A constant theme in 2008 was the rebranding of autism, as Orac at Respectful Insolence referred to how the likes of David Kirby have been constantly saying that “autism isn’t autism”—-it’s “mercury poisoning,” “vaccine-aggravated mitochondrial disorder,” “mercury-induced neurological disorder,” etc., etc.

(April being Autism Awareness Month—-does your child know about this—let’s not get into what such “rebranding” would do to the month…….)

The notorious Judge Rotenburg Center in Canton, Massachusetts uses electroshock “treatment” on some its residents, some of whom are autistic. In April, one of its staff was charged with rape, assault, and battery of another staff member—-more about the very, very questionable practices at the JRC is noted here.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield can be said to be the figure who set in motion the claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. He is currently being charged with alleged violations of medical ethics by the General Medical Council in the UK. At a hearing in April, Dr. Wakefield noted that he is “‘perfectly willing to accept [his] understanding was wrong.’”—- Also on the legal front: 2008 saw a version of “vaccine litigation subpoenagate,” with Neurodiversity blogger Kathleen Seidel successfully quashing a subpoena issued to her by vaccine litigation lawyer Clifford Shoemaker, and Dr. Marie McCormick also issued a subpoena.

More about the presidential candidates’ views on autism became apparent, especially those of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and, yes, on vaccines—-and as to why vaccines, and topics like the so-called “autism epidemic,” continue to be discussed, seems to be a sign of at least a little paranoia and politicking……….

In the midst of talk of diagnosis and disability rights, of treatments and of what’s an appropriate education for an autistic student, we took a hands-free cold walk last weekend to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza, and passed a wall of snowflakes too.

• Age of Diagnosis and the Apparent Increase in Autism
  A study in the December Archives of Pediatrics and General Medicine examines autism prevalence trends over time in Denmark and states that “the apparent increase in autism in recent years is in part attributable to a decrease over time in the age at diagnosis.
• Recovery Distracts
  How the notion of “recovery from autism” colors—not for the better— parents’ decisions about “treatments” and “therapies” for autism, and also on the popular perception of what autism is.
• Dangerous Ideas About Autism
  From Icad: “Suggesting that parenting a child with a disability is so challenging or stressful that killing these children is somehow understandable or excusable adds to the probability that other parents will kill their children, because sick minds struggling with the impulse to kill can be assisted to go over the edge by social endorsements, which help them to rationalize murder.”
• Overglut of Gluten-free?
  If everyone’s going gluten-free, is a “special diet” really a treatment for autism?
• Human Clinical Trials Underway for Fragile X Drug
  Experimental drugs that are said to “correct” symptoms of Fragile X, Rett Syndrome, and tuberous sclerosis complex are now in early-stage human trials, the MIT Technology Review reports.
• The Daily Commute (Your Child’s)
  How far does your child—or do you—travel to school?
• Letter to OSU President Gordon Gee
  A letter by Melanie Yergeau, a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in English, in response to remarks by President Gee including the statement that “‘It [autism] should not exist.’”
• Older, and Trying to Be Wiser, and Better at Hemming Pants
  I turn 40 and find myself wearing hand-me-ups from a not-yet-adolescent boy
• The Private-Public Dance: What’s Appropriate?
  What’s an “appropriate” education for an autistic child?
• Who’s On the Board?
  No one with autism when it comes to Autism Speaks.
• Arrested: The Charge? Bad Behavior
  Children with autism and other disabilities, and more of them, are “actually getting arrested for having tantrums at school,” Minnesota’s WCCO reports.

When Charlie was formally diagnosed with autism in July of 1999, “autism” seemed like something strange and puzzling and (to be very honest) unfathomable to me. I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t understand why it was necessary to apply such a “label” onto my toddler.

Nine years later, and not only do I know a great deal more about autism (with much more still to learn). It seems that people in general know a lot more autism, or are at least familiar with the word; it’s been some time since I said “autistic” and someone said back to me, “You mean he’s artistic?”.

At 10 months, Charlie’s then-pediatrician noticed that he had a “minor gross delay”: He’d just started rolling over at 9 months and, too, just started to sit independently. He had other gross motor delays and, taken on their own, these didn’t, and don’t, add up to an autism diagnosis. But Charlie, as I realize in thoughtful hindsight, did not display joint attention. He loved to be carried and held and smiled; he tended to stay put in one spot. Now, every time I read about some researcher’s latest new method for identifying autism in infants, I wonder, what would such a test have noted about Charlie? And I as often think, it’s likely they would have noted “something” about Charlie—-that, today, he might have been diagnosed at an even younger age; researchers are, indeed, evaluating the accuracy of autism screening tools for children 18–24 months of age.

