gary goldstein. he is an autism specialist at the kennedy institute. thanks for being here. >> thank you very much. pleasure to be here. >> i want to ask you about some of the things at work because we try to be very solutions-oriented on this program, but i'm going to start off by asking what do you make of these new numbers? >> well, i was a bit surprised to see that the plateau hasn't yet been achieved. we're still seeing an increase every two years. >> you know, people have seen these numbers, and we just take them off as far as how rates -- when you look at the studies, does it giver you any more insight into causes from an environmental perspective or otherwise? >> we know your genes cannot change this quickly. genes change over thousands of years. not over a decade or two. we know even though there's strong genetic influences on autism that they cannot be responsible for the increase. >> so -- >> the other thing that's happened -- in the past decade there's been enormous number of really large genetic studies, and we're identifying genes, but th