Allow me to share a bit of motherly wisdom that I picked up from another mom who had an autistic child. Since the term 'autistic' was new at the time, it was as if some new problem sprung up from no where one day and was looking like it was going to get worse. The cause was unknown then as it is now and we moms could only speculate as to what might have caused it. My term for this problem was the 'Twinkie Theory'. Too much crap being put in our food that didn't belong there.
The other mom had a more relaxed theory for autism that sure did make sense. She calmly explained that since the begining of time, you had plenty of stupid kids born every day. These kids just had their own brand of stupid...hence the label - autistic.
It may sound very un-PC to most but if you have a child with autism, you can see the wisdom in that statement and you stop driving yourself crazy to look for a reason and you play the hand that was dealt to you and go on with life.