An interesting take on the vaccine/autism "controversy..."

[peter12]

The increase in autism cases may be a statistical anomaly caused by doctors purposely mis-diagnosing patients with developmental disabilities as autistic in order to get access to state funding available to autism patients.

In every state, our scary autism epidemic fuels walkathons, awareness events, and a proliferation of local chapters of national autism organizations. And across the country, concerned parents whose children aren’t keeping up or seem troublingly different, turn to medical professionals and early childhood educators for evaluation and help. The problems are real.
But what if the autism statistics are wrong?
In 1987, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) began broadening the definition of autism to include not only children for whom socialization is impossible, but also those with varying levels of ability to interact and function. What was once a devastating affliction known simply as “autism” evolved into a “spectrum” of disorders, encompassing everything from profound impairment to far milder challenges. Naturally, this more expansive definition of autism partly explains the exponential increase in diagnoses in recent years.

It appears the numbers are probably grossly overblown. I wonder what Jenny and Jim have to say now?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910u/autism-diagnoses

[Burninator]

Interesting article, but I'm not sure how this relates to the vaccine (non)issue.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Burninator

Interesting article, but I'm not sure how this relates to the vaccine (non)issue.

I should have made the relationship more clear. The argument is that the increase in vaccinations has led to the supposed increase in autism diagnosis among children.

[FlamesAddiction]

My sister works with handicapped children, many of whom are "autistic". It's been known for a long time that many diagnoses are probably wrong. Many times, they just look at the symptoms and see what "template" they fall into, and then they label the children. The symptoms for autism are similar to a lot of different developmental disorders, but it's just easier (or lazier) to put them into one group.

[Sliver]

Funny American Voices in The Onion today on vaccines:

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo...ne_flu_vaccine

[troutman]

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1049

There is no question that the number of ASD diagnoses has been steadily increasing for the last two decades. The burning question has been – is this a real increase in the disorder or an artifact of increased surveillance and an expanded diagnosis. I have reviewed the evidence in depth previously – the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the increasing autism prevalence is due to increased efforts to make the diagnosis and a broadening of the definition of autism. The evidence is not sufficient to conclude that there is not also a real increase in ASD incidence, but nor is there data to support this conclusion.

Further, since I wrote my last summary, there has been more data to support the conclusion that autism rates are really flat. The National Health Service also has recently published a survey of autism prevalence. While the US studies looked at children from 3 to 17, the NHS study looked at all age groups. Their question was this – is the prevalence of ASD the same or different among various age groups? If the incidence of ASD is truly increasing, then younger age groups should have more ASD than older age groups.

They found a consistent prevalence of 1% in all age groups they surveyed. This is remarkable for two reasons – first, they found the exact same 1% figure as the CDC US survey (assuming the CDC data is more accurate than the phone survey published in Pediatrics). This supports the conclusion that the 1% figure may be close to the true prevalence of ASD in the population.

Second, the NHS study found that the prevalence of autism was the same in all age groups, strongly suggesting that true ASD incidence has not been increasing over recent decades and supporting the increased surveillance and definition hypothesis.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=95

Of course the implications of this are profound. If there is no autism epidemic, if there is a “stable incidence” of autism over recent decades, then this alone is powerful evidence against the vaccine hypothesis – and in fact removes the primary piece of evidence for a vaccine-autism connection. Just as a true increase in incidence would have called out for an environmental factor causing autism, the lack of any increase argues strongly against any environment factor – especially when this is combined with the copious evidence for multiple genetic factors as the ultimate cause(s) of ASD.

[Azure]

Hey now Troutman, lets not let science get in the way of my pre-conceived and stupid notions that vaccines cause autism.

[photon]

If you talk to professionals about autism or aspergers or ADHD they will themselves admit that it is just a label to identify a set of behaviours. The label is useful to unlock specific kinds of care and help for the parents and children. Otherwise the label really doesn't mean that much, professionals are more focused on dealing with the specifics than they are with the label.

So yeah I could see an "artificial" increase in diagnosis, but it's not really artificial, it's just the system says "we need x, y and z to get this kind of help", and the child needs the help, and the behaviour falls within the definition of the label, so fine, use the label to unlock the help.