67). Autism has surpassed other conditions such as Down's syndrome and multiple sclerosis and has been one OF the most popular neurological condition affecting children worldwide. Autism affects more than 400,000 children in the United States. Once perceived as a disorder cause by "faulty mothering" Autism has now been discovered to be a life long biological syndrome, with origins across the fields of genetics, neurology, immunology, and biochemistry. Autism has shown to have affects on the gastrointestinal and central nervous systems (Gleberzon & Gleberzon, 2001). .
The present author intends to illustrate that autism is directly related to development in the brain, most specifically, damage to the brain stem during the first few weeks of embryological development, when the brain stem is developing or damage to the brain stem done (TRY TO FIND ANOTHER WORD, I AM DUMB CANT THINK) later in life, and plays a role in autism. "The authors conclude that the common group of anomalies noted in both cases of Thalidomide embryopathy and Mobius sequence suggests that brain stem damage probably occurring early in embryogenesis can sometimes be associated with autism" (Liesegang, p. 633).This author intends to show that autism is a mixture of many genes acting together as well as interacting with the environment to produce the symptoms that are autism, and to stress that a shortened brain stem also may have a large impact on this disorder. (ARE ALL INSTANCES OF AUTISM SUPPOSED TO CAPITIALIZED, I NOTICED SOME ARE AND SOME ARE NOT).
METHODS.
This author plans to accomplish this goal by providing a general overview of what Autism is as well as comparing and contrasting the ideas and developments by many authors about the symptoms and some researched etiologies about where autism came from. The present author will do this by giving personal information derived from direct contact with autistic children and by researching information about all aspects of autism, in journals, the Internet and at the same time using the textbook.