An Epidemic of Discovery
January 15, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
But is there, in fact, an autism epidemic?
Asks Arthur Allen today in a review of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism by Roy Richard Grinker in today’s Slate. Allen, author of Vaccine, continues:
Most of the scientists who study the disease—though not all—believe that any increase in recent decades in autism incidence, as opposed to diagnosis, has been modest. In his new book Unstrange Minds; Remapping the World of Autism, George Washington University anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker, who has an autistic 15-year-old daughter, makes the case that the rise in autism diagnosis is nothing more than an epidemic of discovery.
Go here to read Why there’s no autism epidemic, but rather an epistemological epidemic—one involving how we see and know the world, an “epidemic” of understanding—to phrase Allen’s “epidemic of discovery” another way.
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