Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates 558
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has raised eyebrows, and concern among current and prospective parents, with a new report documenting that the rate of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States jumped 30% between 2008 and 2010, from one in 88 to one in 68 children. CDC officials don't know, however, whether the startling increase is due to skyrocketing rates of the disorder or more sensitive screening, or a combination of both."
Medicalizing Normality (Score:5, Insightful)
'Nuff Said
really? really. (Score:5, Insightful)
about a century and a half ago, nobody ever heard about autism.
you wouldn't be diagnosed an autist, but simply made to stand in a corner of the class with a dunce cap a lot.
i can picture the headlines.
autism discovered!
sudden surge in number of autists baffles scientists!
as we get better at diagnosing conditions like this, naturally there will be a rise in the number of positive diagnoses.
Shifting thresholds (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect a lot of diagnoses concern borderline cases, that would previously not have been counted as verified autism - so before, people would be classified as "odd" or "geeky" but not as someone who carries a mental disability.
The same thing happened with depression. In the old days, depression was virtually unheard of, aside from extreme cases of people constantly trying to take their own lives. Nowadays, everybody and their dog gets depressed at some point during the year, and prescribed medicine.
Autism is the new ADD (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying that all or even most of the diagnoses of autism are false positives, but when you're living in a world where human communities are dwindling and become more insular - so there is less direct social engagement, extended families are spread across continents - so this core social unit is less dynamic and extensive, and people spend more and more time in front of screens - at work and at home, this sort of result is not overly surprising. Shit, when did the first iPhone come out? Mid 2007? Coincidence? iThink not.
Increased screening sensitivity is probably playing a big factor as well: "Tommy seems rather introverted and shuns the company of others. He also throws a huge tantrum when we take away the tablet with the toons on it. Probably autism." I'm not saying this is due to negligent parenting, but when there is an obvious diagnosis that fits the symptoms, why look any further? Again, these are the marginal cases which are sufficiently prevalent to cause this spike.
That's a bit simplistic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting the cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are people so quick to say vaccines are connected? Wait until some weirdo declares that soap causes autism, and see how the world behaves even after the claim is debunked times over. Just like with vaccines. Enjoy the smell of the (literally) unwashed masses then.
Re:Autism is the new ADD (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a theory, it's a wild conjecture. Where is your evidence for a rise in misdiagnosis?
Oh, I don't know - maybe the fact that this study is based in the US, which has a track record of "over-diagnosing" mental health disorders in children, such as ADHD ( http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd... [cdc.gov], http://www.psychiatrictimes.co... [psychiatrictimes.com]).
Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!
Re:really? really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus a number of parents that can't accept that their precious offspring simply may be plain stupid or lazy as any other kid.
There HAS to be a reason and there HAS to be someone or something responsible for Li'l Joe standing in the corner with the dunce cap so often.
And I guess that still leaves a bit of wiggle room for an actual increase of people ending up somewhere in the autistic spectrum.
Re:Shifting thresholds (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he's just sad that dogs get sad.
Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or endless 'vaccinations' (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe, just maybe it's a combination of factors, each bearing its own small risk and in conjunction increasing the rate. Or maybe it's simply better and more sensitive diagnoses of the condition.
One thing is certain. The link between vaccination and autism has been extensively searched for and there isn't one.
Re:Shifting thresholds (Score:2, Insightful)
The same thing happened with depression. In the old days, depression was virtually unheard of, aside from extreme cases of people constantly trying to take their own lives. Nowadays, everybody and their dog gets depressed at some point during the year, and prescribed medicine.
How does this get modded as insightful? People feeling depressed and clinical depression are two very different things. Its easy to laugh off and make glib comments. It doesn't make them true though.
When were these old days of which you speak? Winston Churchill, yes that one, suffered from depression which he called his "Black Dog". Greater access to healthcare, and better trained physicians, will always increased apparent incidence of mental conditions. Is it right that in previous times these people would suffer in silence?
Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! (Score:2, Insightful)
any fucking site that says' detoxify or anything related should ring alarm bells. it's fucking sham scams.
Re:Or endless 'vaccinations' (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, if there were a link, then we should expect to be able to observe it thanks to the activity of celebrity morons like Jenny McCarthy. If vaccination or the minute traces of an antimicrobial called thimerosal (a mercury compound) used in some vaccines were the cause of autism then surely it should observable in the rates of autism? After the scare, less people vaccinated and manufacturers removed thimerosal from childhood vaccines so there should have been an observable effect on autism rates. There wasn't.
Conflating (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware of conflating autism with autism spectrum disorders and asperger's syndrome. Classical, pre-2000s autism isn't a faddish behavioural disorder, it's the kind of debilitating condition that can require life-long professional care.
