BBC: Autism at 1% Among Adults as Well as Kids
According to an article on the BBC website:
Autism is as common among adults as it is in children, according to the world's first big study of its prevalence, undermining the theories of those who claim the MMR jab is responsible for the rising toll in recent years.
The survey, carried out by the National Centre for Social Research in collaboration with the University of Leicester, shows that one in 100 adults in England have an autism spectrum disorder, which can range from a serious disability to difficulties in socialising, and includes some people with extraordinary artistic talents.
These findings were actually released in the Lancet (a major peer-reviewed journal) in January; yesterday's articles describing the study seemed to be specifically aimed at allaying fears about the MMR and other vaccines. In fact, the article specifically mentions and discredits Andrew Wakefield, who is best known for promoting the idea of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine.
Tim Straghan, Chief executive of The NHS Information Centre is quoted as saying:
[This study] suggests that, among adults, rates of autism remain broadly constant across age groups. The findings do not support suggestions of a link between the MMR vaccine and the development of this condition."
The present study involved 7,500 adults, among whom approximately 1% appear to have symptoms diagnosable on the autism spectrum. Few, according to the study, are receiving appropriate support or treatment. Results of a much larger study are expected to be released later this year.
Correction: I mistakenly stated that results of the study described above were published in the Lancet. In fact the study, which was conducted under the auspices of The National Centre for Social Research, was described in a recently published report based on findings from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007, which specifically aimed to determine the prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders (which includes autism and Asperger’s syndrome) in adults in England. Additional information is available on the UK's National Health Service site.
Comments
In other news – “professional wrestling” is fake.
In his 1998 patent application for an alternative measles vaccine, Dr. Wakefield cited a Swedish epidemiological study which showed an estimated autism prevalence of 1:100. Dr. Lorna Wing, a prominent UK epidemiologist, also predicted a 1:100 rate – in 1999.
Autism is like dust – the harder you look for it, the more you find. The disorder has always been with us, just called something else, or ignored.
No doubt anti-vaccine activists will seize on this study to show an autism epidemic, albeit a retroactive one.
Adults with autism disorder’s once out of the school system are no longer in any rate counts, and quite frankly since there are very little programs for adults, how would anyone know there are adults with autism. The focus has always been on children. This is an area much needed to be addresses.
I don’t understand how they can state mmr has only been around since the 90’s?? then in another paragraph..
MMR vaccine has been used extensively and safely around the world for over 30 years and is the best way of protecting your child against measles, mumps and rubella.”
Measles vaccine has been available since 1956, and was used in the mid sixties extensively, with boosters at age 11/12. I found this with just a quick google click, adults born between 1979 and 1988 seem to be affected but not at the rate of 1 in 100. These adults are 21 to 30 yrs of age and are showing the rise to the peak on most charts, and of course these adults had access to mmr.
I would like to think this is true, that we aren’t seeing a relatively new phenomenom, but unless I’ve been on another planet, it’s another lie designed to promote status quo, “get your shots”. Does anyone have a link to those adult age bands, maybe I just missed them.
I am to guess then, that every study before this, showing an autism increase has been bogus and there is no reason for us to be here or on any board discussing such a normal part of life as autism.
Come on Lisa even you can smell this one… This does not pass the smell test… Small survey large claims. The conclusions drawn and the extrapolation of data with study is amazing. They say the Vaccine Safety advocates jump to conclusions… All I can say is wow… Twitter has been lit up by these guys and it will come back at them… It always does. TannersDad Tim
Barbaraj~ we’re not talking about the single measles jab which has been around for a long time. We’re talking about the MMR which has been around for 30 years, was licensed in 1971 and the booster in 1989 however that booster isn’t what the MMR Wakefield theory was about or the MMR itself to autism. You have to look at the age that booster is given (last I looked was age 4), and the theory of course is the age it’s given and regression is seen. Rarely do you see reports of regressive autism at that booster age.
This of course is partly why Wakefield’s theory is just that, since you’d think from the time the MMR was released you’d had seen autism rates sky rocket.
Wakefield may be mistaken, but this “study’ isn’t a mistake it’s by design. Children at age 18 are considered adults , the mmr was widely used since, I believe 1979, I just want to know the age bands they are using, bands of 18 yr olds, 30 yr old, 25 yr olds?? All of these fall within the age of the mmr.
Actually, the school can be responsible for kids until age 21, which it the legal age for adults
Yes we have seen it “skyrocket” since the introduction of the mmr, then again with the introduction of the hepb. It’s been confirmed that rubella as a wild virus is responsible for some autism in the 60’s. Wakefield may be correct , others have been finding measles in cancerous lung tissue, measles is one disease that perhaps should have been left wild for our bodies to build immunity against, as it’s seeming now to persist in the body lying under the radar of our immune systems. Autism may just be the tip of the iceberg in this one.
If rates of autism had increased, we would have needed an increase in institutional beds. As empathy driven people have complained for years, the number of institutional beds in this country have actually decreased, but the remaining ones are not overcrowded.
I am endowed with Asperger’s (professionally diagnosed) and I can identify Asperger’s Syndrome traits is four generations of my family. I rather doubt my engineer grandfather got it from a vaccine in the 1890’s.
If someone wants to know where a lot of the ASD adults are, all they need to do is visit an engineering firm and study the engineers and drafters. I estimate the prevalence at engineering firms of at least 25%.
Hello friends –
Drawing any kind of conclusion from this ’study’ is foolhardy. For example, out of 7500 people originally interviewed, 19 got an eventual ADOS score that put them on the spectrum. The rest is ‘extrapolation’. Ho ho.
Check that out! They only found 19 people with autism, and men were roughly ten times more likely to have a diagnosis. In other words, there was 1 woman given an ADOS score in the entire dataset!
Not only that, but they failed to find a single case of autism in ethnic minorities.
Wow!
The initial screening tool, the AQ light, is even more of a joke. Here are some sample questions:
Are you fascinated by dates? You’re one point towards being on the spectrum!
Detail oriented? On the spectrum!
Apparently, having a preference for fiction edges you in one direction or the other for having autism. Who knew? [Is that on the DSM?]
The entire study is available as a .pdf online but linking to it will cause my post to sit in moderation. What a joke.
- pD
Thanks PLD, that was almost SNL material! What bothers me more than the ridiculous “study” is how it made it into Lancet? Do they have a “fun” side, like RD “humor in medicine”? I liked where they dropped their number to the smaller subset to participate in phase two. Yet the Mayo study over a six year period hasn’t made it into a journal, it’s under review, no one wants to touch that hot potato. Why would we inject a child with anything that lowers their immune system during a flu pandemic, that goes for the mmr too, I hope “even” the trusting hold off on that one.
PLD – I really do suspect that the conclusions of the study are accurate or close to accurate (I am sure there have always been plenty of people who fit today’s definition of an ASD).
But I have to agree that the study itself seems pretty lightweight. Worse, the fact that it’s being republished right now (flu shot season) raises a lot of red flags.
I’ll look forward to seeing the results of a larger, more carefully controlled study.
Lisa
Bill, I find what you said so interesting, as I’m from a family where most of the men were engineers , one rocket scientist, and currently the younger generation are computer analysts, a few very intelligent ones “paint houses”, don’t ask why, I don’t know? I’ve always been curious about this, and at times have thought, what in their wiring could set them up for autism in todays world? OR, how close were they? I remember my father did not do well socially, or in marriage, he talked little, however, he was respected and when people recognised him on the street he seemed animated in short polite conversation. I grew up thinking that was “his” world, as I never saw animation at home. Maybe learned behavior,a necessary adjustment? However, there was no capd, dyslexia, spinning, perhaps a level of ocd, and extreme attention to detail. If he gave me a dollar he pulled out the book , small black book , and next to my name a ledger of sorts, and he would write ,date/dollar. Could it just be the area of the brain that is affected in autism is a bit different in bright people . Maybe we are losing the generation of engineers to autism. Why, is engineering lopsided in sex distribution. Could we say about as lopsided in distribution as autism?
Thanks Bill it’s certainly something that should be on the plate when looking for why some kids and not others. Just for information the brother of the child that I mentioned last week as doing so well, is an engineer/computer analyst, as is his Dad.
Hey Lisa:
There is solid data from the late 1980s that shows autism prevalence at roughly 3.3 per 10,000 kids in the U.S. (A Prevalence Study of Pervasive Developmental Disorders in North Dakota – they looked at 180,000 kids, a bit better than 7,500 from the UK)
If you believe the numbers coming of CDC today at 1 in 100, that means 96.7% of children in the US in the late 1980s either went undiagnosed or didn’t exist.
The old numbers from the late 1980s were based on the DSM-III criteria for PDD/autism, not DSM-IV. Here’s the DSM III criteria, it’s a very short list:
DSM III (1980): Diagnostic criteria for Infantile Autism
A. Onset before 30 months of age
B. Pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people (autism)
C. Gross deficits in language development
D. If speech is present, peculiar speech patterns such as immediate and delayed echolalia, metaphorical language, pronominal reversal.
E. Bizarre responses to various aspects of the environment, e.g., resistance to change, peculiar interest in or attachments to animate or inanimate objects.
F. Absence of delusions, hallucinations, loosening of associations, and incoherence as in Schizophrenia.
When I read this list, I know my son would have met the criteria using DSM-III, as well as every kid with autism I have ever met…
So, are you saying that you think the criteria above missed 96.7% of the kids who we are catching today? Do you think parents who noticed the above list of behaviors from their kids would have done nothing in the late 1980s and just sent their kid to public school where the teachers wouldn’t notice anything, either?
