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Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates

Posted by samzenpus on from the going-up dept.

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has raised eyebrows, and concern among current and prospective parents, with a new report documenting that the rate of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States jumped 30% between 2008 and 2010, from one in 88 to one in 68 children. CDC officials don't know, however, whether the startling increase is due to skyrocketing rates of the disorder or more sensitive screening, or a combination of both."

20 of 558 comments (clear)

  1. Medicalizing Normality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'Nuff Said

    1. Re:Medicalizing Normality by MitchDev · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's just a repeat of the "ADD" craze the medical industry was in in the 80's and 90's to make doctors feel needed and important....

    2. Re:Medicalizing Normality by Pope · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Have you ever considered that perhaps Autism is an evolution of humans, rather than a thing which will "fuck" us?

      LMAO, you don't know how evolution works, do you? What possible advantage could autism provide, when it renders most afflicted persons unsociable and awkward and therefore highly unlikely to pass on their genes?

      --
      It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    3. Re:Medicalizing Normality by canadian_right · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You've never actually met an autistic person have you? It is NOT an advantage in 99.99999% of cases, A few people with mild cases can live normal lives, but this is the exception. Most autistic people cannot live on their own and require close supervision 24x7. Most people, even saintly social workers, find it extremely unrewarding, frustrating, and generally unbearable working with autistic people.

      Autism is a horrible affliction.

      --
      Anarchists never rule
    4. Re:Medicalizing Normality by funwithBSD · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My son is autistic too.

      With the right combination of Physical Therapy, Speech therapy, and Occupation Therapy over the last 7 years, he is almost indistinguishable from a "normal" person. He is not that much different from your average geeky kid, except his short term memory is like a database with broken indexing: it is all there, but he has to really work to get it out. If you supply a prompt, the data floods back out of him at a surprising rate.

      So far, his only real social setback is he has NO IDEA that all the girls around him adore him. Kid is putting out some sort of weapons grade pheromone or something.

      He came home the other day with some cool looking knotting thing going on. Asked him about it, turns out the girl who is the top of the social pecking order in his class saw his shoe untied. She offered to tie it for him at lunch, spent half of lunch break redoing the lacing.

      I don't think he will have any problems passing on his genes.

       

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    5. Re:Medicalizing Normality by BobMcD · · Score: 5, Informative

      My youngest son has high-functioning autism with pdd. From my point of view, you're both right and wrong (in that extremely insensitive way only an ignorant person can be.) So let me reflect.

      You're right - there is a 'craze'. It involves things like throwing Risperdal and/or non-gluten-casein diets at a problem that science can't even define, let alone treat. Jenny McArthy's book, all that crap. It is crap, you're right about that. It is the same as all infant science - as much voodoo as fact. But that goes for a lot of medicine these days, so let's not judge too harshly.

      You're wrong (in a fuck-you-generating way) that this is 'just' a craze. My son is a very different type of human. In fact this is how we break in new care givers: "Imagine a space craft landed and dropped off one of their children. Everything he does is normal on his home planet, and most of the things we do are weird and strange to him. That's Scott."

      He can't really relate to people in a natural way. Eye contact is poison. He mixes up the concepts of 'love' and 'need' (he'll be the first to tell you he 'loves to fart', for example.) He'll probably never have a 'normal job', but could work in a specialized environment, etc.

      There are upsides, too. Some of them are basically superpowers. For example, if he saw a calendar at any time during his life, he remembers it forever. So you can ask him, 'what was the Wednesday before April 7th, 2006' and he'll tell you. I have no idea how useful this would be to anyone, but it's still pretty remarkable. His circadian rhythms are pretty much infallible. Stuff like that.

      In short, he's unique enough to have a 'thing' that deserves a name. The existence of the 'craze' doesn't invalidate the 'thing'.

      It isn't all bad

  2. really? really. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    about a century and a half ago, nobody ever heard about autism.
    you wouldn't be diagnosed an autist, but simply made to stand in a corner of the class with a dunce cap a lot.
    i can picture the headlines.

    autism discovered!

    sudden surge in number of autists baffles scientists!

    as we get better at diagnosing conditions like this, naturally there will be a rise in the number of positive diagnoses.

    1. Re:really? really. by bickerdyke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Plus a number of parents that can't accept that their precious offspring simply may be plain stupid or lazy as any other kid.