A study in the December Archives of Pediatrics and General Medicine examines autism prevalence trends over time in Denmark and states that “the apparent increase in autism in recent years is in part attributable to a decrease over time in the age at diagnosis.” A cohort of more than 400,000 children—all children born in Denmark from January 1, 1994, through December 31, 1999—were studied. From the abstract:

Results Statistically significant shifts in age at diagnosis were observed for autism spectrum disorder; children diagnosed before age 9 years in the cohorts born between January 1, 1994, and December 31, 1995, between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 1997, and between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 1999, were on average diagnosed at ages 5.9 (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.8-6.0), 5.8 (95% CI, 5.7-5.9), and 5.3 (95% CI, 5.2-5.4) years, respectively. The relative risk comparing the 1996-1997 birth cohort with the 1994-1995 birth cohort at age 3 years was 1.20 (95% CI, 0.86-1.67), which decreased to 1.10 (95% CI, 1.00-1.20) at age 11 years. Similarly, the relative risk comparing the 1998-1999 birth cohort with the 1994-1995 birth cohort at age 3 years was 1.69 (95% CI, 1.24-2.31), which decreased to 1.23 (95% CI, 1.11-1.37) at age 11 years. Similar results were observed for childhood autism.

Conclusions Shifts in age at diagnosis inflated the observed prevalence of autism in young children in the more recent cohorts compared with the oldest cohort. This study supports the argument that the apparent increase in autism in recent years is at least in part attributable to decreases in the age at diagnosis over time.

When Charlie was just diagnosed and shortly after (in 1999-2000), we were often told that he—he was 2-3 years old then—was “very young” to be diagnosed. Now, it seems standard for children to be diagnosed by the time they’re the age Charlie was when he was diagnosed with autism back in 1999. It seems more than obvious to me that we would have been told that they were seeing “red flags” about, who knows, 6-month-old Charlie’s development, and we would have started out on the road to a diagnosis even earlier than we did. A summary of the articles in the December Archives of Pediatrics and General Medicine displays two graphs, which show that, between the two birth cohorts studied (one from 1994-1995 and the other from 1998-1999), the age of a child at the time of autism diagnosis decreased, even as the prevalence rate has been increasing.

Again, the authors of the study note that it’s possible that “the apparent increase in autism in recent years is at least in part attributable to decreases in the age at diagnosis over time.” Thus, early detection and diagnosis of autism—-and increasingly earlier detection and diagnosis, at that—are, it can be argued, contributing to the increase in the prevalence rate of autism. Our ability to better diagnosis autism isenabling us to identify autism earlier in younger children and this is a contributing factor to the rise in autism cases. There’s not so much an “autism epidemic” occurring, as that our knowledge about autism is growing and will, it seems and I hope, continue to.

No question that the prevalence of autism has increased significantly in the past couple of years. Rod Welford, the education minister of Queensland (Australia) attributes the rise in his state—which is, according to the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, “much higher” than in other states—–to “over-” and “mis” diagnosis. Parents, says Winter, are seeking an autism diagnosis falsely, so their children may “receive more resources from the Education Department.”

Talking about “over-” and “mis” diagnosis of autism seems quite opposed to the argument that rise in the prevalence rate is due to a better understanding and identification of autism, and to better diagnosis—-somehow I don’t think families would go to all the trouble of having a child evaluated and diagnosed “just” to get “more resources.”

So thimerosal’s not the “‘smoking gun‘” linking vaccines to autism, according to David Kirby, whose 2005 book, Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy argued that thimerosal—-a mercury-based preservative—-was the culprit behind what he calls the “autism epidemic.”

From an article in today’s Star-Ledger (New Jersey) about an October 23rd forum on infant and child vaccines at the Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology at Hackensack University Medical Center:

[Kirby]…..said he believed that thimerosal, which still exists in trace amounts in some childhood vaccines, was no longer the “smoking gun.” Several national studies have found no connection, and a California study found that, even after thimerosal was removed from vaccines, diagnoses of autism continued to rise.

But, he said, the links between vaccines and conditions like autism are still strong and more research is needed. One area to look at is to determine which children might have a genetic propensity for a condition such as autism, for which vaccines may act as a trigger.

……

“New Jersey is lousy with mercury,” he said, much of it from air pollution that is spread in rain.

But he also pointed to the “universality of vaccines” as an explanation for so many children’s contracting chronic illnesses.

“Not everybody lives near cell phone towers, uses the same baby food or household products, but everyone gets vaccines,” he said. He cited the example of the immigrant Somali population in Milwaukee. Pregnant women, mothers and babies were given up to 10 vaccines “and the autism rates among Somali refugees are through the roof,” he said.

