Rare vs. Common

Do most cases of autism result from extremely rare and spontaneous genetic mutations or from more common variations? That question has engendered the liveliest debate so far at the SFARI annual meeting.Most researchers estimate that rare variants account for about 15 percent of autism cases. But geneticist David Ledbetter bet $1 for every person in the room yesterday that that number will turn out to be at least 50 percent.Read more at...SFARI, April 2009.