Curiously, JB Handley
Those kids prior to adding autism to IDEA would of had a different primary than autism, so those parents would had sent their kids to school and they probably would of had an IEP, but not listed as autism.
Aside from that, parents certainly would had noticed, but what kind of doctor do you go to to get that DSM, which ever one used at the time? Many parents at that time and even today have a stigma about the whole psych doctor thing and even if you took your child to one, you’re not at all guaranteed their interpretation of behaviors would have been seen as autism-related and still today many are wishy washy thought not to have autism but maybe mutism, or schizophrenia, or ODD and oten ADHD. When my child was diagnosed, I went to 3 different places of which 2 agreed something was going on but come back at age 5. Had I left it at that, he’d still have no diagnosis but he’d surely require an IEP. I meet many parents who have young children and they have a most difficult time getting a diagnosis at all.
The “criteria above missed” would have certainly been missed years ago and still is today.
Sandy:
97 percent missed? Wow, that “stigma” sure removed itself quickly. I didn’t think 1987 was the dark ages.
That’s also assuming all countries used the same DMS as this country did. You don’t think people still don’t get the willies when thinking about a psych, more so when so many are just talking about main stream care?? Now take that and add a child into it. You tell any typical parent these days your child’s has a psych, you tell me what that reaction will be. 97 percent missed, I can easily see it. They were diagnosed with something other than autism. Probably ADHD, which is exactly what the outbreak was in the 1970’s, ADHD.
Fact still remains about the MMR and it’s release date. You bet those main stream doctors out for money were getting their hands on that new vaccine back in the 1970’s. If it were the MMR alone, you’d had seen the rates going up, and in fact you can look at this one of 2 ways. Either that vaccine did in fact cause something back during that vaccines release to the public, only it wasn’t diagnosed autism (would account for those 97 percent) or there wasn’t an increase at all (which really there is not recordable record of autism increase until the 1990’s) you pick which one seems more plausible.
What I am saying, JB, is that the criteria you list is quite different from the criteria which, today, encompass the entire autism spectrum.
And those criteria include ONLY those individuals who, today, would be considered profoundly autistic — NOT all those who would, today, be diagnosed as on the autism SPECTRUM.
Assuming that PDD-NOS, Asperger syndrome, and what many of us call “high functioning autism” make up a large percentage of the 1:100 cited by the (admittedly pretty questionable) study, then I’d say YES, a whole lot of people who are now adults would have been undiagnosed or differently diagnosed as kids but would today fall within the autism spectrum.
People with AS might have been diagnosed with mood disorders, wind up with OCD or depression, etc. — or with nothing at all. People with HFA or PDD might have been diagnosed with mild MR, or emotional disturbance, or speech delays. Or, again, they might just have been seen as “slow.”
I can tell you from experience that a lot of people were medicated or placed in special classes, etc., without any formal diagnosis at all.
The problem with this debate, though, is that we have no really useful numbers that allow us to say X% of people diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder since the DSM IV was published have Asperger syndrome, “high functioning” autism or PDD and Y% have “low functioning” or “classic” autism.
Yes, there are some figures from Fonbonne that suggest percentages — but since there’s no consistency about diagnosis, reporting, etc. I don’t rely too heavily on those.
Lisa
Lisa
Mr. Handley knows that two-thirds of the children who are on the spectrum today would have received a different diagnosis, or no label at all, prior to 1988. He also knows that the DSM-III criteria for autistic disorder are more restrictive than in the DSM-IV(R).
Sorry JB, your shtick isn’t working anymore. Might I suggest sticking to the facts?
Hi Lisa,
Can you confirm that the results were published in The Lancet? I took a quick look but couldn’t find it–thanks.
Isn’t the psychology interesting?
The NHS report is part of a 15 year effort to determine the prevalence of various “psychiatric” disorders in adults.
Prevalence being a statistical measure it kind of makes sense to me that they got highly qualified statisticians to perform the study. And they got a team to validate the work and they used validated ways to measure ASD and they got experts to do the clinical work.
It is not perfect, and I personally don’t like that they reported the results as point estimates. But I believe that the study will be/is viewed as really pretty strong.
And it is important to note that the results are consistent–although a bit low–with the current understanding of the prevalence of ADS. But then with their method they will always under count the cases.
Notice the pattern? None of the people criticizing the results understand statistics.
PS Mr. Handley’s error is that he is trying to compare reported cases (ND) with systematically sampled cases (UK). From his comments he makes it clear that he simply doesn’t understand the studies and consequently came to ridiculous conclusions.
Drawing any kind of conclusion from this ’study’ is foolhardy. For example, out of 7500 people originally interviewed, 19 got an eventual ADOS score that put them on the spectrum. The rest is ‘extrapolation’. Ho ho.
Interesting.
JB is pushing the idea that a study in ND that tested about 100 kids is definitive even though it didn’t use any prescreen. The ND study You state that a study that prescreened 7500 and actually tested via ADOS over 600 isn’t good enough quality.
You can’t have it both ways. If this study is junk, all the older studies you want to compare it to are junk.
The adults in the UK study is not junk. It isn’t published and peer reviewed. But it is pretty amazing that they accomplished what they did. A prevalence study on adults is hard enough that some have called it impossible.
How many adults should they have ID’d? They found 19. I think they did the ADOS on 600 (that would be about 3%?). How many people are they going to give the ADOS to in order to make a good study? 10 times as many? Do they need to have 6000 ADOS tests?
Take the criteria you want for that and apply it to the famed “vaccinated/unvaccinated” study. There you are looking for a small fraction of the 1% of autistics out there. So, if they want to see a difference of, say, 1/10 of the total autistic population would they need 60,000 ADOS tests done?
ADOS testing runs hundreds to thousands of dollars to obtain from a private clinic. Are we talking about a $60,000,000 study–not even counting the cost to do the pre-screen?
Of course you wouldn’t use two sets of standards, would you? One easy one to “prove” vaccines cause autism and a tougher one for the studies you don’t like?
Have a nice day!
I’ve been trying to post this correction, but for some reason it’s not appearing. Wanted to be sure folks see it:
Correction: I mistakenly stated that results of the study described above were published in the Lancet. In fact the study, which was conducted under the auspices of The National Centre for Social Research, was described in a recently published report based on findings from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007, which specifically aimed to determine the prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders (which includes autism and Asperger’s syndrome) in adults in England. Additional information is available on the UK’s National Health Service site.
Lisa
If you believe the numbers coming of CDC today at 1 in 100, that means 96.7% of children in the US in the late 1980s either went undiagnosed or didn’t exist.
Isn’t that David Kirby’s thesis?
JB and David Kirby make the bad assumption of two choices–undiagnosed or didn’t exist.
Misdiagnosed is also a possibility. Lisa and others have already commented on the fact that the 1 in 100 is for all ASD’s, not for autistic disorder only as the 1980’s data would reflect.
Also, Bearman showed lately that many people in California were, indeed, misdiagnosed as having mental retardation when, in fact, a dual diagnosis of mental retardation/autism was appropriate.
Dr. Hertz-Picciotto showed that much of the rise in California was due to lower age of diagnosis and a broadening of the diagnostic criteria.
It isn’t whether some of the kids in the 1980’s were misdiagnosed, it is how many.
Here is John Stone’s analysis of this study:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/09/uk-government-farce-over-new-adult-autism-study-.html#more
Thanks, Passionless Drone, for making so much sense, and JB for being outstanding, and Barbaraj for your thoughtful comments too.
Sandy, you make no sense whatsoever.
How on earth can a study which identifies only 19 people with autism draw any conclusions about whether prevalence has changed? Surely that is not enough people for statistical significance. This is preposterous.
You know Twyla, ditto. Sense is only there when you’re open-minded and objective and maybe you are, only you seem to be stuck on certain people and I’ll ask you nicely again to get unstuck from me. There’s no reason to be disrespectfull.
Twyla and Sandy – please refrain from jabbing at each other.
I understand you disagree, but it’s going to be awfully tough to follow this thread unless you stick to the actual content of your debate.
Thanks,
Lisa
Lisa, how is Sandy “jabbing” at anyone?
Lisa:
Re: The UK study. You may want to look at the questions they used to determine someone has “autism” – it’s a joke, and a fairly audacious attempt to whitewash history and convince people that autism has always been with us.
It’s unbelievable to me that people really think in the 1980s 96.7% of kids went undiagnosed but were all standing right there. I look at the kids with ASD labels in my own son’s public school and there is zero chance they would have fallen through any crack. Missed 96.7% of the kids? And, the notuion that they simply all used to be called mentally retarded has long since been debunked.
It’s amazing that we are still debating whether or not autism cases have actually risen. Lisa, it appears you fall in that camp (given your comment that you surmise the autism rates are the same in the adult population), why not just change the name of your blog to Neurodiversity?
Delusional. JB
Autism has always been with us, to not agree with that would then not acknowldge people like Temple Grandin. We also know at least that autism has been around since the day some one medicaly termed it. We aslo know autism was around us enough that they termed it refrig moms. Had there only been a handful of children that term never would have been used. We also know in history prior to autism being well known, the thing to do with those children we send them to the state institutions and their diagnosis was MR. There was far less awareness of such disabilities or services for those children. That MR hasn’t been debunked. You can look statiscally at any public IEP stats and see MR IEP’s dropped as autism IEP’s rose. California also has it flaws on just who the regional centers will accept and if your child these days and for a long long time having an PDD-NOS, you really have to go through red tape to get services for them.