So Minneapolis (not Milwaukee) is “lousy” with Somali children who have autism (which is not, of course, a “chronic illness”)?

As everyone knows, it’s generally said that New Jersey is simply “lousy”; based on the autism education Charlie’s gotten here, with speech therapy and OT and daily PE integrated into his school day, and good lines of communication between the teacher and me thanks to email and the phone, I would beg to differ. (But I do tend to weigh education and schools heavily in my thinking.)

And as for it raining mercury here in Jersey? It has been raining all day here—-snowing even in some places—-Charlie and I got a bit wet on our way to the dentist office. He’s never been inclined to use an umbrella—-good thing we both have hooded rain jackets—-neither of us has yet to become more autistic.

So now that thimerosal’s off the suspect list for causing autism, what’ll be next?

“Fear of autism is perfectly reasonable.”

Well, I guess it could be construed as such. But not really.

The above sentence is from a September 15th article on Babble—”the magazine and community for a new generation of parents”—by Kate Tuttle, with the title of Compulsory Vaccination. The article presents a capsule history of vaccines and resistance to them since their invention in the late 18th century:

Some of these early objectors believed that vaccination was itself an affront to the God who had sent disease to punish sinners, while others, like today’s anti-vaccination activists, feared that the shots meant to protect the public good would inflict harm on individuals.

The numerous scientific studies refuting a vaccine-autism link are cited, and the role of the Internet and the mass media in furthering the life of rumors about this or that as a “cause” of autism; after this comes the statement about fear of autism being “reasonable”:

Fear of autism is perfectly reasonable. It’s a scary diagnosis, one that’s risen exponentially over the past two decades — though whether through a vast expansion of the diagnosis or an actual increase in numbers is still hotly debated. But it’s natural that a condition with no known cause would inspire concerned parents to go looking for a culprit, particularly one they can protect their children from.

Fear of autism might seem “perfectly reasonable.” But autism is not something you can catch, like measles and there’s a tendency, because of fear and a bit even of panic, for people to shrug away and even belittle arguments that attribute the notable recent rise in the prevalence of autism to better diagnosis. It’s not that there is an epidemic of autism, as that fear of a child “getting” autism from something that a parent could “protect their children from” seems endemic in our culture right now.

The Babble article gets somewhat to the heart of why some continue to believe, and quite fervently, in a vaccine-autism link. The now-discredited study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield claiming a link between the MMR and autism that was published in The Lancet in 1998 (not 1988 as Babble says) is noted:

It doesn’t really matter that there’s no significant scientific debate about the matter (as with evolution and global warming, a vanishingly miniscule number of actual scientists disagree with the majority opinion), many parents still feel that the relationship between autism and vaccines is an open question. And though the number of families opting to exempt themselves from vaccination requirements is overall quite small — less than one percent in most states — it’s a very vocal minority. (A growing movement of parents choose to vaccinate their children, but on a delayed or modified schedule.) Parents who opt out of vaccines tend toward the crunchy; Waldorf Schools are among those with the highest incidence of non-vaccination, and have found themselves the epicenters of childhood disease outbreaks.

Many parents still feel that the relationship between autism and vaccines is an open question. To me this is the crux of the problem, and one of the main reasons why belief in vaccines or something as vaccines as causing autism persists. Science is not enough, and is not going, to change people’s views, but their feelings and emotions—the heart over the head, if you will—-play a huge role in all of this. Parental fear of autism is rather anything but reasonable, it would seem, and stems from a resistance to accepting what the science says.

And autism can seem a “scary” word if your child has just been diagnosed and all you can think is, “what do I do?”. But there is (however much it seems to be so or not) a lot more that can be done to help and teach autistic children today—my son’s prospects, while limited and seemingly ever in flux—are much greater than they would have been in previous generations. There’s still a lot of misunderstanding out there, but also a lot more understanding and knowledge. While some parents will continue feel that a vaccine or something in a vaccine “triggered” autism in their child, I’m not so sure whether most parents actually think so, and will continue to believe so.

It’s not autism that is to be feared but how tenaciously the notion of a vaccine-autism link is being clung to, and will be adherd to, long after study after study refutes a link, and the jury is long gone.