      There HAS to be a reason and there HAS to be someone or something responsible for Li'l Joe standing in the corner with the dunce cap so often.

      And I guess that still leaves a bit of wiggle room for an actual increase of people ending up somewhere in the autistic spectrum.

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      bickerdyke
    2. Re:really? really. by king+neckbeard · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, the article states about half of those diagnosed have average or above average intelligence. Thus, autism is becoming less and less about intelligence and more about just having different behavior. I think this will likely be a great thing, as it will help separate the conflation of autism with mental retardation. This will benefit everyone across the spectrum of intelligence, and along the spectrum of what we consider severity for autism.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    3. Re:really? really. by Jason+Levine · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, as someone likely on the autism spectrum* - albeit high functioning, I find it easier to communicate via social networking (and online in general) than face-to-face. With face-to-face, there are problems like needing to think of the appropriate thing to say in the appropriate manner, keeping appropriate levels of eye contact, getting the tone right, blocking out distractions like other conversations, and doing all of this on-the-fly in a short enough period of time. Often I have exactly the right words in my head, but they come out of my mouth all wrong (if they come out at all). With online communication, I can type out my reply, correct it five times to hone my message before sending it. (Like I've done with this one.) If anything, I've found that online communication has helped me with face-to-face communication, not "increased my autism."

      * My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and everything that I read seems to describe me as well. I could seek a diagnosis but it would spend money we don't have and wouldn't help my son out. So I'm comfortable being "likely" instead of "definitely."

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    4. Re:really? really. by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You realize that 'normal' people invariably have symptoms or findings found in syndromes or diseases. The discovery of which prompts the 'second year medical student syndrome'. At least in the US, the second year of medical school is when you start studying the pathology of disease and learn about all of these funny named syndromes and problems. Invariably at least one or two resonates with the reader and they feel instantly afflicted. This prompts further study (which is good) and further worry (which isn't).

      What you described is pretty much everyone who doesn't go on to be a used car salesman or a politician. Figuring out the ins and outs of social contact is hard for most humans. People afflicted with autism / aspbergers are really hard stopped to the edge of human contact. Yes, at a molecular level, some of us who don't deal with the social graces as well as others probably have some similarities, but pretty much all of health and disease lies along a continuum, We often make fairly arbitrary distinctions because it helps pigeon hole things and humans like to do that... But it's not always representative of the issue.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Shifting thresholds by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suspect a lot of diagnoses concern borderline cases, that would previously not have been counted as verified autism - so before, people would be classified as "odd" or "geeky" but not as someone who carries a mental disability.

    The same thing happened with depression. In the old days, depression was virtually unheard of, aside from extreme cases of people constantly trying to take their own lives. Nowadays, everybody and their dog gets depressed at some point during the year, and prescribed medicine.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Shifting thresholds by gtall · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Really? Ever see someone in their manic mode of manic depression? I have a sister with this as well as schizophrenia because many mental disorders rarely come alone, it is something like a smorgasbord. Anyhow, one evening she took exception to the wall-to-wall carpeting in Ma's bedroom while Ma was in the hospital. She ripped up that carpeting in the bedroom and an adjacent room, moving several pieces of large furniture out of the way to do it. I asked her how long it took, it took a few hours in the evening and a few the following morning.

      She ripped up the carpeting with her bare hands. That's what can happen when she doesn't take her meds. And that was during a manic episode, the schizophrenic episodes are stranger.

      Unless you've lived with someone with mental illness, you don't know squat about it.

  4. Galvanises? by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Funny

    At last, the real culprit is revealed: zinc.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  5. Autism is the new ADD by korbulon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not saying that all or even most of the diagnoses of autism are false positives, but when you're living in a world where human communities are dwindling and become more insular - so there is less direct social engagement, extended families are spread across continents - so this core social unit is less dynamic and extensive, and people spend more and more time in front of screens - at work and at home, this sort of result is not overly surprising. Shit, when did the first iPhone come out? Mid 2007? Coincidence? iThink not.

    Increased screening sensitivity is probably playing a big factor as well: "Tommy seems rather introverted and shuns the company of others. He also throws a huge tantrum when we take away the tablet with the toons on it. Probably autism." I'm not saying this is due to negligent parenting, but when there is an obvious diagnosis that fits the symptoms, why look any further? Again, these are the marginal cases which are sufficiently prevalent to cause this spike.