The mention of Neurodiversity also demonstrates there are many adults out there on that spectrum.
There is no doubt autism cases have risen, the question still remains as to why. This article doesn’t really address that.
Re: The UK study. You may want to look at the questions they used to determine someone has “autism” – it’s a joke,
JB, do you really not understand the study or are you just trying to confuse people?
Either way, it doesn’t speak well for you.
The questions used were part of the initial screening process. They are not used to identify if someone is autistic. They used the ADOS and a score above 10 to define autism.
That is so painfully clear in the study that either you didn’t read the study, you didn’t understand what your read, or you are willfully misstating the facts.
I look at the kids with ASD labels in my own son’s public school and there is zero chance they would have fallen through any crack.
Being misdiagnosed is not “falling through the crack”.
We know (KNOW) that many children were misdiagnosed by today’s standards. We know this because many were given initial diagnoses of being non-autistic and later given diagnoses of autism or autism+mental retardation.
This is based on actual histories of people.
It doesn’t speak well of your integrity that you continue to spread misinformation.
Neither does it speak well of Generation Rescue, which, let’s face it, speaks for the American anti-vaccine movement. You’d think Mr. Handley would at least try to get his facts straight.
Delusional indeed.
Any who surf around, and including this blog site, many parents comment who have adult children with autism. The truly sad thing is once our own children become adult age, they are pretty much forgotten just as those adults today are. That’s what we have to look forward to. We as parents go though stages as our children get older and eventually, some of us may advocate in different area’s like services for adults and quite honestly if there were such services already out there, we’d all have a better accurate idea of just how many people in the USA and other countries as well, have autism of all ages. It’s quite sad, even though my child is a child, that adults are forgotten. It’s sad it happens at all. As parents of children with autism disorder’s, really your combined focus should be of all with autism, not just the children.
Hi Twyla,
I think the question you should have asked is: what should Jane and Joe parent do to figure out if the study is any good?
I think is fair to say that just about any reasonable person would answer with: Jane and Joe should ask someone that understands statistics.
Instead you referred us to a blog posting from someone that clearly is not able to critically evaluate the study. How can you possibly believe that this is a good strategy to figure out the truth?
Even if you don’t want to go to someone else for guidance, all you have to do is read the section where they explain the assessment process to see how wrong the blog is.
PS: you posted “How on earth can a study which identifies only 19 people with autism draw any conclusions about whether prevalence has changed? Surely that is not enough people for statistical significance. This is preposterous.”
Reality check: this isn’t hypothesis testing, there is no test for significance you have no understanding of the data. This is what happens when you use sites like AoA as a source for science.
Hi Mr. Handley,
I have seen a number of comments like yours that assert the methods used to determine if a person had autism were “a joke”. But then you provided no actual reason to support this assertion.
Fortunately if you bother to read the history of the method, you will find that over the last ~7 years the method has become the “gold standard” for determining if an adult has autism. This is the conclusion of the experts that are actually out there diagnosising adults.
Free advise, you might want to tone down the rhetoric and personal attacks on AoA site and try to focus a bit more on quality.
Right now the only joke is the arguments made at AoA.
re: #27 Sorry, Lisa — you’re right — I’ll stick to the subject matter!
White&Nerdy -
I believe the joke part of the survey was the prescreening method used in phase 1 of the survey. That method qualified 5,329 people to be screened using the ADOS. Of that group 630 where selected to go onto the next phase where the ADOS was used. You are correct that the ADOS is the gold standard and when it was applied it found 19 of these people had a a form of autism.
That means the prescreening done in phase 1 was correct about 3 percent of the time and incorrect 97 percent of the time.
If you look at other tests that are meant as a screen for autism, such as the MCHAT, you will find that they are much,much better at screening that the modified Autism Quotient that was used was.
Hence the screening process done for phase 1 was something of a joke.
Do you think there were really fewer cell phones in the 1970’s than now? Naw, there were lots of cell phones then. It’s just that people kept them in their purses or pockets, hidden away. There used to be a lot of stigma — a lot more than today — people didn’t want to admit that they had cell phones. And even when people saw the cell phones, they mislabeled them as something else such as calculators or paper weights. People then didn’t have the special training necessary to recognize cell phones.
That’s kind of what these arguements for no increase in autism sound like to me. Give me a break. Yes, there was autism in prior generations, but it was very rare.
And I’m not just talking about someone’s uncle the engineer who graduated from college and can drive a car and hold a job and speak in complete sentences but doesn’t have a lot of friends.
These days there are a whole lot of kids who cannot function at a basic level — life skills, communication, behavior. It wasn’t like that 50 years ago. I know. I was there.
And institutionalization doesn’t explain away the lack of autism. None of my classmates had baby siblings who mysteriously disappeared to institutions.
Teachers who have been teaching for years and other professionals such as psychologists know too — Autism used to be much more rare than it is today.
And enough with the JB bashing. He does know his facts. He is extremely intelligent and is making the most sense of anyone here.
AGE AMONG CHILDREN WITH AUTISM: In the State of California nearly 7 out of 10 children with autism are less than 14 years old.
Birth Years; Age; # of Individuals; % Rounded
2006-2007; 0-2 years; 44; 0%
2002-2004; 3-5 years; 7,245; 20%
1998-2001; 6-9 years; 9,740; 26%
1994-1997; 10-13 years; 7,010; 19%
1990-1993; 14-17 years; 4,783; 13%
1986-1989; 18-21 years; 2,554; 7%
1976-1985; 22-31 years; 2,624; 7%
1966-1975; 32-41 years; 1,364; 4%
1956-1965; 42-51; years; 1,112; 3%
1946-1955; 52-61; years; 387; 1%
1945 and earlier; 62+ years; 79; 0%
Source: State of California, Department of Developmental Services Quarterly Client Characteristics Reports
Notice that the lower birth date ranges are 10 year whereas the upper ones are 2 to 4 years.
From the Department of Education annual reports to the US Congress (Children with a diagnosis of autism aged 6-21] served by IDEA (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act) :
http://www.whale.to/a/autism_increase.html
DISCOVERING AUTISM: LEO KANNER IN 1943
An Extremely Rare Disorder
“Since 1938, there have come to our attention a number of children whose condition differs so markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far that each case merits—and, I hope will eventually receive—a detailed consideration of its fascinating peculiarities….
“These characteristics form a unique “syndrome”, not heretofore reported, which seems to be rare enough, yet is probably more frequent than is indicated by the paucity of observed cases.”
-Leo Kanner, “Autistic disturbances of affective contact”, Nervous Child, 1943
“The fact that an average of not more than eight patients per year [over twenty years] could be diagnosed with reasonable assurance as autistic in a center serving as a sort of diagnostic clearinghouse, speaks for the infrequency of the disease, especially if one considers that they recruit themselves from all over the North American continent…”
-Leo Kanner, “The specificity of early infantile autism” Acta Paedopsychiatrie, 1958
Analysis of Prevalence Trends of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Minnesota
James G. Gurney, PhD; Melissa S. Fritz, MPH; Kirsten K. Ness, MPH; Phillip Sievers, MA; Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD; Elsa G. Shapiro, PhD
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2003;157:622-627.
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/7/622
Background
Alarming increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder have been reported recently in the United States and Europe.
Objectives
To quantify and characterize prevalence trends over time in autism spectrum disorder in Minnesota.
Methods
We conducted an age-period-birth cohort analysis of special educational disability data from the Minnesota Department of Children, Families & Learning from the 1981-1982 through the 2001-2002 school years.
Results
Prevalence rates of autism spectrum disorder rose substantially over time within single-age groups and increased from year to year within birth cohorts. Autism spectrum disorder prevalence among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 3 per 10 000 in 1991-1992 to 52 per 10 000 in 2001-2002. All other special educational disability categories also increased during this period, except for mild mental handicap, which decreased slightly from 24 per 10 000 to 23 per 10 000. We found that federal and state administrative changes favoring identification of autism spectrum disorders corresponded in time with the increasing rates.
Conclusions
We observed dramatic increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder as a primary special educational disability starting in the 1991-1992 school year, and the trends show no sign of abatement. We found no corresponding decrease in any special educational disability category to suggest diagnostic substitution as an explanation for the autism trends in Minnesota. We could not assess changes in actual disease incidence with these data, but federal and state administrative changes in policy and law favoring better identification and reporting of autism are likely contributing factors to the prevalence increases and may imply that autism spectrum disorder has been underdiagnosed in the past.
*****
Yes, they speculate that better diagnosis plays a role, yet there is no corresponding drop in other categories to suggest diagnosis substitution.
Oct. 17, 2002
M.I.N.D. INSTITUTE STUDY CONFIRMS AUTISM INCREASE
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — The unprecedented increase in autism in California is real and cannot be explained away by artificial factors, such as misclassification and criteria changes, according to the results of a large statewide epidemiological study.
“Speculation about the increase in autism in California has led some to try to explain it away as a statistical issue or with other factors that artificially inflated the numbers,” said UC Davis pediatric epidemiologist Robert S. Byrd, who is the principal investigator on the study. “Instead, we found that autism is on the rise in the state and we still do not know why. The results of this study are, without a doubt, sobering.”
Key findings of the study are that:
• The observed increase in autism cases cannot be explained by a loosening in the criteria used to make the diagnosis.
