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We live in a highly chemical environment now and sure, I can believe that over the years it has effected us and is showing up in our offspring.
True Dat. Plus, Amercan children are so much more suseptable and fragile than they used to be. It's much harder to raise a perfect child into a healthy adult nowadays. I think Obamas' on the right track challanging the supreme court to uphold his healthcare program. It will just be easier to not have to make so many decisions for our kids. If he says Slurpies are bad, then they can be outlawed without having to go through all the wasted time with the House and Senate.
As the number of kids diagnosed as autistic has gone up, the number of kids diagnosed with the politically incorrect condition 'mildly retarded' has gone down. This may simply be better or more accurate definition.
They are still trying to push that "better diagnosis" route, but I think that most people believe by now that something is causing autism, and it's something that some powerful interest doesn't want let out of the bag. My three top culprits are:
Vaccines
Food
Pollution
The FDA keeps denying any link between any of those things and autism, even though vaccines have a very clear correlations with autism. So when is the public going to put pressure on the FDA to man up and actually investigate the cause of autism instead of explaining it away? My guess is the same time the worthless FDA bans the policy of rotating the Pharma CEOs through the head FDA positions. In other words, never.
I don't buy the diagnosis theory. There are simply too many kids with autistic features today that simply did not exists 60 years ago. Many people know this through anecdotal evidence. However, the diagnosis theory doesn't make sense empirically, at least not to me. As people have pointed out, the criteria for autism diagnosis has changed to become more inclusive. So as the criteria changes, we should see spikes in the diagnosis rate that correlate with the widening of the diagnosis criteria. We don't see that. Instead, we see a nice clean upward curve. Not only that, but it almost looks like an exponential curve!
Here is a link to the changes in the DSM for autism:
As you can see, in 1952 autism was lumped in with childhood schizophrenia (an exceedingly rare disease). It became its own category by 1980, and then was revised in 1987. They increased the categorical net again in 1994. So we should, at the very least, see little upticks in cases the correspond with these changes, we don't. From 1980 to the present we see a nice, steady increase:
So, I simply don't buy the diagnosis idea. We would see spikes with the institution of large training programs or changes in inclusion criteria, we don't.
Is it an autism explosion or a diagnosis explosion?
The diagnosis explosion is more like it, over diagnosis due to the fact doctors are not experts on everything and how would they know a child has a slight case of autism? My nephew is autistic and now every kid born to this family is thought to be also my sister thinks her grandson is autistic and keeps taking him to different doctors who all have different opinions. It seems today all kids who act a little different have a medical problem to explain it.
In the past, autism was a fairly serious disorder. It had to do with failure to bond, and was quite debilitating and was a definite learning disability.
Now any kid that isn't surrounded by 2 dozen close friends at all times, who doesn't particularly like large parties or is a bit of a loner is diagnosed with autism.
All those who in the past used to be labeled as nerds or geeks are now labeled as autistic. They can have straight A's and be called high functioning autistics -- but in the past, autism wasn't viewed as a disorder that allowed you to be high functioning.
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