Does Ultrasound Cause Autism?

Does Ultrasound cause Autism?

Because we have a baby on the way, we've been getting a lot of advice...   

One bit of advice we got, a warning really, was to tell us that we are bombarding our unborn child with ultrasound, and that could lead to autism. 

Ultrasound has been around for many decades, if there were any clear dangers it would have been obvious by now.  To suddenly fear something that has been demonstrated to work safely for decades just seem silly to me.  But to be fair, if there were some sort of subtle damage being done, during an ultrasound exam, it may indeed take this long to discover it.  

So what new studies do the anti-ultrasound people have back up this claim?  Typically they don't seem to have any, they seem to rely on the fear of "what if it's true".  I imagine that, for a lot of people, that's all it would take.  However, I need to know what the evidence points to before I can make an informed decision.  So after looking around the internet at some reputable sites (like WebMD and HeathCentral) and only finding positive things being said about the safety of ultrasound, I started looking at what the anti-ultrasound websites had to say.  I found that those websites make a lot of claims, but the only actual evidence they seem to offer is that they refer back to one or two studies.  So off I went looking for those two studies.

The first study, they refer to, is a 20 year old study (See 1993 Lancet article), that seemed to have found that human fetuses, that were exposed to multiple ultrasound (in the third trimester), had a slightly lower birth weight.  However, if you actually read the article, it turns out that the weight difference that they found was 25 grams (less than one ounce), and that was the difference in the mean birth weight of the two groups.  You might be asking yourself "what does low birth weight have to do with autism anyways?".  That's a great question, birth weight shouldn't have anything to do with autism. This study seems to be sited only in order to show that ultrasound might be affecting your baby, somehow.  It's also worth noting that when anti-ultrasound websites site this study they don't bother to mention the follow-up study.  The same group that performed the first study did a follow-up on those same children, eight years later (see Lancet article).  The newer study found that there was no perceivable differences between the children of two groups.  NO DIFFERENCE!  The findings from the original study doesn't seem to have ever been confirmed by any newer studies.  The first study may only been a statistical aberration. 

The second study, that they seem to site, is a 2006 study done at Yale (you can see/hear it at 2006 NPR article).  As the research team leader (Dr. Rakic) points out, this study was done with relatively high levels of ultrasound (because of relatively small size of the mice), and for prolonged periods of time (30 minutes focused on the brain) and the effects they found were slight.  The study makes no association with any behavioral changes in the mice later on.  When evaluating a study like this, keep in mind that the damage done by sound waves is all about the dosage level, the volume.  High levels of sound can be damaging, it can damage to your hearing and it can even damage the mechanical integrity of objects (like breaking a glass).  However, low intensity sounds will never accumulate to cause that same kind of damage.   The Yale study can not be used as any evidence for the dangers of normal ultrasounds, performed for normal durations.

So, you might be asking yourself "what's the harm with just being wary of ultrasounds?"  Like with all beliefs, the harm depends on whether or not the belief is actually real, and how you act on those beliefs.  

In the case of ultrasound, there are real demonstrable benefits to using it.  If you avoid the doctor proscribed ultrasounds you risks complications, ranging from minor complications all the way up to death.  If you avoid extra (elective) ultrasounds you may only loose an extra baby picture.  Now, weigh those benefits, which are real, against the risks, which are just speculations based on nothing more than the fear of "what if". 

Also, the harm might not just come from just being wary of ultrasounds, it could come from something entirely different.  Believing in one irrational thing often leads to believing in other irrational things.  If you're going to change your behavior, about ultrasound, based on an unsubstantiated belief what other claims are you also going to act on without sufficient evidence? 

Will you be wary of cell phones because some have claimed they might cause brain cancer (I wonder what they do to fetuses)?   Are you going to move away from power poles, because some have claimed they might cause leukemia?  Will you be wary of vaccinations because some claim they might cause autism?  

"The wise man proportions their belief to the evidence" - David Hume

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RIP Kepler

RIP Kepler

3/6/2009-8/15/2013

NASA has confirmed that there is no hope for correcting the problem with the Kepler spacecraft.  It seems that two of its four positioning wheels (reaction wheels) are non-operational and can't be freed up.  Kepler did manage to function for its intended four year mission, so it was still a successful mission. 

During its mission, the Kepler spacecraft has found 3,548 (and counting) candidate planets, and 135 of them have been confirmed by ground based telescopes.  Of those 135 confirmed planets, about five are in the habitable zone, in other words they are of the right temperature that they could have liquid water on their surface.  And, the Kepler mission isn't done yet, the spacecraft has collected a lot of data, and going through all that data takes time.  The Kepler mission team may continue to find new planet candidates for many more months to come.  Also, there is a proposal to re-task the Kepler spacecraft for other purposes that don't require precision positioning (the two wheel proposal).  

Kepler's replacement spacecraft, the TESS mission,  isn't set for launch till 2017.  Till then, we'll have to rely on ground based planet finding missions.  These are very exciting times to be alive.

My review of Ray Comfort's "Evolution vs. God"

Have you had a chance to see Ray Comfort's new documentary "Evolution vs. God".  The film is available for free (linked below), but it will cost you 38 minutes of your life.  And no, you'll never get those minutes back.

For those of you who think that there might be a good case to be made against evolution, or maybe even for creation, this film is not it...  Ray Comfort put this documentary together by interviewing  some scientists, students, and even some people on the street. 