• Some children reported with mental retardation and not autism did meet criteria for autism, but this misclassification does not appear to have changed over time. …
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/news/mindepi_study.html
We are surrounded by so much evidence that the rate of autism has increased dramatically over the past 25 years.
One thing that often amazes me about conversations on this topic is that the same people who are constantly telling us that our experiences mean nothing, that only science published in peer reviewed journals matters — these same people keep coming up with completely baseless totally speculative reasons for the “apparent” (or obvious) increase in autism, such as better diagnosis, hidden hoard etc. There is no evidence of a hidden undiagnosed hoard of adults with full blown autism, who somehow escaped everyone’s notice while growing from infancy to adulthood.
pD-
Here’s some information you may want to consider if you are to critique the report
1) They didn’t find any ethnic minority adult autistics. Not surprising, really. They tested about 600 adults with ADOS. The UK is about 90% white (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Ethnicity)
So, one could assume about 60 were ethnic/racial minorities.
If the autism rate is 1% or less, they would find 0.6 or fewer ethnic adults with autism.
2) I don’t understand your critique of the AQ test as a first-phase screen instrument. Using this they found a rough prevalence (before weighting) of about 3%.
One has to assume that the researchers were trying to use the AQ to screen for a higher percentage of adult autistics in the group they tested with ADOS. Either they were successful in this (3% being high) or the real prevalence amongst adults is 3% or more.
Twyla–
“The observed increase in autism cases cannot be explained by a loosening in the criteria used to make the diagnosis. ”
You are missing a very key word in that statement–
the increase in autism rates can not be *completely* explained by a loosening in the criteria used to make diagnoses.
Dr. H-P’s study showed (and she stated such in her paper) that younger age of diagnosis, *changes in the accepted criteria* and *inclusion of more mild cases* were real factors that contributed to the increase in the California autism (CDDS data) counts.
“Some children reported with mental retardation and not autism did meet criteria for autism, but this misclassification does not appear to have changed over time.”
King and Bearman’s study (out in the past week or so) showed that a people born before 1987 were, in fact, diagnosed as non-autistic and later had autism diagnoses.
There is no evidence of a hidden undiagnosed hoard of adults with full blown autism, who somehow escaped everyone’s notice while growing from infancy to adulthood.
Well, there is the report noted in this blog post.
There is evidence that a number of adults institutionalized for schizophrenia may be autistic (study by David Mandell).
There is the paper by King and Bearman that just came out that reports on people who were born before 1987 and given diagnoses of mental retardation and, later, were diagnosed as autistic.
Hertz-Picciotto’s group showed that some of the increase is, in fact, due to changes in the criteria, inclusion of more mild cases and other factors.
So, yes, except for actual reported data (these and more).
What did David Kirby say–if you are looking the wrong way you won’t see the Lincoln Memorial?
Tell me, Twyla, how does the Washington Monument look from where you stand?
No one once stated that or insinuated “constantly telling us that our experiences mean nothing”. This really isn’t about personal experiences. It’s about the over all number increase.
One has to look at how California’s regional centers works when they look at their own data of numbers. In Minnesota, the school can term an IEP autism without a medical diagnosis, and the rates are 1:81, the bulk being of one school district and of one ethnic group. In some states the IEP is termed DD until the age of nine. If only a school district is saying your child has autism, that of course is not the same as if the child really does have autism nor does that school district do anything to look into other causes. Looking at school records of course is a poor choice for numbers to begin with and not a reliable source and of course it has to be factored in when autism was added to IDEA when you are obtaining rates from the school.
The fact is the increase in autism rates can not be completely explained by anything.
Twyla – I think in part you’re using the evidence of your own personal experience in lieu of looking at the larger picture.
I understand that “I saw it with my own eyes” seems to be good evidence, but in fact it may be very misleading.
For example, as a child (I’m nearly 50) I DID know families in which one member was “disappeared” into an institution. I DID know kids injured by polio (weird, but true). I DID see kids medicated for being “difficult” with no diagnosis attached. My mom taught classrooms full of kids with MR and emotional disturbance diagnoses.
So my experience – the evidence of my eyes – points in the opposite direction.
But that doesn’t make me “righter” than you – it simply means I had a unique set of circumstances that gave me different experiences.
As an informal science educator, I perform science “magic” all the time. I can turn “water” into “wine” with a few chemicals. But that doesn’t make me a miracle worker — even if my audience of kiddos thinks I am.
Lisa
How can we explain this?
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2008/07/24/2687/a_mysterious_connection_autism_and_minneapolis_somali_children
Lisa I would think you could have seen autism in those that were involved in the rubella epidemic 1964. These children would be 45 years old.
http://books.google.com/books?id=tZbaV166zNwC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=autism+rubella+1964&source=bl&ots=XGCz9VkMP4&sig=TD2HN772OIugdxn4EN40y-CDaqY&hl=en&ei=we68SturONS6lAe1xcWqDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=autism%20rubella%201964&f=false
You can explain the Somali population and autism in a few ways; 1 being it shows a great genetic link and or 2, it’s one main large school district in itself, that is red flags. MN doesn’t have regional centers, either. Look at the ages where those rates are high, the bulk is pre k ages but the over all autism IEP’s in grade school on up doesn’t account for large numbers. Then you have MN is controversial due to the fact they can term an IEP with out having a medical diagnosis. The school district could had termed it DD without a medical diagnosis, but they decided to term it autism. The school district also will try and talk you out of a medical diagnosis and tell parents they only need that educational diagnosis, and that goes on no matter what district you’re in within the state. They did it to us. Let’s also keep in mind the big controversy in MN as to why we had no senator and such a voting mess when the people who were suppose to help the Somali population vote, they snuckered them about who they were marking.
Minnesota alone can demonstrate why school districts are a great conflict of interest and not a good source for autism rates.
For example, out of 7500 people originally interviewed, 19 got an eventual ADOS score that put them on the spectrum. The rest is ‘extrapolation’. Ho ho.
It’s usually very difficult to do a full assessment of the entire population studied. You skipped a step. Of the 7500, they selected 600+ for phase 2. Only these 600+ were assessed with the ADOS, of whom about 3% were found to be autistic.
So why wasn’t prevalence 3% then? The 600+ were selected in such a way that autistics were expected to have a higher probability of selection.
Evidently, once the 19 autistics were identified, the authors found that these autistics had been assigned a probability of passing to phase 2 that was about 3 times that of the average person in phase 1. The math is straightforward in retrospect.
I think the statistical methodology is completely sound.
Why didn’t they just assess 600 adults at random? Obviously, they might have only found 6 autistics this way, which is kind of close to zero, so there’s not as much statistical power this way.
Why didn’t they use a more conventional methodology, such as selecting those who scored 26+ in the AQ-50 for phase 2? I’m kind of guessing here, but the authors apparently didn’t trust the AQ-50 to not miss some autistics. Some autistics might not be able to answer the questionnaire. That explains why they looked at other things, like psychosis, etc.
There are other limitations of note in the paper. The seemingly complicated weighing methodology is not one in my opinion.
Sandy, are these children without medical diagnosis, and not included in the 1% figure used in the USA?
Granted this is one ethnic group with similar genes. However they are fine in Somalia. Why do they have such high rates of autism in MN and in Sweden? Perhaps this is one group that shouldn’t be vaccinated? Are there other ethnic groups in this country that are not being counted in our statistics?
We are surrounded by so much evidence that the rate of autism has increased dramatically over the past 25 years.
Strangely, I’ve always thought the exact opposite, even before this study, as you can see here, for example:
http://autismnaturalvariation.blogspot.com/2007/09/high-prevalence-of-autism-in-adults.html
How do you know they’re fine in Somalia? Or what they use to diagnosis autism? Those in MN, in no way does it determine who had vaccines or not and in MN, you can have an autism IEP without a medical diagnosis and in any other state, schools can only diagnosis and term IEP’s for speech and learning disorders. So when looking at MN Somali children with autism, they had no medical data to look at, they based it all off the school which is a conflict of interest, more so when they tell you out right you don’t need a medical diagnosis, leading the parent to believe they just diagnosed their child with autism when in fact all the did was an educational assessment. The more people they have in early intervention, the more funds they get which would follow them into grade school. You want to follow money, come to MN public schools.
Sandy is correct. Without a prevalence study from Somalia, there’s no way to make a comparison, and say, well, it really does look like they get less autism in Somalia.
As a reminder, the prevalence of autism among Somalis living in Sweden was 0.7%. In Minnesota, the administrative prevalence was at most 1.4%, which is not that different to what it is for general population children in Minnesota who are a bit older.
When they come up with prevalences of 2% for Somalis, maybe it’s time to think something is going on. So far, I would suggest that Somali children are simply recognized earlier than most, for reasons we just don’t understand.
I’ll agree, there is no telling what “okay” in Somalia means.
How about here, is it me or are many kids walking around with diagnosis that seem no different than kids that don’t have one. Is “spectrum” too inclusive?
“Is “spectrum” too inclusive?”
That’s really for the Psychology profession and autism researchers to work out. But if you’re in the 1-percentile of anything, that kind of means you’re way outside the norm, doesn’t it?
Lisa said, “Twyla – I think in part you’re using the evidence of your own personal experience in lieu of looking at the larger picture. “
Lisa, my personal experience is only one small part of the information I posted. And the information I posted is just one small fraction of what exists. Schools and government agencies have reported huge increases in autism over the past 25 years. I posted links to two peer reviewed published studies from the MIND Institute which said that factors such as better diagnosis could only account for a minority of this increase.
