The Really Big Lie About Autism

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By Evelyn Pringle, Posted by Evelyn Pringle (about the submitter) Page 2 of 4 page(s)

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In the Atlanta Journal Constitution article, Are Autism Cases on the Rise in the US? child psychiatrist Dr. Bradley Peterson told us "the numbers are comparable to what they were 20 years ago."

In the New York Times article, Study Puts Rate of Autism at 1 in 150 U.S. Children, Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, from Yale University School of Medicine was quoted as saying, "It appears that the rates are unchanged over the past 20 years or so."

Correspondent Lesley Stahl reported on the one in 150 rate on "60 Minutes" on February 18th. She interviewed Dr. Stephen Goodman, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has studied autism statistics for the past 30 years. He stated, "The explosive increase that has been claimed is almost certainly not true."

Dr. Goodman believes that "if the numbers are rising, they're not rising very quickly, if it's going up at all."

He added that the expansion of the definition of autism in 1994 is the reason for more children diagnosed as autistic.

Dr. Goodman failed to mention that besides a wider meaning being given to autism in the 1990s, this was also the decade of the dramatic increase in the number of mercury-containing vaccinations in the childhood schedule.

Dr. Goodman doesn't accept that mercury-laced vaccines are a factor in autism. Furthermore, he told us that he was on a national medical panel that found no evidence connecting the use of the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, in children's vaccines to the high autism numbers.

In truth, the Institute of Medicine panel that Dr. Goodman served on used a host of easily manipulated population studies to show that adding a known neurotoxin to vaccines is safe. These are the same kinds of studies devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s as proof that smoking wasn't harming people's health.

It should be noted that Dr. Goodman isn't able to do the one thing that would settle the debate over vaccines and autism. He can't show us the rigorous testing done on thimerosal before it was ever allowed in our children's vaccinations. He can't do that, because there was none.

The drug company Eli Lilly invented thimerosal back in 1930. They said it was safe and after the creation of the FDA, its use was simply continued. It's hard to understand how a federal panel could claim that thimerosal is safe when they knew it was never tested for toxicity. That's hardly oversight information that either the CDC or FDA wants publicized.

Dr. Goodman may think autism numbers haven't changed, but he would have a hard time convincing school district officials across the U.S. that all the autistic kids everywhere are the result of an expanded definition of autism and better recognition of the disorder.

These are just a few examples of how autism is affecting state and local communities.

Two months ago, Raquel Eatmon, at CBS 11 News in Fort Worth reported, "According to the Texas Education Agency over the last five years autism has nearly doubled from 8,972 to 17,282. Some researchers insist the numbers are higher."

In New Jersey they spent $3 billion on special education last year. New Jersey also reported a 30-fold increase in autism since 1991, with 7,400 students now diagnosed as autistic.

The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire reported this week that the number of autistic students had tripled since 2001. School board president David Immen said that the increase in students with autism "is not a bubble passing through; it's a wave that's coming."

Salem Statesman Journal in Oregon reported that there are now 700 students in the Salem-Keizer school district who are autistic.

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