If you had autism, would you be scared of passing on bad genes?

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  • Yep but how come normal people can have autistic kids? can't it go the other way around then?

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    • Genes don't always express themselves and sometimes remain dormant when "skipping a generation". I may carry a gene that causes autism but my family may never even exhibit it.

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    • Because while they might have the gene, if their other gene is functional the issue doesn't present itself.

      I might have the terminology wrong, but you have two versions of your genome, one from each parent. Some variants of a gene are considered dominant over another, such as how brown eyes are more common than blue, you have to be dealt two blue eye
      genes to use it, otherwise the brown eye gene wins.

      With autism, we have no idea if genetics even drive it. It could be just psychology. In my case, I actually started acting more autistic after I was told I was autistic because I was scared of looking retarded. Sounds stupid, I know, but that's really what happened.

      In any case, yeah even if it's purely genetic, I might or might not pass it on. Depends on how many play a part in setting up for autism, and on mom's genes too. One weird thing is that there are many more autistic men than women, but they're not all men, so if it is genetic, if we have a son he'll be more likely to be autistic than if we had a daughter instead.

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