146 Maternal Twins and Male Gender Bias in Autism Spectrum Disorders
amount of blood from their mother; the uneven supply of blood to each of the
twins introduces uneven amounts of synthetic chemicals that the mother is
inadvertently exposed to during pregnancy. The unequal supply of blood,
mostly ignored in research, may explain the disconcordant twin children.
We should just mention here that schizophrenia maternal twins also show
discordance [15–17]. We are made to believe that schizophrenia is a “genetic”
disease and inherited from one of the parents. The parents are made to feel
guilty that they have transferred this illness to their children (just as mothers of
ASD children were blamed for being bad mothers and “refrigerator mothers”).
But, again, we forget to look at the influence of the environmental factors
which may play an important role in manifestation of this horrific illness. We
are not going to deal with this subject here, since it is beyond the scope of this
book, but will refer to it again at the end of this chapter to further illustrate the
mystery of discordant maternal twins. In Chapter 7, we will describe numerous
endocrine disturbing chemicals (EDCs). If one was exposed to these in utero,
the adverse effects may not manifest until much later in life.The Conundrum of ASD Discordance
in Maternal Twins
The fact is that almost all maternal twins receive different amounts of blood
from their mother. How is that possible? As shown in Figures 6.3 and 6.4, there
are five different kinds of maternal twins. One of the most unfortunate twin2000
PhRMA projections calculated by applying current prevalence rates to population projections.30,00025,000Ages 65–74
Ages 75–84
Ages 85 and over20,00015,00010,000
Number of cases (in thousands)
5,0000
2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100Figure 6.2 The projected increase in prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease. Source: http://www.
silverbook.org/fact/projected‐alzheimers‐disease‐prevalence‐2000‐2100/.