Right off the bat, Ray tries to pretend that evolution is not observable, and therefore it is not science.   This is a silly argument.  Fossils are observable, their ages are measurable, organisms changing over time (morphologically and genetically) is an observable fact.  And not only is it observable, it's repeatable.  Every time a new fossil is unearthed and dated, the science is being repeated and tested.  If you're wondering why, out of all those being interviewed, not one person said what I just said, I'm wondering the same thing.  There seems to have been lot of selective editing going on with this documentary (see here), and Ray seems to have been dishonest with his previous edits before (see here).  So, it is very possible that they did answer Ray's question about observable evidence, but he is not really looking for answers, only video clips that support his preconceived conclusion.

Next in the documentary, Ray takes on the tactic of confusing the issue by using the term "kind", as in one "kind" of creature vs. another "kind".   The term "kind" has no scientific definition, so he is free to play fast and loose with it, changing its meaning as needed.  "You say it's a new species of fish, but it's still a fish, it's the same kind"  This shifting of the goal post, in how much change is needed in order to prove evolution, is only meaningful to creationists.  In science, any biological change over time is evolution. Creationist, like Ray, say that they will accept "micro-evolution" but not "macro-evolution".  Again, these terms are not really scientific terms, so they can move the goal post as needed.  The very argument, that macro-evolution is somehow different from the changes that they do accept, implies that there is some sort of master DNA (like a backup) in each organism that will only allow an organism to change to a point. But no further!  There is no cellular repository that holds a master copy of the "original-kind's" DNA.  If you want to argue that "macro-evolution" is impossible, it is up to you to prove/show/demonstrate that there is some sort of mechanism that could prevent genetic change from accumulating over time, that there is some limit.  Science has clearly shown that genetic information does change over time, and those changes are cumulative.

Ray then tries a common tactic of attempting to equivocate belief in evolution as being some form of faith.  Again, this is silly.  An average person may indeed need to trust the experts in order to believe that evolution occurred.  And as some will to point out, trust and faith can sometimes be used interchangeably.  But that doesn't mean that they are equivalent.  Most of us understand the difference between trust and faith.  Trust is earned and faith is given.  In other words, I trust the experts because I have been given many examples of them backing up their claims.  Every bit of technology, every medical advance, is a demonstration that the experts got it right.  Faith is truly a cop-out, it's the last excuse given in order to "justify" holding a belief without good reason. 

The questioning then moves on to erecting a whole bunch of straw-man type arguments; "can you make a flower out of nothing" (as if that's what the theory of evolution says), "do you believe that nothing exploded" (as if that is what the big bang theory says, and as if that had anything to do with evolution), "do you really believe that everything could have come from an explosion, including giraffes" (really, are we now bypassing evolution completely and just saying modern animals came from the big bang explosion?).

Then, for some reason, Ray thinks it's important to show how some of the people seemed to have trouble naming some famous atheists.  Again I have to wonder about all the answers that were edited out.  He goes on to point out why he thinks some of their answers were wrong.   Ray, like a lot of people, doesn't seem to know what an atheist is, and he also doesn't seem to understand (or allow for) some people truly being atheists even though they don't adopt the label when describing themselves.  Carl Sagan and many others, who are in fact atheists, don't want the stigma that can sometimes come with adopting that label.  Atheism is just a-theism, which is just another word for non-theism or non-belief in a god.  Many, like Ray, have this misconception that atheists actually believe that there is no god.  It is true, that a person who holds the belief that there is no god would still be called an atheist, but that type of atheist is less common and they are often referred to as strong atheists or anti-theists (anti-belief in god, as in belief that there is no god).  To misrepresent all atheists as if they were strong atheists, is like asserting that all Christians are like Catholics.  Ray's only point in weeding through who was "a real atheist", seems to be to get to the one atheist he can say blew his own brains out, and say "see, there is your poster boy for atheism".

Ray then goes on to argue that belief in evolution leads to immorality.  As if the prospect of having unpleasant results would somehow change the truth-claim as to whether or not it actually happened.  This argument makes no sense.  And besides that, no one is claiming that we should base our societies, or how we treat each other, on what evolution has to say about anything. 

Finally, near the end, Ray devolves into his typical fear tactics, 'look how bad you've been over your lifetime, you need to save yourself from (Christian) hell'.  He doesn't bother to consider how bad he might be in the "eyes" of another god.  He doesn't seem to think it matters if our conversion were only motivated by our own self-serving survival instinct.  Motivation by fear seems fine for his god.  And he ends up admitting that he doesn't even consider that he might be wrong.

Needless to say, I did not find this documentary compelling, in the least.  Ray has again shown himself to be, in my opinion, a person who is happy to argue irrationally and dishonestly if needed, just to bolster his own convictions.  I would really love to see the unedited interviews, to see what really happened, but I doubt that will happen.
Feel free to comment.

Introduction

Hello all, welcome to my blog.  This is my first blog, so constructive feedback is appreciated.

A little about me:

I'm a science enthusiast, who makes it a point to try to understand all areas of science, and I endeavor to keep up with what's new.  I'm an avid reader of books, listener of audio books and podcasts, and watcher of documentaries.  

I'm a skeptic (not a cynic), which means that I don't just accept claims without understanding the evidence, and the reasoning, behind those claims.  For the exact same reason, I'm also an atheist, which simply means I'm a non-theist, in that I do not hold any god-belief.  Or to put it another way that you might relate to, we're all atheists when it comes to other peoples gods.  I simply use the atheist label, to describe my own lack of theistic belief in all gods.  I'll become a theist as soon as someone can demonstrate that their god exists.  If you have any good evidence, I would certainly like to know.

My reason for this blog: 
I'm often the go-to-guy, when it comes to evaluating new health claims, science claims, anti-science claims and supernatural claims.  My intention is to use this blog as a continuation of that function.