Hiding behind genetics to avoid culpability for environmental causes of autism

Genetics is the darling of the biomedical research industry. For diseases ranging from cancer to skin disorders, investigators have been busily at work for decades trying to identify the conditions’ underlying genetic causes. However, these same investigators – and the reporters who communicate their findings to the public – are often strangely incurious about the role of environmental toxins as triggers of disease.

A story about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) published in October 2017 by the news website Vox furnishes an example of this genetics-as-the-explanation-for-everything perspective....