The Autism “Problem/Crisis/Epidemic/Emergency”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has referred to autism as a “serious public health problem,” and A-CHAMP and National Autism Association (NAA) member Anne McElroy Dachel takes the title of her April 10th article Autism: A Serious Public Health Problem from Gerberding’s words. Dachel is quite concerned with language in this piece, and asks why the CDC has yet to refer to autism as the “crisis” and even a “national health threat”:

Oprah started the [April 5th] program by saying that the CDC calls autism a “national health threat.” That was the first time I’d seen a term as strong as “health threat” used by the CDC in referring to autism.

According to my reading of Dachel’s writing, Oprah said that the CDC said that autism is a “national health threat,” which is not the same as the CDC itself saying that autism is a national health threat—-Dachel is using what, in Latin grammar, is called “indirect statement,” in which one repeats the words of someone else.

Again, the word used by CDC director Gerberding is “problem”; as Dachel notes, “the CDC is extremely careful when mentioning autism.” Dachel also asks why the CDC has so far refrained from calling autism an “epidemic,” as she believes it to be. Dachel accounts for the CDC’s not using her more charged terminology because this federal agency also runs the vaccine program:

The CDC may have their own reasons for avoiding attention-getting terms like “crisis” and “epidemic.” This is also the agency that runs the vaccine program. As the charge continues to be made that vaccines are directly related to the explosion in the autism rate, the CDC continues to deny it.

If the CDC were “officially” to refer to autism using the terms that Dachel prefers (”crisis,” “epidemic,” and also “emergency”—all quite inflammatory terms) this would “necessitate taking action.” Which, by her account, the CDC has not done and this, as Dachel writes at the end of her article, spells something worst that “crisis,” “epidemic,” and “emergency,” namely “disaster”:

The clock is ticking however. The generation of autistic children will soon become the generation of autistic adults dependent on the U.S. taxpayers for support and care. The first wave will be aging out in the next few years and the autism epidemic will be evident to everyone. When that happens, it will no longer be just a crisis. It will be a disaster.

If, writes Dachel, the CDC does not up the tone of its rhetoric on autism, something much more awful than an autism “crisis,” “epidemic,” and “emergency” will occur: Namely, not only a “wave” of autistic adults who are the current “generation of autistic children” (my son is in these numbers, as the children of many friends), but yet another wave of autistic adults, a veritable unhidden hoard, a tsunami of autistic persons “evident to everyone.”

And the good thing, as Dachel herself notes, is that we will notice all of these autistic persons; we will see them, unlike the situation for previous generations, whose autism was not apparent, understood, or identified: I just had a conversation with an autistic person from a “previous wave” yesterday (she lives across the street from us). We are able to see them now because we know what autism is and are able to understand when we see it.

And, provisioned with what we now know, I don’t think we will be drowning.