Autism is too broad and other problems (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, just going to say it again. The definition or classification "autism" is too broad. Different people under the classification have different ranges of impairment. It needs to be broken down. In one area, Asperger's, it once was and has since been blocked in with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Why? (perhaps part of the larger trend of tyring to label more people as "mentally incompetent" as a means of separating people from their rights?) I don't know.
But instead of creating a broad classification and diagnosis, there needs to be increased study into variants and ranges of disability. Some people are just fine and are a bit awkward while others are completely incapable of taking care of themselves. It's inaccurate to simply put it all under that one umbrella and treat things under a "common core" and ultimately unhealthy to do so.
But the complete and utter resistance to seeking out causes blows me away. If one in 68 children were missing limbs at birth, there would be an international outcry. But because the impairment isn't readily visible, people want to ignore it and especially many want to deny it even exists at all seeking to classify it as a "choice" or "behavior disorder." Those people seem to be incredibly selective of their understandings of the connections between the body and the mind. On one hand we all agree and understand that hormone and other chemical balances of the body and especially nutrition and the use of drugs have a profound effect on the mind. Yet at the same time, there is a set of people who want to believe something entirely different despite knowing what they surely already know. (We're magical spirit creatures inhabiting bodies... ignore the fact that taking chemicals can change how your spirit creature feels and acts. People seem immeasurably incapable of connecting the body and the mind.)
Why aren't we investigating more? Why?!
This problem definitely fits the definition of "epidemic" and yet somehow it doesn't warrant investigation and study? Is it because important business models will be threatened? I believe that will be of high likelihood. Some might think it's worse than that and I hope that's not it but there are documented and unclassified cases where out very own US government really and truly has done things to people -- horrible and terrible things. Sometimes it was intentionally and other times perhaps out of wilful ignorance. The question of intent is important, but we do have some basic facts we can at least point to:
1. The rate is high and climbing still.
2. The problem isn't being studied properly.
That's enough for now. It needs to be proven or disproven. There's no need to go any deeper than that at this point.
Bring on the armchair scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
How much poison do you eat? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let’s see rising levels of mercury in fish, arsenic in rice, methylbromide in bread, adding fluoride [*] to drinking water ON PURPOSE, BPA in plastic food containers, volatile PBDE flame retardant in yout furniture, VCOs in your paint and building materials, trans fats. I can go on and on and on.
Besides eating a diet excessively high in carbs and low in other nutrients, we’re poisoning the shit out of ourselves. And you’re surprised that some people aren’t handling it well?
[*] Fluoridation is controvercial, the target of commie conspiracy theories, etc. In reality, it’s shown to have a substantial positive impact on tooth development in children, it’s dirt cheap, and kills many pathogens in water. However, it’s also strongly linked with lowered IQs and thyroid disease. It’s basically poison. If you’re smart, you’ll get a fluoride filter for your water and give your kids high doses of iodine instead, which has the same effect on teeth, the same disinfectant properties, and is an essential mineral.
Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Education funding and excessive medicallisation (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a severely autistic girl who was thought to be completely incapable of social interaction and language use... until she went over to a computer and starting typing on it. Basically she was seen as severaly retarded based on in-person interaction, but with the use of electronics to communicate, she is now in gifted classes http://carlysvoice.com/home/ab... [carlysvoice.com]
Re:Medicalizing Normality (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever considered that perhaps Autism is an evolution of humans, rather than a thing which will "fuck" us?
LMAO, you don't know how evolution works, do you? What possible advantage could autism provide, when it renders most afflicted persons unsociable and awkward and therefore highly unlikely to pass on their genes?
Re:Medicalizing Normality (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never actually met an autistic person have you? It is NOT an advantage in 99.99999% of cases, A few people with mild cases can live normal lives, but this is the exception. Most autistic people cannot live on their own and require close supervision 24x7. Most people, even saintly social workers, find it extremely unrewarding, frustrating, and generally unbearable working with autistic people.
Autism is a horrible affliction.
Re:Medicalizing Normality (Score:4, Insightful)
Who buys the phone and installs the app?
He does. Before he moves out he uses a computer his parents bought for him, to buy the phone. Or the parents give him the phone. He then pays for the food and rent via a work-from-home job that requires little/no human interaction. Maybe programming apps to help people like himself. Maybe he needs some help marketing them, maybe his parents or a sibling or someone he's never met does that part.
Sure, he can't live on his own if he's just thrown out into the world right after he's born. But NO ONE CAN. EVERYONE has to be helped out and handed things by their parents and/or society to start out. But once the correct tools are given, they can live on their own. For some people, the right tools are as simple public schooling and directions to the employment office. Some people also need a wheelchair. Some people need different tools entirely.
