>>717606570
>It's actually mercury poisoning
Pretty sure a more likely culprit would be lead, unregulated growth hormones in food, and plastic.
But Autism has also always existed, its just that in a pre-industrial world they were more free to be hermits and eccentrics and focus on whatever their hyperfixation was instead of being funneled down a pipeline designed for one specific type of person.

Have you considered that autism isn't abnormal, the abnormal thing is treating it like a mental illness or disease?
One of the major traits of autism is pattern recognition, which group of people do you think benefits the most from medicalizing this condition and filtering them out of society via medication or poverty? Which group of people doesn't want people to not only notice patterns, but lack the social grace to go against the narrative and speak up about it? They might even target this group in particular for castration to prevent them from breeding and having children that can notice things they aren't supposed to notice as well.
Just a thought though haha