The Really Big Lie About Autism

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By Evelyn Pringle, Posted by Evelyn Pringle (about the submitter) Page 1 of 4 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Posted by Evelyn Pringle - Writer

The 2007 CDC Autism Study

About six months ago I wrote an OpEd piece called "The Really Big Lie About Autism" in which I described the persistent yet illogical claim that all the autistic kids filling speech therapy sessions, classrooms, and even whole schools, are the result of "better diagnosing and greater awareness" on the part of doctors. In other words, autism has always been a major childhood disorder; we just didn't recognize it for what it was.

That article focused on the Really Big Lie About Autism as told to parents by the medical community. Regardless of the number of autistic kids sitting in their waiting rooms, doctors are satisfied that it's all due to their keener sense of observation.

The Really Big Lie About Autism has just been updated and expanded.

This past month the Centers for Disease Control released the findings of a major study on autism. There were actually two surveys done looking at 8-year-olds, the first in six states and a second looking at 8-year-olds in 14 states. On average, they found that about one in 150 children born in 1992 and 1994, or 6.7 per thousand, have autism. New Jersey was on the high side with one in every 94 children, including one in every 60 boys.

The CDC announced this latest mind-boggling rate with an air of pride. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding explained that the new numbers were because "our estimates are becoming better and more consistent."

Now it seems that the CDC is on a par with the medical community with the news about this new autism rate. Not only are doctors better at diagnosing, but also CDC officials are better at counting.

Incredibly, the CDC still cannot say with any certainty that autism is actually affecting more children despite all the autistic kids everywhere. The CDC has been studying autism numbers for more than ten years, yet they don't know if it's more prevalent.

Dr. Gerberding explained it this way, "We can't yet tell if there is a true increase in ASDs or if the changes are the result of our better studies."

The CDC still can't tell? This agency gets billions of tax dollars each year to run health care in the U.S. They can give us statistics on any other disorder or disease broken down by age, sex, and ethnicity, including changes in the incidence rate--except autism. The study's lead author, Dr. Catherine Rice, made it clear that nothing in her research can tell us about trends. "We hope these findings will build awareness," Rice said.

A number of experts quickly rallied to the defense of the "no real increase" position. Doctors have come out officially to remind us that there is nothing to be alarmed about concerning the new one in every 150 children rate.

Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, chief of the CDC's developmental-disabilities program at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities was interviewed in Newsweek and agreed that it isn't that "the rates of autism have gone up, just that now we have some more definitive data."

On ABC's 20/20 on February 23rd, Dr Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, explained that the increase in autism is due to the fact that "people that we once called quirky or geeky or nerdy are now called autistic."

He further stated that with a label of autism, it would "allow that child then to qualify for services which otherwise they wouldn't be qualified to get."

Incredibility, there are those who are using the new autism numbers for children born in the 1990s to create statistics all the way back to the 1980s. Doctors are citing this 2007 study as proof that the autism rate hasn't increased in the last twenty years.

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