  6. Education funding and excessive medicallisation by NoNeeeed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Part of the problem in the UK (so may not be the same in the US) is that there is additional funding and support for kids with diagnoses like ASDs so there is a big incentive for schools and parents to push for it. It's driving a whole approach of medicalising behaviour. Kids who in the past would have been simply regarded as a bit unusual and who a teacher would have had to just cope with are now being given medical diagnoses and possibly additional help.

    As discussed in the article what would be interesting to see is more detail on the distribution of ASD diagnoses, in terms of where they sit on the spectrum. If there is an increase the diagnosis of severe autism (the kids who would reasonably have been diagnose as autistic 30 years ago) then that would suggest that there is some environmental factor at work. If, on the other hand it's mostly high functioning and borderline then it seems likely to be mostly down to diagnosis.

    While I'm very much in favour of education being better able to deal with kids' differences, I'm not sure medicalising it is the way to go.

    --
    Paul Leader
    1. Re:Education funding and excessive medicallisation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My grandparents clearly had autism. It was never formally diagnosed. They had all sorts of interesting personality disorders (DSM!) and unhealthy destructive relationships.

      My parents clearly had autism. It was never formally diagnosed. They have all sorts of interesting personality disorders (DSM) and unhealthy destructive relationships.

      I clearly have autism. It was never formally diagnosed. My parents dealt with it by physical punishment. They hit me with wooden sticks so they wouldn't hurt their hands. I grew up really fucked up. Imagine being randomly beaten for reasons you do not and can not understand. I spent 2 decades clinically depressed, actively trying to kill myself. I know what arsenic tastes like. I know what it's like to hold a knife to my wrist, a gun to my head, and want, more than anything, to pull the trigger and end my pain and suffering. Sometimes you hold on for just another day. Sometimes for only a few more seconds of life. You know how a child's mind works? I used to wonder if I had already died, and already gone to hell, as I couldn't imagine anything worse.

      I got out of that. I got help. I spent almost another 20 years in psychotherapy, putting the pieces of my mind back together again. Unlearning the self-destructive behaviors I had unconsciously accepted. Not an easy thing.

      Today, I'm in my fifties. Today, my children have autism. It has been diagnosed. I have them seeing some of the best doctors in the country, right on the leading (bleeding) edge of medicine.

      Today we understand how layers of the brain's neural structure do not develop properly in autistic kids. How autism has many causes. Some kids will respond to gluten free diets. Others to dairy free diets. There are blood tests that can pick up on the antigens, telling us which kids can be helped by such alterations. It's known that their gut (intestines) are leaking proteins, causing the immune reaction picked up by the blood tests. It's known that these proteins can bind to neural receptor sites, and how they can act exactly like narcotics.

      Today it's known how still others kids have problems with nuts, with artificial sweeteners, or with artificial colors. There are a many dietary problems, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Other kids have difficulties with heavy metals. Others have, well, the list of causes here goes on and on and on. Autism is a catch-all disease, describing symptoms with a great number of underlying causative factors.

      Bottom line here is that there is a lot we can do to help these kids without fucking them up for life with depression or psychosis through abuse. If you don't deal with their problems, it is abuse. We assume control they do not possess. They can develop into great engineers, doctors, whatever. They're bright kids. Just different. They don't have to become monsters. We don't have to turn them into monsters!

  7. Re:Or endless 'vaccinations' by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please stop spreading the vaccine-autism bullshit. It's been consistently debunked and was only ever supported by a single flawed study that a celebrity took charge of spreading to scare parents out of vaccinating their children.

  8. Putting the cart before the horse by Buck+Feta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The question is simply answered: diagnoses are more prevalent because the drugs to treat those patients now exists. It is not mere coincidence that the FDA approved the use of Risperdal in late 2006, and its generic, Risperidone, in late 2008. There were more than a few doctors who have made more than a few dollars from prescribing tis medication. Johnson & Johnson has to pay a $2.2 billion dollar fine for illegally marketing this drug through the use of kickbacks to doctors and pharmacists. So don't tell me the pharmaceutical isn't dirtier than a whore's whose-its. Everyone relax. Autism rates will decline when these drugs get a bad enough name. Then, a more expensive drug will be produced to treat a more common malady, and everyone will freak the fuck out again.

    --
    I am Audience.
  9. Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One thing that is certain is that vaccines save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children every year. But by all means, forego them if you really don't want to "take the risk."