Posted on 04/08/2012 6:22:16 PM PDT by neverdem
THE report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that one in 88 American children have an autism spectrum disorder has stoked a debate about why the condition’s prevalence continues to rise. The C.D.C. said it was possible that the increase could be entirely attributed to better detection by teachers and doctors, while holding out the possibility of unknown environmental factors.
But the report, released last month, also appears to be serving as a lightning rod for those who question the legitimacy of a diagnosis whose estimated prevalence has nearly doubled since 2007.
As one person commenting on The New York Times’s online article about it put it, parents “want an ‘out’ for why little Johnny is a little hard to control.” Or, as another skeptic posted on a different Web site, “Just like how all of a sudden everyone had A.D.H.D. in the ’90s, now everyone has autism.”
The diagnosis criteria for autism spectrum disorders were broadened in the 1990s to encompass not just the most severely affected children, who might be intellectually disabled, nonverbal or prone to self-injury, but those with widely varying symptoms and intellectual abilities who shared a fundamental difficulty with social interaction. As a result, the makeup of the autism population has shifted: only about a third of those identified by the C.D.C. as autistic last month had an intellectual disability, compared...
--snip--
But whether the diagnosis is now too broad is a subject of dispute even among mental health professionals. The group in charge of autism criteria for the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has proposed changes that would exclude some who currently qualify, reducing the combination of behavioral traits through which the diagnosis can be reached from a mind-boggling 2,027 to 11, according to one estimate...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Talking late....people just don’t understand averages.
I used to watch my neighbors child. He didn’t walk till he was 18 months, never crawled just got up one day and walked. Didn’t say two words till he was three, then spoke in full sentences.
Yet today at 30, he is a Special Forces Marine and highly decorated.
(((sigh))))
Yep, the money.
Glad you are protecting the child.
Has a lot to do with money lost to aborted Down’s kids.
Special Ed teachers had no purpose any more.
I was a stay-at-home mother, deeply bonded. I knew there was something wrong with my oldest when he was ten days old, even though I didn’t have much experience with babies - he wasn’t seeing the world right. When he stopped looking me in the eye when he was nine months old, when the babbling stopped, when he developed strange fascinations, when he spoke a word or two but stopped, I was terrified in my heart but it took another year for his pediatricians to see that there was something wrong and tell me what it was called!
And on the other hand, his younger brother is not in the least autistic, but he’s definitely a different-drummer kid with attention problems, and the school and a psychiatrist tried to tell us he was on the autistic spectrum.
Under-diagnosis and over-diagnosis - what a difference eight years and a family history makes.
Funny, Amish has an autism rate of 1 per 15000. Somalian refugees settling in Michigan, never dealt with autism in their homeland villages, suddenly have autistic kids born in US. Processed foods? Childhood immunizations? Radio waves from all the electronics around? Who knows. I think the Amish provides some clues. Younger Amish couples are starting to immunize their kids after seeing how severe some child hood illnesses can be. Be interesting to track how they do and any rise in autism rate among these Amish kids.
You’re right - it’s often nothing more than a numbers thing.
My friend's grandchild has been diagnosed as autistic...he's shy...and it takes some time to warm up but he's fine and chooses whom he likes....
Another friend had a supposed ADD kid. Parents told the school to go to hell. The young lady is now a doctor. God bless the parents.
There are truly autistic children, but not in the numbers that the current gurus claim. Like every other scam, it comes down to extravagant amounts of money for clients, researchers, teachers, parents, and anyone else who can grab part of the pot. If there is a real increase in real autism I would suspect something similar to what was discovered for the increase of asthma in children .... parents over dosing Tylenol.
I would think that nothing equals the bonding of a child with it’s biological mom. Just as pheromones AFFECT THE BEHAVIOR of humans so too would similar phenomena occur between a child and it’s mother. Lack of bonding time between babies and their moms MUST have it’s consequences, perhaps AUTISM. I’m not even sure it’s really about “quality time”.. That’s a politically-correct term or scapegoat to justify career women not spending ENOUGH time with their young ones!
Interesting point. Nevertheless, with highly trained education professionals and the “mental health” industry it is always wise to follow the money.
The latest research has shown no connect with immunizations. However, a double mutation on a male gene is a definite indicator that autism is present. We know many parents who have a child on the spectrum. We suspect that their is something in the environment causing this. We just do not know what it is. Believe me, we would love to know. We’re desparate to understand this.
As for the money. Let me explain something. There is NOT a whole lot out there for Asperger’s kids. We have fought and researched and dug and made ourselves exhausted trying to find services. And yes, we pay for everything, including very small private schools to educate our son. Its damn expensive too.
Your child gets grouped with the juvenile deliquents because the public school can’t really cope though they claim they can. IT can be a nightmare in many regards. My son could really play baseball very well, but quit Little League because of the crowds. If you don’t have a child on the spectrum, you can’t possible really understand how this permeates every aspect of your life.
In the case of autism, it is more often a shift in diagnosis, from “retarded” to “autistic”.
Today’s lack of bonding between mother and child COULD be the trigger for autism.
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Good point!
Is there any chance that some of this can be linked to recreational drug use by the parents?
Plus these claims of all this money for the disorder is also bogus. The services for autism have been slashed. Everyone is fighting for an increasingly smaller services.
Its also crap that autism is on the rise due to mom’s working. I am very bonded to my child as is my husband and grandmother, etc. Most of the kids I know on the spectrum, they are to stay at home moms. Your child is different. Normal daycares are not even going to take them.
Find something else to blame other than the parents. This is like saying we wanted our child to be diabetic or have asthma. I see that some FR would like to blame this on cultural conditions instead of environmental or genetic ones, but there is absolutely no proof of this “bonding” problem being a cause for autism.
“He can not cope with large crowds and noise.”
Yep. OTOH, sometimes these kids do very, very well in one focused area—like math, or music, or computers. (Just not crowds!)
My 2nd grade teacher had gone to a conference of dyslexia the summer before I was in her class. While I would not call what she did diagnosing she did point out symptoms that led to the diagnosis. By 7th grade I was reading on a college level.
There’s a commercial running on TV right now for a new drug for boys with ADDHD. Actually, it is an ADDITIONAL drug to be taken with the first drug in case the first drug isn’t being as effective as it is supposed to be. My question, why take the first drug in the first place if it isn’t working, and keep the drugs coming to control the kids who probably just are acting normally.
They want boys to act like little girls.
Bingo!!!! And it takes a lot of drugs and punishments to achieve that wondrous goal.
and their parent(s) can get them on SSI disability, which makes everyone happy (but the child).
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