Getting to the Bottom: The Imus Center and the Northvale autism “cluster”
A few days ago I noted that the word imus—as in shock-talk host Don Imus and his wife, Deirdre Imus (who has not infrequently publicized her views about an environmental cause of autism)—-has (at least) two meanings in Latin: “We go,” when imus is the first person plural, present tense, of the verb “go,” eo, ire, ii, iturum; and also “go, mouse!,” when imus is taken as i, mus, with i the second person singular imperative of eo, ire, ii, iturum and mus meaning, indeed, “mouse.” There is a third Latin meaning of imus: The word can also function as an adjective meaning “inmost, deepest, bottom-most, last“; in this instance, imus is the superlative form of the adjective inferus, which means “lower, southern, of the lower world.” The superlative form of an adjective refers to the furthest degree of something: “Tallest” is the superlative form of “tall” and “oldest” of “old,” as in “Charlie is the tallest student in his classroom, though he is not the oldest”; ima vox thus means a “low-pitched voice.”
“Imus” meaning the “deepest” or the “bottom-most” or the “lowest”: It would not be terribly difficult to take this meaning and apply it to Don Imus’ tendency to use offensive language, as he did in regard to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. His wife, Deirdre Imus, has spoken more recently about autism and specifically about possible environmental causes of autism, and so it seems rather possible to consider the “bottom-most” meaning of imus. As in, Ms. Imus and her Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology® which, as the December 26th Bergen Record (of northern New Jersey) notes, initiated a study into concerns about an “autism cluster” in Northvale, New Jersey.
As I wrote in October:
In June, it was reported that 14 out of 39 children born since 1997 to teachers at a special education school in Northvale have “disabilities ranging from autism to muscular degeneration.” This finding immediately led to proclamations that there was an “autism cluster” in Northvale, which is in highly populated Bergen County and just over the border from New York state. The special ed school was housed in a long-since closed Catholic school, St. Anthony’s, and the St. Anthony’s Task Force was initiated by the Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology®, at Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC).
The St. Anthony’s school site is owned by the Newark Archdiocese, which has hired Cranford (NJ)-based engineering firm PMK Group to study the property and, according to Archdiocese spokesman Jim Goodness, has “found nothing unusual with the property.” The Archdiocese has also “declined to release the report to The [Bergen] Record, citing potential litigation.” Dr. Lawrence D. Rosen, the medical advisor for the Imus Center who led the study regarding the “possible cluster,” suggests a cover-up: “‘”That’s what they [the Archdiocese] said……..We’re still waiting to see a copy of the report. We’d love to see that.’” The Bergen Record further reports that New Jersey’s “Department of Health and Senior Services also found no abnormalities after completing a walk-through to evaluate the building” and that the “preliminary results of air quality tests” conducted by the Northvale school district have found “nothing unusual.”
Dr. Rosen is saying that the “possible cluster” is “‘legitimate.’” Regarding the notion of an “autism cluster,” this was said by Dr. Walter Zahorodny, director of the New Jersey Autism Study and assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in the October 17th Bergen Record:
“It’s not really interpretable scientifically. I wouldn’t say it’s meaningless, but it would take some more basic investigation to show if this was indeed a cluster..It seems what’s being reported is an informal survey based on a small number of cases.”
And, as the December 26th Bergen Record cites Michael Greenberg, director of the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment at the Edward J. Bloustein School, Rutgers University:
“It’s the cause of the problem that is very difficult to say………….With clusters, the only time we can find something is usually in a workplace, usually in a factory … like asbestos mines. Then you’ll have a cohort of workers exposed to substances hours upon hours, day after day.”
Deirdre Imus’ Center seems indeed to be intent on getting to the bottom of the Northvale “autism cluster” and to the increases in the prevalence rate for autism, which is now 1 in 150 among children in the US and 1 in 94 in New Jersey. Alex Nussbaum, chief environment reporter for the Bergen Record recently posted about Northvale and autism (and kindly referred to Autism Vox). He asks if
“any knowledgeable commenters have an opinion about the Imus Center or the lead researcher here, Lawrence D. Rosen? Are they known for credibility in this area? Agenda-pushing?”
I will note that Deirdre Imus’ line of environmentally friendly cleaning products is displayed on her Center’s website and it does seem that “greening” and “cleaning” are two of the Center’s concerns. Because of this, it is all the more necessary for researchers at Ms. Imus’ Center to take into account the extent to which public and professional understanding and awareness of autism, and our tools for diagnosing autism, have evolved and grown over the past few years. A study published earlier this year by Paul Shattuck, a professor in the School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, showed how the U.S. Department of Education’s criteria for classifying special needs children have changed and how these changes have affected the numbers of autistic children: Prior to the early 1990s, the Department of Education did not have an autism classification. Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism, which was published at the start of 2007 by Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University, describes more precisely how the diagnostic criteria for autism have changed and have been broadened to include more people. While it may feel as if there is an “autism epidemic,” these changes in our cultural and social understanding of autism need to be carefully considered.
