"Though its causes are unclear, it has a strong genetic component"

Autism is an EPIDEMIC.  There has never been a recorded genetic EPIDEMIC.  Ever.  Even genetics professional journals, citing markers for autism, don't cite them as the CAUSE.  The EPIDEMIC needed a TRIGGER.  What is common to so many children, in so many countries, of so many varying environments, of so many varying diets?

Look at the timing of this article.  How many kids are going to be asked to "catch up" on shots for school?
And now parents will be incorrectly reassured when they read this article, or by school staff who have read this article, that vaccines aren't the cause of the epidemic.  Could the timing possibly be intentional?
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"By Baron-Cohen’s account, autism is just an exaggerated version of the male profile...."

Yet they don't mention the role of testosterone.  They certainly don't mention testosterone vis-a-vis thimerosal.  And extreme maleness does not account for the gut pathology or the gut-brain relationship and associated impaired gut function, malabsorption, and toxins getting to the brain."
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"If Baron-Cohen is right, autism is not just a disease in need of a cure. It’s a mental style that people can learn to accommodate. Sometimes it’s even a gift."

He has obviously not lived the life of a severely autistic child.
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"Males aren’t hopeless, though. They show a lifelong advantage on tests of spatial and mechanical reasoning. In fact they’re nearly twice as likely as women to score more than 700 on the SAT math test, and four times as likely to become engineers. Social conditioning may account for some of that gap."

Well, this could squash some research funding.  700 on the SAT math test is pretty good.  Unfortunately, how many thousands of autistic children are lucky if they can give their teachers 5 objects upon request and know to stop counting at 5?  After months of trying? Ever??
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"It’s not hard to see how autism fits into this scheme. In its classic form, the condition leaves people virtually devoid of social impulses."

They've focused on social in this article.  They haven't focused on the severe learning disability and dangerous lack of self-help and speech skills.  And they haven't focused on real physiological damage, illness, pain, and behaviors caused by the destruction of bodily systems by vaccines.
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"Autistic people make generalizations, too (“it’s a train,” “it’s a blender”), but studies suggest they work from the bottom up, attending doggedly to everything their senses take in. That has nothing to do with maleness, but it helps explain various aspects of autism—the encyclopedic memory, the lightning-fast calculation and the extreme sensitivity to
sounds, lights and textures. It also ties in neatly with recent studies linking autism to super fast brain growth during the first years of life. Researchers believe that process may generate more sensory neurons than the brain can integrate into coherent networks."

They do not address what caused physiological destruction and dysfunctions that cause aberrant brain development and sensory integration disorders.  They don't talk about sensory disturbances caused by mercury or the destruction mercury causes.  They never tell us exactly how many kids have big heads, or too many cells of some sort, or how a vaccine-injury might have caused that.  They don't talk about enzymes, or neurotransmitters, etc. disrupted by vaccine components.