Seems a band called Elbow has won the Nationwide Mercury Prize—-a “staple of UK music accolade-giving since 1992“—-for its album The Seldom Seen Kid. Considering the attention devoted by some “autism activists” (Safe Minds etc.) to the belief that vaccines or something in vaccines, like the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, can be linked to autism, there would indeed be some competition for, I don’t know, “most mad about mercury” and “best talking about detoxing autism.” Jenny McCarthy—now starting up a lifestyle line of non-toxic products—would be a fair contender, as would Evidence of Harm author David Kirby who has again and again “rebranded autism”—-renaming it vaccine-transmitted mercury poisoning or “Environmentally-acquired Neuroimmune Disorder,” to name but two examples—-all while stating that it’s something in the environment behind the epidemic rise in cases of autism, be it vaccines, dental amalgams, or a “Shanghai Plume” of mercury from coal plants built in China that’s wafting across the Pacific Ocean.

Dr. Paul Offit’s recently published book, Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure charts the rise and fall of the vaccine/something in vaccine causes autism hypothesis. A growing body of scientific research refutes such a hypothesis, but not before it has stoked so many parental fears that vaccination rates for the MMR have decreased in the UK and that the US has had its largest outbreak of measles. Just last week, a new study disputed a link between the MMR and autism; as more such studies have been published, anti-vaccine/pro-vaccine safety advocates have cried foul and claimed that scientists have “deep ties to Big Pharma”: Rather than weighing the scientific evidence, there’s a tendency among such advocates to cry out “conspiracy!” and talk around what the evidence says.

And, too, they keep digging for connections and links and bits of data that would suggest that, for instance, some of the autistic children described in Leo Kanner’s 1943 article on infantile autism had been exposed to something suspicious, and even toxic, in the environment; a number of articles by journalist Dan Olmsted have claimed such coincidences. The latest such coincidence was described in a September th  of Autism post, in which Olmsted hypothesized that Neurodiversity blogger Kathleen Seidel is literally “toxic,” due to an alleged brush with ethylmercury—an “occupational exposure to chemicals”—that, who knows, “triggered autism” in her……….

This is Dan Olmsted’s hypothesis, though one can’t but help noting that the post’s title, “Is Kathleen Seidel Toxic?”, has at least two meanings. The first meaning is that noted above—-that Seidel is “toxic” (like autistic children who “become” autistic due to mercury poisoning or some such)—-and the second is that she’s “toxic” in a more metaphorical sense, insofar as her extremely-well-researched and thought-out posts on Neurodiversity have exposed the anti-vaccine/pro-vaccine-safety advocates to some trenchant scrutiny. Seidel is also featured in Dr. Offit’s new book, and was featured as well in a New York magazine article on neurodiversity. She’s indeed been rather “toxic” (in a figurative sense) to the vaccine-autism hypothesis, and to the purveyors of a number of biomedcal and alternative, and often experimental, treatments for autism; Seidel has strongly objected to the detrimental effects of calling autistic persons “trainwrecks” or “poisoned” or “tragedies.” (And here’s more about toxicity.)

Seidel’s scrutiny of vaccine litigation and alternative treatments for autism is much-needed. Of course, families will choose the treatments that they discern are best for their child, but it’s not so easy to evaluate claims of what works and what does not, and when a quack is quacking. Take something as apparently innocuous as organic food: Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) indeed suggests that “considering and going organic is another important step in this process for better eating, health, and digestion.” Then one reads history professor James E. McWilliams in the September 8th Slate about how organic agriculture might be polluting food with heavy metals:

Scientists have known since the 1920s that organic fertilizers used by farmers to supplement conventional systems—composted animal manure, rock phosphates, fish emulsions, guano, wood ashes, etc.—further contaminate topsoil with varying concentrations of heavy metals. Organic advocates, who rely exclusively on these fertilizers, remain well aware of the problem today, although they rarely publicize the point.

No one is saying that organic soil has higher heavy-metal counts than conventional soil as a rule—scientists have not conducted enough research to make such a determination. Still, some evidence indicates that organic soil can, in some cases, be more contaminated. George Kuepper, an agriculture specialist with the National Center for Appropriate Technology, observed in a 2003 report that composting manure actually concentrates the fertilizer’s metal content, which could lead to greater levels of the contaminants in organic soil.

So even while, as TACA says, “these [organic] foods do not contain nasty chemicals added during the growing process,” something—even “heavy metals” of the type some talk about “detoxifying” a child of—may still be present in organic food (which maybe is not exactly “better” for us). There’s more than meets the eye, and the label.

When the talk is about autism, there’s been enough time devoted to arguing for and refuting hypotheses of vaccines as linked to autism. Dr. Offit’s Autism’s False Prophets traces the history of this hypothesis, now in decline. What is not, of course, in decline is the number of children and adults diagnosed with autism. Understanding and awareness of autism—what it is, how to teach autistic persons—have also been growing in the past decade. These are growth trends that are not about to stop, and we need to keep calling for more and better educational supports and services, for schools and schools programs, for job-training, actual jobs, actual housing, and many other services and suports for autistic person, throughout their lifespan.