Lisa said, “I DID know kids injured by polio.” Lisa, one of my parents’ best friends was in a wheel chair from polio, and died of various complications before reaching old age. Although the polio vaccine has had some serious problems, I have never questioned its value in eradicating a serious disease. I am not anti-vaccine. But I believe we are currently giving too many vaccines too soon with inadequate research on vaccine injuries, vaccine ingredients, long-term cumulative effects of vaccines, effects of giving multiple vaccines at once, and factors causing increased susceptibility to vaccine injuries (e.g. family history of auto-immunity).
Whether or not polio is a dangerous disease is not relevant to the question of whether our current vaccine program is causing high rates of immune system disorder among children today, including diabetes, asthma, severe allergies, IBD, and inflammation of the brain and nervous system resulting in ADD and autism.
I find it extremely hard to believe that there is the same prevalence of Autism in Somalia as in Minnesota, but that the people in Somalia just don’t notice it.
Again, we’re not just talking about nerdism. The descriptions of the Somalian children in Minnesota with autism are descriptions of children who lost the ability to speak and developed a severe level of impairment.
Regardless of what label is used, a child who cannot speak will be noticed, whether in Somalia or in Minnesota.
Here’s another study comparing prevalences of disability category classifications for annual birth cohorts from 1975 to 1995, published in Pediatrics, based on U.S. Special Ed data.
“For the autism classification, there were birth cohort differences, with prevalences increasing among successive (younger) cohorts. The increases were greatest for annual cohorts born from 1987 to 1992. For cohorts born after 1992, the prevalence increased with each successive year but the increases did not appear to be as great, although there were fewer data points available within cohorts. No concomitant decreases in categories of mental retardation or speech/language impairment were seen. Curves for other health impairments, the category including children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, also showed strong cohort differences.”
I can’t believe we are still even arguing about whether autism has increased.
And the National Centre for Social Research study claiming 1% autism among adults included kids as young as 16 as “adults”. Today’s teenagers and young adults were exposed to the expanded vaccine schedule, including a lot of thimerosal.
Yes, soon we really will have lots of adults with autism, because the over-vaccinated generation is growing up.
I find it extremely hard to believe that there is the same prevalence of autism in Somalia as in Minnesota, but that the people in Somalia just don’t notice it.
Twyla, have you ever been to Somalia?
No, ANB, I have never been to Somalia. But Abdulkadir Khalif lived there before moving to Minnesota. He said:
“He met all the normal milestones until he hit 18 months,” lamented Abdulkadir Khalif, speaking of his three-year-old son with autism. “He was a beautiful baby, running around, saying a few words, until about the winter of 2006, right when he got his MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) shot. He got sick and we went to the hospital, and he stopped talking immediately around that time.”
“Do I know it was the vaccines?” Khalif asks. “All I know is he stopped talking right around the time of those shots.”
Neither Khalif nor his wife (who was given a thimerosal-containing flu shot while pregnant, even though the label instructed the doctor to administer the shot during pregnancy, “only when medically necessary”), had ever heard of autism until the day their son was diagnosed.
Khalif says, it is “not possible” that autism could be this common in Somalia. “I’ve been living with it on a daily basis, with my own child. And I lived in Somalia and Kenya for a long time. If it was this common, we would have had a name for it, and we don’t. That tells me it does not exist.”
“And these symptoms? I had never seen anything like it before. We have names for mental retardation or Down syndrome. But the mannerisms, the loss of speech, the tantrums and violence and running out of the house that comes with autism – I think we would have noticed those things. But we’ve never seen them before in Somalia or Kenya.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/minneapolis-and-the-somal_b_143967.html
Interesting, Abdulkadir Khalif writes for AOA. Why not link to an article from the Twin Cities? The autism rates in Somalia would be about 1:100. In East Africa the rates would go above the USA’s. Keep in mind, that region doesn’t have vaccines like they do here. I never heard of autism either before my son was born.
In the Somali community, she says, mental disorders carry a stigma.
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/42505467.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUvDE7aL_V_BD77:DiiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr
Sandy said, “The autism rates in Somalia would be about 1:100. In East Africa the rates would go above the USA’s. ” What the heck is your source on that?!? You’re making that up.
So what if he writes for AoA? A lot of people with varying backgrounds and experiences have written for AoA.
“And these symptoms? … I think we would have noticed those things. But we’ve never seen them before in Somalia or Kenya.”
This reminds me of the time Dan Olmsted missed the Clinic for Special Children in Lancaster County, PA.
You take the population and the number of autism and do math to find the rate per that population. The rates are probably higher and I’d guess many aren’t reported. And no, I never make things up.
The difference between those who write for AOA and those who do not, culture-wise, you would not see autism as easily in that country and many countries like it and more than likely in those countries give those children up. Abdulkadir Khalif says had there been those with autism in Somalia, he’d had seen it. No one really sees autism until they have a child with it, and based on other’s accounts from our local paper (I live in MN) they give a different story about that ’stigma’.
Mr. Handley could comment on autism among the Somalis. I understand he offered large cash awards to Somali parents who could link vaccines to their children’s autism. I don’t recall all the details, but I’m sure Mr. Handley would like to share.
Twyla, so many have the science yet don’t have the words, you bring to mind Rachel Carson, she had both, keep up the energy!
Yes, that father from Somalia said it all, when he said, it is so unusual that his people don’t have a word for it in their language.
When I suggested, maybe it’s too inclusive I’m not sure I can explain what I meant, I see many walking around without diagnosis, who exhibit the very same behaviors, like my own, and many, many are boys born 1996-2000 , imo it’s either include them all which would likely double the number or take out those that are functioning. Mine lost language after a dpt, he melts down, repeats the same phrase, puts us all in danger at times, yet at other times he’s okay, I don’t want a diagnosis, I have him in a very structured private school where he does well academically and the kids have a values code drill every day. No bullying is tolerated. I know if he were in public school he would be a disaster, his language is fine now, he is the house expert on everything animal, has a friend , and unlike me has never missed a spelling word on a test. I have many children here for gaming nights, and I can tell you, sincerely, the truth is, many, many, are affected and could be included if diagnosed. Easily it is 20% ..easily.
I find it extremely hard to believe that there is the same prevalence of Autism in Somalia as in Minnesota, but that the people in Somalia just don’t notice it.
Why do people assume that it’s easy to determine how common autism is by just looking or asking around (the Dan Olmsted method)? In reality, a prevalence study is a very expensive, time-consuming endeavor carried out by people very experienced in determining if someone is autistic or not.
Since many Muslim Somalis marry their first, second or third cousins, this could in fact explain and be a great place to look at genetics. In the Somali community, mental disorders carry a stigma I’d imagine they never had a medical term for it.
How common would you say autism is in a semi-rural area of Sri Lanka? If Dan Olmsted went there and asked an ice cream salesman if he’s seen any autistic kids, for example, what would he find?
Yet, once they actually researched it, with screening tools and diagnostic instruments, they found a prevalence of 1.07%.
I’m new to this, so I have no idea who dan olmstead is, but I do know many mothers who haven’t had their kids diagnosed . If your child can function, and you find a system of education that works for him, do you need to seek out a diagnosis? I have one friend who just now, put her son on medication, and I believe she’s wrong, it hasn’t stopped the meltdowns, it took him from being an A+ student to a B, I guess he’s not as obsessive? It doesn’t matter because the side effects seem to be a depression that I’ve never seen before in him, he’s 13 . Sure we have some that are diagnosed, one two doors down from me, one across the street, another up the street, another in an apt. five houses down. I don’t believe it’s 1 in a hundred, there is no way this is true, absolutely impossible. The absolute worst is my neighbor directly across the street, I told him his child was getting far too depressed on his medication dejour, he said the psychiatrist said he must be on it or something similar, he committed suicide last summer, age 15. I went to the funeral, they had a wall of his artwork, he was so talented, more talented than anyone knew. What went wrong? His mother walked out on the husband and all five children, she tried for years, she homeschooled, the marriage couldn’t survive the autism, and the child couldn’t survive without his mother. One in a hundred, is such BS. IS there one family with three or more male children born between 1992 and 2000, that doesn’t have one. I can’t find that family here.
Why have a diagnosis? Many things can appear to be autism but is not. Without a diagnosis, it could be anything.
The thing is, most of the autism rates are obtained from the public school system. Prior to adding autism to IDEA, there was no counting autism rates and where one might consider it rare back then, more than likely it was not. There simply was no counting done and once they started counting, walla, there’s a bunch of kids on the spectrum.
If you do not have a medical diagnosis, then one cant say their child has anything, and the school educational IEP is not a diagnosis. In MN an IEP can be termed autism w/o a medical diagnosis, which makes it so controversial since schools are not medical and it’s a conflict of interest. Once a child is out of the school system, they’re no longer in a count. Depending on the grade the child was in at the time IDEA added autism, some of those children would no longer be in the school system to be in that count.
re: # 64
Sandy, interesting that you linked to a story about Somali mother Idil Abdull. Some emails she exchanged with Minnesota officials are shown at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/somali-gloves-c.html
Also see Mark Blaxill’s story at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/out-of-africa-a.html
I linked from an unbiased local news paper which is largely different from e-mail communication which can not be verified it wasn’t altered.
Fact still is, why one ethnic group in the 2nd largest school district of the state? Why only pre K? Not all the Somali community lives in that city, either. If anything, if it doesn’t point to corrupt school district system, it does point to genetics.
