2023-04-22 09:01:54
The sentence fell in November 2014. “He is autistic, that’s for sure, and we don’t know how he will evolve,” says the doctor. The life of Camille and her companion has since been turned upside down: the autism of their son, 11 years old today, inhabits every hour of their daily life.
Characterized by a set of behavioral, communication and social interaction disorders, theautism spectrum disorder is experienced, in its heavy form, as a handicap. A disability that has become a health concern.
According to the most recent estimates of industrialized countries, the prevalence rate of autism is estimated at 2%. In France, 8,000 autistic children are born each year, according to the Inational institute of health and medical research (Inserm).
On both sides of the Atlantic, the conclusion is unanimous: not only is the number of births of autistic children constantly increasing, but its rise is exponential. In the United States, US health authorities counted one in 5,000 children with autism in 1975, up from one in 68 children in 2014. Only three years later, that rate had risen to one in 59.
Some qualify these figures by invoking the classic trompe l’oeil of all epidemiological data: the development of the diagnosis. Do our societies really have ever more autistic people or simply ever more children diagnosed as such by medicine?
Pollution, the number one suspect
For Camille, herself a medical engineer, the rise of screening cannot explain the exponentiality of the curve, this “increase in the increase”. The multiplication of cases of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders is certainly linked in part to improved diagnosis, concedes Amaria Baghdadli, psychiatrist, but “only in part”, insists the doctor, head of the University Department of Child Psychiatry and the Autism Resource Center at Montpellier University Hospital.
Discovered in the 1970s, the hereditary origins of neurodevelopmental disorders are attested by the entire scientific community. But DNA does nothing to explain this increase in the number of cases. And this, because of a clear scientific reality: our genetic heritage cannot evolve in such a short time.
Our environment, on the other hand, has experienced massive disruption since the post-war period. Atmospheric pollution, contamination of our plates by pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, foods processed by industry, endocrine disruptors: we now live in a chemically modified world.
To understand
For the past ten years, data collection has established an ever more obvious parallel between pollution and autism. So there is indeed a statistical occurrence, “but we have not yet established the causal link from the neurobiological point of view”, continues Dr Baghdadli.
Retrospective, this previous research generally aimed to establish the link once the autistic diagnosis had been established. Which amounted to “making the way upside down”, explains the psychiatrist. “You have to be there when exposure to pollutants occurs, from pregnancy, not after”.
This is where the novelty of the titanic research program that it coordinates with the CHU of Montpellier, called “Marianne cohortThis year, and over the next ten years, this study will medically follow 1,700 pregnant women and their families. Its goal: to understand the early biological and environmental determinants of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. also provide better support for children already suffering from developmental and autism spectrum disorders.
The planet, society, the individual: one health
Funded by the National Research Agency, cThis giant study is the culmination of a long fight, carried out by Amaria Baghdadli in 2014. “We have come from so far”, sighs the psychiatrist. When she was in medical school, her generation “did not even consider studying the link between health and the environment”, recalls the fifty-year-old.
Even in 2017, his warnings had received a cautious welcome within the French scientific microcosm. But with the Marianne project this year, Amaria Baghdadli sees a civic and political awareness, which goes beyond the framework of autism: “Society and decision-makers finally understand that human health depends on the environment, in the chemical and social sense” . The planet, society, the individual: “There is only one health” summarizes the doctor.
This is one of the lessons that Camille draws from her son’s autism. Alternative medicine, art of living, organic food: the young woman and her companion, a biochemist, have gone green. For her child, it’s too late, she sighs. But the cohort, Marianne fills it with hope “for the others”. “The more we demonstrate the environmental impact on our health, the more the lines will move,” she hopes.
Paradigm shift
AT Globally, the spread of chemical pollution has not even begun to slow. According to a study published in the medical journal “Environmental Science & Technology”, the degree of chemical pollution of our planet reached a new critical milestone in 2022.
>> To read also: Eternal pollutants: everywhere and forever
Demonstrating a direct correlation between health and environmental degradation could, however, cause an ecological trigger. This is the point of Xavier Briffault, researcher in social sciences and health philosophy at the CNRS. We are witnessing, according to him, a modification of the politico-environmental paradigm, moving from an ethical ecology to an ecology of public health. In other words: from “polluting is bad” to “polluting is bad”.
Health is not just an end of the ecological fight, but a means, continues the researcher: mobilizing our fears, the health issue makes it possible to put pressure on politicians according to this argument: “Not only are you killing the planet but you are kill”. The sociologist concludes with a glimmer of hope: “Health is one of the most powerful levers of action there is”.
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