To get to the bottom of anything about autism can be a complicated, and complex, story.
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POSTED IN: Cause, Classics, Environment, Epidemic, Language, New Jersey, Vaccines
6 opinions for Getting to the Bottom: The Imus Center and the Northvale autism “cluster”
Harold L Doherty
Dec 27, 2007 at 10:53 am
“Because of this, it is all the more necessary for researchers at Ms. Imus’ Center to take into account the extent to which public and professional understanding and awareness of autism, and our tools for diagnosing autism, have evolved and grown over the past few years.”
Indeed. And the role of environment as a contributing factor in causing autism is part of that greater understanding of autism
1.
“Studies of twins have established that it is not 100 per cent genetic, since even among identical twins, when one has autism, the likelihood of both twins having autism is only about 60 per cent. This means there must also be an environmental component, but what it is remains unknown.”
Simon Baron-Cohen, Freedom of Expression, TIMESONLINE, December 14, 2007
2. Dr. Martha Herbert, a Harvard neuroscientist and Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, said a few years ago, autism researchers would be marginalized if they talked about environmental factors. But now, “any major article or proposal concerning the causes of autism is coming to be considered incomplete if it doesn’t talk about a potential role of environmental factors.”
There is little doubt that the 1994 expansion of the DSM autism characterizations and greater autism understanding has contributed significantly to the explosion of autism diagnoses. But the existence of those factors do not necessarily account for the incredible increases we have seen and there are no studies or data to prove that they account for the entire increase. Grinker’s assumptions do not end scientific inquiry with respect to autism and possible environmental factors. The examination of potential environmental contributors to the increases in autism continues.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Dec 27, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I heard Martha Herbert speak at the 2007 Eden Insitute-Princeton conference (one of her final comments was about dolphins and mercury exposure in the ocean, not about autism). She had much to say at the April IOM workshop on the environment not to mention her article in the ASA magazine, the Advocate. Like Deirdre Imus, she is starting from an environmental perspective and this colors her views.
Emily
Dec 27, 2007 at 5:12 pm
There are so few phenotypes of disease or disorders that are 100 percent genetic that I’m surprised anyone’s even bothering to equivocate about it. The presence or absence of a given allele is, in most cases, just the beginning of the story. There are so many factors–promoter activity, epigenetic regulation, pre and post transcriptional/translational regulation, modification of the final protein product or its activity or some effect along that pathway–that I’m hard pressed to think of very many genes *at all* that are not subject to environmental influences.
Yes, identical twins who inherit the allele for achondroplasic dwarfism will have quite similar dwarfism phenotypes, but even that may exhibit some variation thanks to environmental modifications. There’s no promise even that two siblings who share the same X chromosome from their father will experience the same genetic influences from that chromosome or even experience them in the same tissues.
Our genes don’t operate in a vacuum. Of course there are environmental influences.
Not to go nuts invoking Occam’s razor here, but the proximal influence on these children appears to be the profession of their parent. Why are they special ed teachers? Do these things occur in their family trees? What is the ratio of offspring with these disorders among special ed teachers in general and how does it compare to these very small numbers in New Jersey? Wouldn’t that rationally be the first place to look rather than rushing to environmental explanations to explain the “cluster”? Are there no ways to rule out what most people think of as “environmental”–i.e., sick building, etc.–by looking at the children of others who taught there? Were these the only people working or who ever have worked in that building while reproducing? These are legitimate, rational questions that ought to be examined without reference to people’s pet ideas about etiologies.
So far, it just looks like anecdotal information without any real scientific investigation (i.e., the scientific method: observe and collect facts, ask question, formulate hypothesis to answer question, design experiments to prove/disprove hypothesis, collect data, draw conclusions). It would seem that here, there has been an Aristotelian leap from observation to conclusion, with little in the way of true experimentation/ruling out/data collection involved.
Daisy
Dec 27, 2007 at 11:46 pm
I found Grinker’s book fascinating and understandable. I hadn’t realized (until I read his book) that my child was diagnosed with Asperger’s fairly early in the timeline of the new, updated diagnostic criteria. The difficulty convincing the school district of the need for a referral finally (almost) made sense.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Dec 29, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Emily, Occam’s razor and Aristotle in the same comment! I think the profession of the parents and their probable greater sensitivity to the learning and other differences of their children may have played some part, as you noted:
And, the numbers are very small. Dr. Rosen had a post about the “cluter” on The Whole Child blog but his post does not seem to be up anymore.
@ Daisy: One thing that stood out to me from reading Grinker’s book is that Charlie’s first 10 years—from 1997 to 2007—overlap with a huge upsurge of information and public awareness (such as it is) about autism. I feel, more and more, that things would have looked very different for Charlie had he been born even a few years earlier.
What will the Trump Factor do for autism?
Dec 29, 2007 at 7:35 pm
[…] bus, or boat from anywhere in New Jersey). (Yes, the same New Jersey that is said to have an “autism cluster,” is said to be trampling on the rights of the parents of preschoolers for requiring […]
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