Autism has been known to Africa at least since 1989 and today is consider to be 1:158 (and no, that’s not made up) which is very close to the USA rates. Thousands of children under the age of five, die every day, mostly from preventable causes.
Child Mortality at Record Low; Further Drop Seen
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/world/13child.html?_r=1
Autism was noted seen prior to vaccines being widely used in that country to prevent deaths. The sad thing is, many children died by age 5 and there probbaly was a while lot of people getting past that stigma to let it known their child had a developmental disorder.
PTSD can cause autistic-like symptoms in children. So can malnutrition, measles, and severe abuse. If Mr,. Khalif never saw kids with autistic-like symptoms in Somalia, then he either wasn’t paying attention, or Somalia is a great place to raise a family.
We already know that AoA’s correspondent was wrong about Kenya. Would it be hasty to assume he is not a reliable observer?
We already know that AoA’s correspondent was wrong about Kenya. Would it be hasty to assume he is not a reliable observer?
I would have thought that the north American Somali community would be small enough that the case of the adult autistic–born in Somalia in the 1980s–who visited Somalia and has been unable to return to Canada for years.
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=2863
Hi MJ,
I very much respect the fact that you thought about the study and actual offered an argument as to why you think it is a “joke”.
If you parse your criticism, it amounts to Phase I—which doesn’t accurately diagnosis autism—didn’t accurately diagnosis autism.
This simply is not a valid criticism but rather demonstrates a lack of understanding of the methods.
Did you notice the interesting pattern?
Those that criticize the study are people that don’t like the implications of the results, but are not statisticians. But the people that are trained to understand the study aren’t criticizing it.
Hi Lisa,
I think in one of the Star Wars movies, Han Solo says something to the effect of “I must have hit pretty close to home to get her so riled up.”
You have a new badge of honor: Mr. Handley took a swipe at you on his latest entry at Age of Autism (“Autism Not Really on the Rise? 96.7% Impossible.”).
I wouldn’t worry too much about this. The entry and the comments are so remarkably lacking in coherent thoughts or ethics that it simply plays into the hands of those that wish to portray the site as a scam.
It is sad that they have marginalized themselves to the point where the only conversation topic left is their integrity, but then they have no one to blame but themselves….
Hi Sandy,
I think there is a much simpler explanation for the Somali numbers.
As I recall (and I haven’t bothered to confirm this):
-The Somali’s were able to choose (to some extent anyway) which school district they wanted to live in
-The Somali’s (rightly or wrongly) believed that one district was the best if you had a kid with autism
-Amazingly all the families with an ASD kid ended up in the one district. I recall other school districts in the area have substantial Somali populations and zero ADS kids
The problems interpreting data from self-selecting populations continues to be an issue on this subject.
Hi Twyla,
Are you familiar with the definition of insanity of continuing to do the same action but expecting a difference outcome?
On the Somali’s you posted:” Also see Mark Blaxill’s story….”
That would be the amateur scientist Mark Blaxill whose previous work on the statistics of autism were rejected as such poor quality as to be unusable? The one that instead of bothering to learn the subject choose personal attacks on those that pointed out his incompetence?
Too bad he didn’t take the time to learn the subject before writing the entry you referred us.
But the really interesting part is that if you accept the standard Age of Autism arguments, then the Somali’s experience is totally contrary to Mr. Baxill’s position. Amazing how no one there was able to follow their own arguments.
Oh well, they are still mostly harmless…
Mark Blaxill, who co-authored “Autism – A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning”, in Medical Hypothesis.
http://autism-news-beat.com/?p=27
Mark Blaxill, who says there was no autism before 1931, and explains why on this video (starts at 3 min mark):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbgw41OAk7E
White & Nerdy, I’m glad you brought up JB Handley’s excellent article “Autism Not Really on the Rise? 96.7% Impossible”, which is at http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/09/autism-not-really-on-the-rise-967-impossible.html
JB carefully takes us through a peer-reviewed study done in North Dakota in 1987, which found that:
“Of North Dakota’s 180,986 children, ages 2 through 18, 21 met DSM-III criteria for infantile autism (IA), two met criteria for childhood onset pervasive developmental disorder (COPDD), and 36 were diagnosed as having atypical pervasive developmental disorder (APDD) because they met behavioral criteria for COPDD before age 30 months but never met criteria for IA. The prevalence rates were estimated at 1.16 per 10,000 for IA, 0.11 per 10,000 for COPDD, and 1.99 per 10,000 for APDD. The combined rate for all PDD was 3.26 per 10,000 with a male to female ratio of 2.7 to 1.”
Got that? 3.3 per 10,000 in 1987 That’s .033 per 100, or 1 in 3000.
12 years later, the researchers published another study, in which “The results of the prevalence study [the original study in 1987] were compared with the results of a 12-year ongoing surveillance of the cohort. The 12-year ongoing surveillance identified one case [only ONE!] missed by the original prevalence study. Thus the original prevalence study methodology identified 98% of the cases of autism-pervasive developmental disorder in the population…”
JB also reviews the DSM-III criteria for autism. He concludes, “I look at scientists and doctors who say autism hasn’t grown, who say it’s all expanded criteria. Then, I go look at the details, I read the old criteria. I run the simple numbers, I read the published studies. And, I say to myself (and anyone who will listen): how can you be so stupid, or so immoral, or so uninterested in the worst health tragedy of our time, and try to convince the world that everything is just fine? The numbers, and the details, scream the truth. ”
Yes, there’s some anger in those words – understandably. JB has a vaccine injured son. And he is in communication daily with many families of vaccine injured children.
But his article is most certainly not “lacking in coherent thoughts or ethics”. His article is extremely coherent, and there is absolutely nothing unethical about it.
And BTW 2003 North Dakota school statistics showed an autism prevalence of 1 in 397. See http://www.fightingautism.org/idea/reports/ND-Autism-Statistics-Prevalence-Incidence-Rates.pdf
W&N, your criticisms of Mark Blaxill are ridiculous and have no basis. His thoughtful article demonstrates his intelligence, and does not contain personal attacks.
re # 83 — sounds like you have an active imagination. Your speculation is not based on facts.
Twyla, the 2003 N. Dakota numbers represent kids on the spectrum, as reported to IDEA. Are you comparing that 1:397 rate to Burd’s 1987 estimate? That’s something Mr. Handley would do.
JB Handley doesn’t write very professional articles. I think the only thing anyone will retain from it is the use of foul language (much the same as McCarthy uses) and the name-calling. It’s odd, we teach children not to do that yet adults are hardly a good example. Some opinions may be coherent thoughts and ethics, my opinion is the article is quite different. It’s more of a rant and slam to a specific person than anything and full of emotion.
What is a tragedy is failing to acknowledge those with autism prior to the children of today. Not sure who said if autism was always here, just the way it is today. There is no valid reporting for it prior but to assume there wasn’t is not being open minded of there being the possibility at all, and in the end Handley’s focus is clear, he is looking for blame. If the numbers are there, “than no one can be blamed for anything”. If that’s ones main focus, they’re doing a disservice to many.
As for post 83, that’s not imagination at all. You’d have to research the state prior to assuming imagination. I’m still banking on genetics. Some people are banking solely on Vitamin D and not vaccines at all.
If any want a real gander at prevalence, go look at other sources. Hard to look at fightingautism when they get their data from the dreaded CDC, and ideaddata which would had included autism to special ed until starting at what year?
…criticisms of Mark Blaxill are ridiculous and have no basis. His thoughtful article demonstrates his intelligence, and does not contain personal attacks.
Mark Blaxill co-authored “Autism – A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning”, published in Medical Hypothesis in 2000. His assumptions are ridiculous and have no basis.
I haven’t read it , but the idea doesn’t seem “way off”, there are similarities to mercury exposures, Kawasaki, likely shares more in comparison to “pink” disease. It takes ideas like this to eventually get answers. To compare the head size of those affected in the womb against those exposed in infancy wouldn’t make “the sense” one would think. A dose larger in proportion to body size, crossing the brain blood barrier would be quite different, IMO.
It’s probably come to this, thousands of parents can’t be wrong. It’s the same with Kawasaki, thousands of parents believe it’s chemical (mercury) in connection with a pathogen. Two groups of parents , both believe mercury is involved, a cdc, that can’t..make that won’t..give answers, so they do such things as put warnings on vaccine inserts that are so vague that one would consider it a joke in any other business. There are thousands that think aspartame kills brain cells, but no fda is suggesting a label on your diet coke. This has to be more real than they are telling , or they wouldn’t put “possibility of KD” on a vaccine label. Are they putting possibility of autism on the vaccine label? In light of Hanah Poling, perhaps they should be.
I’m so curious as to how many families have both, Kawasaki and autism .
Kawasaki, mercury, pink disease; do you have a statistic to those having those and autism to those that did not have autism? Add my child to the not having any of those.
As far as I have read, aspartame has no connection to autism.
In the light of Hannah Poling, look at your own vaccine records and see if your own child had that many catch up vaccines in one day. Hannah is only Hannah, and unless you can exactly duplicate her vaccine schedule, there is no comparison or value of that case other than to that family.
Wow! What wonderful news about what adult autism looks like!Did you know that with apparently no treatment, ALL of the adults with autism will soon be able to speak, live on their own,and have enough social skills to want to fill out forms and have long telephone conversations with strangers.
Recovery is more than possible; it happens to everyone with severe autism!Great!
