Comments:No single cause of autism, research review concludes

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I think that using the medical term "neurological" somehow obscures the plain fact that autism most probably starts in a form of brain injury. If parents and members of the public could understand a little of how detailed and complicated the brain "machinery" is that allows "normal" people to have a good enough level of intelligence, speech and social skills, they might begin to realise that an exact explanation of all autism is unlikely and maybe impossible. It seems reasonable that there is a genetic component in some families as there are similar personalities in families- which means brains are rather alike. When one tiny, critical part of the brain goes wrong you get families with, for example(in real life,two highly intelligent parents, one child becoming an internationally renowned scholar, another working for Google and a third who is quite autistic (although very bright with similar abilities to his brothers). It would be a good idea to tell people that preventing autism is extremely unlikely, even within families.

Direct link to publication for people who would like to read the source article would be very useful.

The title suggests that no single cause exists. This is not supported by the story, it's sources or the research. It is still unknown. There are risk factors which are correlated, but no cause is determined. For all we know crickets song could be the cause.

Just look at the titles of the source stories. "Risk factors for autism remain elusive: study" — Reuters, July 11, 2011 "Search for Autism Cause Yields Many Suspects" — MedPage Today, July, 11, 2011 "Birth Complications Linked to Autism" — WebMD, July, 11, 2011 "Fetal and Birth-Related Complications May Be Linked to Autism"

Instead of letting the results of the study show, let's just let journalists pick and choose what they think the research means. All these titles lean in different directions some of them are just plain wrong. I won't go through all of them because this is the Wikinews article.

The research did not conclude that there is no single cause of Autism. No conclusion like that at all.

The article concludes that there are most likely multiple factors interacting, i.e. that most likely genetic factors combined with factors surrounding birth (and maybe other factors) result in autism. That there is no "one" cause.