschwind, Daniel H. (10 January 2008). "Linkage, Association, and Gene-Expression Analyses Identify CNTNAP2 as an Autism-Susceptibility Gene". American Journal of Human Genetics. 82 (1): 150–159. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2007.09.005. PMC 2253955Freely accessible. PMID 18179893.
  10. ↑ "Pediatrics". Retrieved 6 June 2015.
  11. ↑ Yoder, J. S.; Dworkin, M. S. (2006). "Vaccination Usage Among an Old-Order Amish Community in Illinois". The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 25 (12): 1182–1183. doi:10.1097/01.inf.0000246851.19000.3e. PMID 17133167.
  12. ↑ AP (1 July 2014). "Measles outbreak complicates 2 big Amish events". USA Today. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  13. ↑ "209850 AUTISM". Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man.
  14. ↑ Hagood, E. Allison (2012). Your Baby's Best Shot: Why Vaccines are Safe and Save Lives. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 136.
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