I’ll just explain to my friend with the 16 year old autistic son, who still can’t speak, flaps and circles around and occasionally has uncontrollable fits where he throws chairs etc around the room, that as soon as he hits the magic age of 18, he’ll be able to live on his own and have long conversations with strangers!
She’ll be so relieved..
As Bill says, what are todays parents doing wrong? Don’t they know that if they would just put those mute, stimming self mutilating children in the mainstream class where they belong, they will all grow up to be engineers.What a relief!
Sorry, a little sarcastic there; but unfortunately, whatever this study was looking at, it wasn’t actually autism.Autism per the DSM IV-TR (ie the diagnostic requirements for autism)
are as follows
Diagnostic Criteria for 299.00 Autistic Disorder
A total of 6 (or more) items from 1, 2,and 3,with at least 2 from 1, and one each from 2 and 3.
1 Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following;
a. Marked impairment in the use of multiple non verbal behaviors such as eye to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures and gestures to regulate social interaction
b. Failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
c. A lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievments with other people9e.g.by a lack of showing bringing or pointing out objects of interest)
d.lack of social or emotional reciprocity
2. Qualitative impairments in communicaiton as manifested by at least one of the following
a.delay or total lack of the development of spoken language(not accompanied by an attempt to compensate through alternative modes of communication such as gesture or mime)
b. in individuals with adequate speech,marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain converations with others
c.stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
d.lack of varied spontaneous make believe play or social imitative play appropriate to developmental level
3.restrictive repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior,interests and activities as manifested by at least one of the following;
a.encompassing preoccupation wiht one or more stereotyped and restriced patterns of interest that is abnormal in intensity or focus
b.apparently inflexible adherence to specific non functional routines or rituals
c.stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerism(eg hand or finger flapping or twisitng or complex whole body movements)
d.persistent preoccupation with parts of objects
Delays or abnormal functioning in a lest one of the follwoing areas,with onset prior to age 3 years
1)social interaction
2)language as used in social communication
3)symbolic or imaginitive paly
c.The disturbance is not better accounted for by Retts disorder or Childhood Disintegrative Disorder.
Thats’ the complete criteria for autism folks.
So a written study supposedly filled out by people who “lack social or emotional reciprocity” and “lack spontaneous sharing with others” who nonetheless take the time to fill out a study for complete strangers,
and a telephone follow up with people who could show “total lack of development of the spoken language..”
How did that telephone conversation go,exactly??
So what could the study actually identify??
Well, likely it would identify introverts
(thats the name for people who like to go to the library instead of parties)
Possibly some people with some traits of obsessive compulsive disorder
(detail orientated people who like things to be perfect)
and possibly some people with some aspergers traits, though given that again this has “lack of social or emotional reciprocity ” and a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests or achievements…” listed as two identifying criteria, it seems unlikely that anyone meeting those criteria would be filling out forms for total strangers either.
Very hard to defend a study like this, that does not even appear to follow the diagnostic criteria.
Hera – I think one of the biggest problems we face as a community is the fact that those criteria are so open to individual interpretation.
Almost every autistic person I’ve ever met has at least some social reciprocity. All of them share enjoyment with others (showing, telling, etc.) at some level.
If it were required that people with autism diagnoses had NO social reciprocity, sharing of enjoyment, etc., then MOST of the people now diagnosed on the spectrum would not really be appropriately diagnosed.
So — in a sense, either we’re vastly overdiagnosing autism overall (in kids and adults) OR diagnosticians are looking at “lack of” in a relative sense. That is, they’re looking at people and saying “they are LESS socially engaged, LESS communicative, etc., than typical people.”
How much social reciprocity do you need to be typical? My sense is there are no definite rules. In fact, there don’t seem to be any absolutes to go by.
Hope this makes sense!
Lisa
Diagnosing autism is complex. You’re relying on a doctors interpretation of behaviors (or on some cultures people’s opinions that it’s an evil spirit which happened present day WI) and hope they get it right. In 1994 I had a niece on my then husbands side who was misdiagnosed and never had an autism IEP all through school. Once she was an adult and out of school, with all her medical and school records, she had a correct diagnosis on the spectrum. We lived with them at that time, and looking back and knowing my own child, it is surprising no one put 2 and 2 together to add up autism. That was 1994, imagine what it would had been like in the 1980’s, 70’s or 60’s. And as another poster always reminds us, no one really tells people once they’re an adult they do have a sppectrum disorder. Every body expects every one to fit right into that ‘main stream’ mind set and if you don’t, well you can imagine the outcome. The rating system is flawed to begin with and to assume there isn’t a large enough number of adults that were simply missed is relying too heavily on that flawed system. There is simply no way to ever have an accurate number present day or past.
I meet many parents who’s child are diagnosed ADHD only, yet they have speech delays and social issues which typically you wouldn’t see that in ADHD nor would you see the social piece. If one looks at the signs of ADHD and autism, they seem very close. Chances are, all the kids in the 1970’s with ADHD were on the spectrum. My child can appear ADHD as well, only you have to look at his surroundings and you’ll find the cause.
Actually, thousands of people can be wrong about something. It happens all the time.
Hera is wrong in several ways. For example, she quotes one of the criteria as “total lack of the development of spoken language” when in fact the DSM-IV says “delay or total lack of the development of spoken language.” That was kind of a dishonest characterization, for starters.
Obviously, total lack of language will be more common in young autistic children than in autistic adults.
Additionally, that one item is not required by the DSM-IV to fulfill criteria. “A total of 6 (or more) items from 1, 2,and 3,with at least 2 from 1, and one each from 2 and 3.”
Furthermore, the study wasn’t just trying to locate DSM-IV autistic disorder, but ASD in general, as do the vast majority of ASD prevalence studies.
The methodology of the study, i.e. how it is that they went about contacting people for the phase 1 interviews, how they dealt with people who couldn’t fill out questionnaires, and so forth, is all in the paper. Hera doesn’t provide any valid criticism of the procedures.
In fact, methodologically, even if a large portion of people didn’t fill out the phase 1 questionnaires in an honest or proper way, it doesn’t matter. I’ve explained this elsewhere.
Now, denying that the ADOS has a good correspondence with DSM-IV criteria is just absurd. The ADOS is one of the best diagnostic tools there is.
Did you know that with apparently no treatment, ALL of the adults with autism will soon be able to speak, live on their own,and have enough social skills to want to fill out forms and have long telephone conversations with strangers.
More nonsense here. Never mind that an autistic could live independently, and still be very obviously autistic – lonely, friendless, not being able to speak very well, etc.
The fact is that there’s no data from the study saying that these adults lived independently. For all we know, a lot of them lived with their parents. We know that many of them lived in ‘projects’.
Further, this was a study of autistics living in private households, not “ALL of the adults.” There’s most likely going to be a follow-up survey of autism among adults living in institutions. Let’s see you make the same arguments when that one comes out.
I think it’s also important to note that the autism spectrum is plenty broad enough to include adults with all kinds of abilities and lifestyles.
My best guess is that people who would, today, be labeled Aspergers or HFA would probably be living independently – yet have challenges or issues that are legitimately autistic. Look at some of today’s self-advocates, and you’ll find many people with Ph.D’s, including authors, speakers, etc.
Meanwhile, I’d imagine that many who would today be labeled as moderately to severely autistic may have received labels ranging from MR to schizophrenia, and may be living in institutions, at home, or be in-and-out of similar settings.
The number of people with “classic” (highly recognizable) autism was and remains relatively tiny.
Lisa
Lisa, that is so vague and speculative. Fact is, good studies have shown huge increases in autism, without the decreases in other diagnoses (e.g. MR) which would occur if there were diagnositic substitution.
It’s certainly possible that there are more mild HFA cases diagnosed today that would not have been diagnosed in the past, but we also have a whole lot of severe full blown autism cases these days which could not have been under the radar in any era.
Well, unfortunately since we’re talking about now adults, there’s no way to look and see what their IEP’ were back when they were in school, but we know their IEP’s up until a certain date when autism was added to IDEA, wouldn’t have had autism as a primary.
Have you looked aside from those studies, to actual school records to determine a drop in other IEP primaries? You may find some very interesting things.
ANB, what precisely are “autistic-like symptoms”? And how, exactly, would one distinguish between “autistic-like symptoms” and “autism symptoms.”
This is a watershed moment! You’re admitting that measles, malnutrition, PTSD and other environmental factors can cause autism?!
QUICK! SOMEONE WRITE THIS DOWN! AT 7:10PM ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2009, A.N.B. ADMITTED THAT THERE ARE ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES FOR AUTISM. …er, I mean, for AUTISTIC-LIKE SYMPTOMS!!!
Be careful ANB. Next thing we know, you’ll be declining your H1N1 shot, and you’ll be stalking Jenny McCarthy for her autograph.
Twyla – I don’t think there’s any doubt that the number of people diagnosed with HFA/Aspergers has increased, since HFA/Aspergers didn’t even exist as diagnoses prior to the 90’s. As to the number of people with “classic” or “severe” autism, there seems to be legit debate over whether or not the numbers have risen (I know about the CA research, but serious questions have been raised about those numbers).
Sandy – just to mention, there were no IEP’s prior to the IDEA in the early 90’s, so no way to look at relative numbers of educational diagnoses, educational labels, etc. prior to then in a way that compares usefully to today.
