Autism Epidemic?

Do we have an Autism epidemic in this country? This is up to debate. However, I personally know two boys diagnosed with Autism. There are also five other boys I know suffering from Autistic symptoms but it's still too early to say for sure since their age is still too young. Most of the boys I know that fall under this category are showing signs such as lack of speech/words, not responding to noise, and/or exhibiting obsessive behavior towards one activity. As a strange coincidence, most of the couples we know that have recently given birth (within the past several years) have all had boys.

There has been a lot of debates over whether immunization shots have triggered Autism. However, there's strong data showing that Autism has a genetic component to it. Namely, if one sibling from a set of identical twins have Autism, the probability that the other twin also has Autism is high. That probability drops to much lower values for non-twin siblings. This is strong evidence that Autism has a genetic component. Since Autism affects boys 4 times as often as girls, this points to some defect with the X chromosome. Since the father's sperm determines the sex of the baby, does that mean that perhaps the health of the sperm has something to do with Autism? Recent studies have focused on the age of fathers as a possible cause of Autism. So does this mean that men now have a "high risk" age to reproduction too? Research points to a mutation of older sperms as a possible cause of Autism in children with parents who have no history of Autism.

The scary part of this is that scientists still don't know the cause of Autism. It is unknown whether it is just a genetic component, environmental effects, or both contributing to the rise of Autistic boys in recent years. As I am looking at having a baby soon, these are scary times.