Is autism an evolutionary experiment, or human interference?

I had a discussion with a young lady one evening about autism, its various levels, and other associated illnesses. There seems to be two schools of thought.
1. That autism is caused by chemical interference of society, contamination from products produced by us, (the human race) which causes anomalies in foetal development causing deficiencies in many social skills while enhancing one unique skill. I would consider this unlikely.
2. That autism may be a series of evolutionary experiments which develop unusually high capabilities on one area of the brain at the deficit of other attributes (predominantly social skills).

I would side with doctors who think toxins from vaccines like mercury and/or infections play a greater role in this condition ,along with numerous other conditions.

i'm under the school of thought (along with a few friends it seems) that autism and cancer are both evolution at work.

Autism is an affect on the brain, certain area's excel while others do not.

Cancer is slightly different, cells mutate, causing them not to die, this spreads to other cells hence cancer. Only thing is, one is mental and the other is physical, (and more deadly)

i can for some reason picture the future going into a new age of homosapians and neiandertahlls, we'll have the brains, (excelled brainpower, experemented by autsim)

vs extreme braun

(if a cell is damaged it commits suicide straight away, but what if the cell didn't kill itself? and the other cells faught the urge to save it, it forced itself to carry on working until it was actually dead even if that work were just reproducing working cells)

Either way these are just my thoughts.

It is plain and simply a glitch in our genetic code, could have been fever in the mother during a crucial period of fetal development, or mercury in the fish she ate, but these abnormal brain functions have been since recorded history. Therefore I would just attribute it to modern science keeping more women from losing a pregnancy that nature would have allowed the body to slough off or failure to flourish would have caused the infant born to perish. But we see so much of it due to intervention.

I am prone to opt for the latter. I believe the govermnet is trying o reduce the population by any means necessary regardless if it is at the expense of out children.