Bob- I agree that the idea that there’s some absolute difference between autistic-like and autistic symptoms is kinda silly. Obviously, autism is diagnosed on the basis of autistic-like symptoms. Which seriously complicates, IMHO, the rulings of the vaccine court… as well as the process of counting, diagnosing and appropriately naming the number of people with autism.
Lisa
Lisa~ I believe IDEA started in 1975, and up to that date, public schools educated only 1 out of 5 children with disabilities and mainly excuded those children from the public school. Autism wasn’t added as a eligibility for services until the 1990’s, (that is not the date IDEA was enacted however) so from the start time of IEP’s (IDEA 1975) to when autism was added is about 15 years of IEP’s most likely not having and autism primary.
Fact still remains, from 1975 to the 1990’s, there’s really no accurate way to get figures to those who were in the school system (or not in the school system) to which adults today should have had an autism primary IEP. they can only look at when autism was added to IDEA and many are still kids.
Whoa – Sandy you’re absolutely right, and I was sure I had that information correct. Have to go back and doublecheck my original sources.
That’s amazing: I NEVER heard of an IEP until I had a kid in special education…
Lisa
Fact is, good studies have shown huge increases in autism, without the decreases in other diagnoses (e.g. MR) which would occur if there were diagnositic substitution.
Such as?
Your statement is also inaccurate, in that you’d expect to see decreases in MR only to the extent that there are no dual diagnoses. In systems with a ‘primary disability’ you do see such drops, like in IDEA, even though it’s not clear if most of the substitution is coming from MR or SLD.
we also have a whole lot of severe full blown autism cases these days which could not have been under the radar in any era.
These are arguments that are made all the time, so it’s a bit surprising to me that people don’t seem to have been informed of the flaws in them, or they have, but they don’t care.
The argument assumes that if a ’severely autistic’ child never not an autism label, this means no one noticed the child, that the child was “under the radar” or some such. That’s ridiculous. For all you know, the child went to special education or was institutionalized without an autism label. Do you think the average person or even doctors were experts in autism a generation back? They weren’t.
I don’t know what criteria the schools use to label a child autistic, or if they “alone”can add them to the “count”. Just to share, I just got our 2004’s “brigance” test, he scored 0 in “visual motor skills” and 0 in language. I’m sure “help” is on it’s way. Yes, I have him in speech, articulation is his ONLY problem, however I’m sure from these scores their building a much bigger one. I’ve been asked a few times about his “vaccines”, during his iep and in a phone call from some “tutor” that wanted him included in the county “program”. He’s my asthmatic, I never thought anyone would be “after” him. He’s so use to not being understood that he’s often shy for fear of criticism by strangers, I’m guessing he felt uncomfortable in his testing situation. He’s not shy around children, he says they think he’s foreign and call him the spanish kid, that’s a five year old’s answer to not being able to understand his speech. I thought it was “kinda” cute, adults on the other hand aren’t “cute”. “seek and ye shall find”…yep they are “seeking” The best part he could be “found” and have been a miracle cure in no time flat.
Lisa~ I never heard of an IEP either until my niece. I had speech services when I was in grade school, however that would had been prior to IDEA in 1975. My mom of course doesn’t remember much from back then and it was my dad who would have communicated to the school about it.
Joseph~ doctors weren’t experts in autism a generation back and one can tell you there’s plenty that aren’t today, either. Anyone who talks to many parents would know many many of them have a hard time getting any diagnosis and docs sit there and ho hum about what it could be. An MR diagnosis is based on IQ, and although many with autism are smart, they are not so paper test smart and have a duel diagnosis.
Barbaraj~ an IEP is not the same as a medical diagnosis, and the ‘count’ mainly does and always has come from educational IEP’s primary. They have done sample studies of a few states for rates, however one then would assume for the rates to come else where that doctors have some functional reporting system. Only in a few states can the school actually diagnosis anything other than a learning disability. Schools can not generally diagnosis a medical condition, since of course school is educational, not medical, hence making the whole autism rates, a generation ago and into today very flawed. Adults are in no ‘count’ at all.
QUICK! SOMEONE WRITE THIS DOWN! AT 7:10PM ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2009, A.N.B. ADMITTED THAT THERE ARE ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES FOR AUTISM. …er, I mean, for AUTISTIC-LIKE SYMPTOMS!!!
The best stenographers use upper and lower case letters, but as long as you’re taking notes, here’s something else to write down:
That’s from a two-year old clinical report from the AAP.
If I’m going too fast for you, I’ll put it in simpler terms:
Genes + Environment = Disease. This is known as the Two-Hit Hypothesis, first proposed for cancer in 1971. They talk about it all the time in medical school.
If you’re confused by the difference between autistic like symptoms and autism, then you need to re-read comment #63:
Sure it’s genetics, so is heart disease, lung cancer, really, one could take a test and find they are literally immune from developing high cholesterol or getting lung cancer. I believe the cdc is hiding behind the very word, “genetic” because most of us think of that as some big predisposition, and it just isn’t so,some are protected by their gene pool never to catch a cold. With the rise as it is in autism, it’s seeming more like it’s a rare genetic pool that’s going to protect families from autism. Chances are few are going to be able to resist the damage of cofactors involved. This isn’t Reyes , a rare disorder, this is likely something that will one day be shown in a petri dish, some wild synergy between metals and viruses, causing a toxin that affects many children and leaves some with damage to their brains. Others are affected, all are likely affected, there is no such thing as not having a reaction to some of these shots. Our 1996 was fine before suddenly needing nicu services for a week. This is an interesting article, I’m guessing, since this is the theme, that the source is “not acceptable”? This may explain the Somali children’s excess of asd.
Hepatitis B Vaccination of Male Neonates and Autism
Annals of Epidemiology, Volume 19, Issue 9, Pages 659-659
C. Gallagher, M. Goodman
PURPOSE: Universal newborn immunization with hepatitis B vaccine was recommended in 1991; however, safety findings are mixed. The Vaccine Safety Datalink Workgroup reported no association between hepatitis B vaccination at birth and febrile episodes or neurological adverse events. Other studies found positive associations between hepatitis B vaccination and ear infection, pharyngitis, and chronic arthritis; as well as receipt of early intervention special education services (EIS); in probability samples of U.S. children. Children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) comprise a growing caseload for EIS. We evaluated the association between hepatitis B vaccination of male
neonates and parental report of ASD.
METHODS: This cross-sectional study used U.S. probability samples obtained from National Health Interview Survey 1997–2002 datasets. Logistic regression modeling was used to estimate the effect of neonatal hepatitis B vaccination on ASDrisk amongboys age 3–17 years with shot records, adjusted for race, maternal education, and two-parent household.
RESULTS:Boyswho received the hepatitis B vaccine during the first month of life had 2.94 greater odds for ASD (nZ31 of 7,486; OR Z 2.94; p Z 0.03; 95% CI Z 1.10, 7.90) compared to later- or unvaccinated boys.Non-Hispanicwhite boys were 61%less likely to haveASD(ORZ0.39; pZ0.04; 95% CIZ0.16, 0.94) relative to non-white boys.
CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that U.S. male neonates vaccinated with hepatitis B vaccine had a 3-fold greater risk of ASD; risk was greatest for non-white boys.
With the rise as it is in autism …
Which PDD is on the rise? All of them? Or just autistic disorder?
Is the full text of the Gallagher paper available anywhere? Note that it’s just the abstract that was listed in Annals of Epidemiology. It’s not one of their peer-reviewed papers.
It’s impossible to evaluate otherwise. I’ve read the prior paper by Gallagher where they claim there’s a big impact on children in special education (most of whom, of course, are not autistic.) I frankly couldn’t figure out how they arrive at their results from the data provided, and they pretty much skip any details.
I believe we will find both authors carry solid credentials, and are published in other journals, as well as this one. I guess we can deny it, say it’s frivolous, lacking some “special” criteria, however it looks real to me. In the climate of hidden truths I believe they are “brave men”.
oops..that may be brave women..
Their credentials are not too relevant. What matters is that their results are correct, interpreted properly, and can’t be easily explained by something they overlooked. It also matters that they replicate.
I think barbaraj is saying that if something “seems real” to her, then it is real.
Well, real to me isn’t believing the conspiracy and hidden truths theories, and many people and studies prey on those that do.
That puts you in a minority, Sandy. The vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants think like BarbaraJ. Ever heard of “the evil eye ? Scientology? Bride burning? Assuming that what feels real, is real, not only makes us easy marks, it also stymies progress. A flat Earth seemed real. So did geocentrism.
ANB~ yes, I heard of those, but I don’t think I’m the minority. What I am is just not a person who needs to be an idea/ theory follower, which is how some of those things you listed started. Out of some ones ‘need’, those things were born.
I’m more of a Judge Judy kind of person “if it doesn’t make sense, then it’s not true”.
ANB & Sandy, Barbaraj posted a specific study with specific results, and you are making completely irrelevant comments about people who feel the earth is flat. You are the ones stereoptyping. You have such ingrained feelings that vaccines don’t cause autism that you can’t even look at and respond to information in a rational way, only by putting down the people whose opinions are different from yours.
Twyla~ I have never once said vaccines didn’t cause autism. Not once. I don’t believe I ever really said what I do think causes autism since I am rational enough to know I can only speak for my child. I also don’t suggest people are not rational, as you often say to others when they offer their own opinion that you don’t agree with. I have never put down people as you have me many times. You’re opinion of me really doesn’t matter to me. No one is here to gain your approval. It is often the case that when people get stuck on conspiracy and hidden truths theories that they are not objective and that can clearly be seen all over.