Re:Autism is the new ADD (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when did not knowing anything about a subject ever stop someone on Slashdot from having a strong opinion about it? Shit, if that were true, the comments sections would look like downtown Detroit.
Autism is not ever diagnosed because a kid has tantrums or is nerdy etc. The professionals know what they are doing.
Yeah, I'm going to take issue with this. I'm sorry about your daughter, but are you saying that professionals are somehow infallible, always getting it right? Come on!
You're right, I have no real expertise in the matter; however, as an ignorant schlub this won't stop me from forming an educated guess about it; and in the light of this study I will conjecture that one of the following is happening:
* Rates of autism have not changed in recent history, but the the diagnostic measures have - this may be due to improvement in methods, greater awareness in the mental health community, but possibly because - for whatever reason - doctors are more disposed to incorrectly diagnosing autism. It's not like this has never happened (http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/2013-2014/01/20140108_autism-22Q.html).
* Rates of autism are indeed on the rise, though a direct mechanism has yet to be discovered. This would be alarming to say the least.
I'm skeptical about the second case, because - Jenny McCarthy aside - no one has established a clear link connecting autism to anything. Most evidence points to problems arising during prenatal development (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1307491), but as to what causes that, no one knows.
Re:really? really. (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize that 'normal' people invariably have symptoms or findings found in syndromes or diseases. The discovery of which prompts the 'second year medical student syndrome'. At least in the US, the second year of medical school is when you start studying the pathology of disease and learn about all of these funny named syndromes and problems. Invariably at least one or two resonates with the reader and they feel instantly afflicted. This prompts further study (which is good) and further worry (which isn't).
What you described is pretty much everyone who doesn't go on to be a used car salesman or a politician. Figuring out the ins and outs of social contact is hard for most humans. People afflicted with autism / aspbergers are really hard stopped to the edge of human contact. Yes, at a molecular level, some of us who don't deal with the social graces as well as others probably have some similarities, but pretty much all of health and disease lies along a continuum, We often make fairly arbitrary distinctions because it helps pigeon hole things and humans like to do that... But it's not always representative of the issue.
Re:Medicalizing Normality (Score:4, Insightful)
Read the comments to find out how long it'd be before one of these people showed up.
Science/medicine freely admits it doesn't have all the answers (at least that's the ideal). The only evidence that vaccines cause autism is one study [wikipedia.org] done in 1998 that was so horribly flawed that not only did The Lancet issue a full retraction in 2010, the doctor who led the group that authored the paper lost his medical license. The sample size was 12 children, nowhere near the size required to generate statistically significant results. In layman's terms, it was complete and utter bullshit promoted by someone who had undeclared conflicts of interest, and got drummed out of the medical profession for his actions. (Insanely enough, the paper itself never claimed a link between autism and the MMR vaccine, yet that's how the media/idiots took it.)
Of course, you don't care about any of that. You want to blame something other than random chance for your child being autistic. There is no credible scientific evidence that you people will listen to or consider; you just toss it out as a giant conspiracy, because chemtrails or lizard people or something.
Ask yourself what would make you abandon your belief that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. If the answer is "nothing", you're a grade-A moronic zealot who has decided to believe in a simple answer instead of thinking. I am sorry your son is autistic. What's your excuse?
Re:Shifting thresholds (Score:4, Insightful)
The important thing for people to understand about real, correctly diagnosed, psychiatric conditions it that they're physical in nature; they're due to chemical problems in the brain. You can no more overcome them with willpower than you can "walk off" a broken leg.
For all we like to think of the mind as being software, the fact is that brain chemistry has deep and profound effects on how we think. Our ability to "steer" our thought processes, to focus or stop obsessing, to synthesize our conscious perception of the world around us from actual sense data and not from fiction, all that sort of thing requires specific neuron chemistry. If the raw materials aren't there, the brain goes off the rails in pretty extreme ways.
Re:Medicalizing Normality (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what I was saying at all. I was saying that the study was such junk that he lost his medical license. Had it merely been the media misinterpreting a paper, that would not have happened; if journals retracted every study that the media misinterpreted, there'd be no point in their continued existence.
I wasn't tossing anyone in with the lizard people. I was using that as an example of a totally unsupported hysterical conspiracy theory.
I don't think anything is being dismissed as not possible. I think things are being dismissed because there isn't a shred of credible evidence to support them. There is no credible evidence that vaccines/food supplies/whatever cause autism. (You could say that there's no credible evidence that they DON'T cause autism, but then you'd be an idiot, as you can't prove a negative.)
It's far more likely that there isn't any more autism than there used to be, it's just more diagnosed now than it had been in the past.
And when there are double-blind, peer-reviewed studies that stand up to scrutiny on those matters, then talk to me. Until then, the plural of anecdote is still not data.