“My son has never been diagnosed with mental retardation, though—based on his cognitive performance and school work and minimal language—I think this would have been his diagnosis in the past.

No epidemic of autism, 1st or 2nd……”

I agree with you that there is no epidemic of autism, neither in the early 1960’s or after the introduction of DSM-III-R, ICD-10, ADOS-R, ARI-R and other ‘Gold Standard’ instruments to diagnose an ASD.

All of these Gold Standard diagnostic tools have included an ever expanding checklist of autistic ’symptoms’ in a Chinese menu fashion, one from column A, two from Column B…

The core problem is that isolated features which are a featured part of the overall syndrome of autism but are not specific to autism are all given equal weight under these diagnostic schemes and what Kanner called the ’sui generis’ of the core defining feature of autism has been lost, leading to the myth of the autism epidemic just as it did in the early 1960’s.

The best evidence is the data produced by the Autism Genome Consortium this year alone. The entire concept of the Consortium is flawed, they look at only the minority of children with a specific genetic anomaly that meet criteria for an ASD, and cannot see (because of the design flaw) the majority of cases who do not meet the criteria for an ASD and are excluded from the studies leading to false assumptions and misleading conclusions.

Every single finding published this year (SHANK3, Neuroligins etc.) have all been previously reported in patient populations with a variety of neurological conditions, primarily mental retardation, but not autism. In every single case the Consortium has promoted as an ‘autism’ gene, the phenotype is actually mental retardation with a minority presenting with enough nonspecific autistic features to qualify for an ASD diagnosis.

Regarding your question about Leo Kanners observation about the over diagnosing of autism. The article was published in 1965 in Behavioral Science. I found the entire article on a website and am posting the link for you:

http://neurodiversity.com/library_kanner_1965.html

This sage advice was not heeded by many authors. While the majority of the Europeans were satisfied with a sharp delineation of infantile autism as an illness sui generis, there was a tendency in this country to view it as a developmental anomaly ascribed exclusively to maternal emotional determinants. Moreover, it became a habit to dilute the original concept of infantile autism by diagnosing it in many disparate conditions which show one or another isolated symptom found as a part feature of the overall syndrome. Almost overnight, the country seemed to be populated by a multitude of autistic children, and somehow this trend became noticeable overseas as well. Mentally defective children who displayed bizarre behavior were promptly labeled autistic and, in accordance with preconceived notions, both parents were urged to undergo protracted psychotherapy in addition to treatment directed toward the defective child’s own supposedly underlying emotional problem.

RAJ, you’ve mentioned that a couple of times. I’m intrigued; where could I find/what’s the citation for that? I’d like to read it first-hand. Thanks.

Savants who learn to play music don’t forget songs that they learn. Savants that memorize stuff don’t turn around and forget it all, if they did why would anyone ever make a fuss over their skill?

These mice look more like a mouse model for amnesia. But typically, anyone who thinks they have a thing that can get funded as autism research will bend it that way because whereas there’s little money for “amnesia” research there’s plenty for autism research because of all the bizarros howling about a fake autism epidemic.

No epidemic of autism, 1st or 2nd……

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16284256?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

In 1965 Leo Kanner, the clinician who first recognized autism as a distinct neuropsychiatric disorder voiced his objection to the 1960’s ‘epidemic’ of autism when mentally retarded children with bizarre behaviors who shared one or more part features of the syndrome of autism were given the fashionable label of ‘autism’.

The current vastly expanded definition and criteria used to confer a diagnosis are vague, ambigous and subjective. This likely explains the second autism epidemic and also explains why such diverse children as Fragile X mentally retarded boys, brain damaged children, language delayed children people with personality disorders and even Romanian orphans who were institutionalized as infants and suffered severe emotional deprivation, abuse and neglect can all meet diagnostic criteria for an ASD.