You’ve got a chance to say what you think about autism services to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC): Send in comments about autism services by September 19, and send in comments about the draft of the Strategic Plan for ASD Research by September 30. Sullivan on Left Brain/Right Brain has also taken a closer look at the Strategic Plan (which you can see here).

We don’t want our kids to be the losers in the vaccine-autism debate, but they and we can lose out on a lot if so much attention remains fixated on this one hypothetical cause of autism. I could care less about taking home any awards, but I’m not interested in my son being a loser when so much is at stake—-and yes, I’ll keep on talking.

Some software and other updates have been going on behind the scenes here, so if this blog loads slowly or (alas and argh) a comment does not go through, please bear with us. Over in the sidebar, the lists of comments and recent posts have not been updating (Learning All the Time (Whether You Know It Or Not) was posted on Friday morning) and I’m hoping that will get fixed soon. In the meantime, I wanted to point out discussions about the YouTube video of an autistic teenager getting beat up—about how autism, unlike measles, is not an infectious disease—–about the luxury of being able to choose to vaccinate or not—-whether hacker Gary McKinnon is a scapegoat or a public enemy.

Also: Tara on an idea for housing for disabled adults in New Jersey on Sued: New Jersey’s Department of Human Services.

And here’s what’s been under discussion here for the past two weeks:

• Gluten-free more and more common (and not just for autism)
  If everyone’s doing it, is “the diet” really a treatment for autism?
• Another Test to Detect Autism Earlier
  University of Missouri-Columbia are studying how to use 3-D imaging to analyze the facial structures and brain abnormalities of autistic children.
• Minnesota Has the Highest Autism Rate?: Depends on How You Count It
  An article in the August 20th CityPages in Minnesota suggests that it’s rather the North Star state that has the highest rate, 1 in 81. The article relies on a chart made up from data from public school districts around the country.
• The Autistic/Has Autism Question
  Dan Olmsted “really can’t stand” it when the “people with autism” are referred to as “autistics,” and he sees the word as a “corollary of ‘retards’.” Hmmmm…….
• Measles Cases, and Fear of Autism, on the Rise
  Measles cases are at their highest level in a decade, and is looming dread of autism at least partially responsible for this?
• The Parental Right to Choose to Vaccinate, Or Not
  A story from MSNBC provides some details about the attitudes of parents who’ve chosen not to vaccinate their children for their “philosophical or religious beliefs.”.
• The Right to Choose, So Choose Carefully
  If the word keeps getting out that there’s some (scientifically disputed) link between measles and autism, and vaccination rates continue to fall, and autism rates stay the same or rise, and measles really really returns—-will those who’ve invested so much energy to promote a vaccine-autism link be willing to be responsible for the consequences of their efforts?
• Measles You Can Catch (But Not Autism)
  “People have forgotten what measles looks like and have forgotten how infectious it is.”—Jane Seward, deputy director of the division of viral diseases at the CDC
• Monday at the Dentist
  A super great visit to the dentist for Charlie!
• A Note On Hillary Clinton’s Speech
  Said the Senator in her speech to the DNC: “I will always remember the single mom who had adopted two kids with autism. She didn’t have any health insurance, and she discovered she had cancer. But she greeted me with her bald head, painted with my name on it, and asked me to fight for health care for her and her children.”
• The Luxury of Choice
  Writes Matthew N. Parker, M.D.: “Perhaps it is yet another symptom of our wealth in this country that we have the luxury of wondering whether it is necessary to vaccinate.”
• Unlike Measles, Autism is Not a Potentially Fatal Disease
  Measles is an infectious disease; autism is not.
• False Prophets and Failed Poets
  The “false prophets” of autism are, it would seem, such figures as Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the doctor at the center of the controversy over the MMR vaccine and autism, and numerous others who have proclaimed that vaccines or something in vaccines is behind the epidemic rise in autism diagnoses, and who’ve given short shrift to arguments for how better diagnosis, understanding and awareness of autism have contributed to a rise in the prevalence of autism.

Darn, I thought it was my own state of New Jersey that does: According to the most recent figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007, about 1 in 150 8-year-old children in multiple areas of the United States had an ASD, and New Jersey has the highest prevalence rate, 1 in 94. An article in the August 20th CityPages in Minnesota suggests that it’s rather the North Star state that has the highest rate, 1 in 81.

The CityPages article mentions a 2001 CDC study but not the more recent one in 2007, though it does cite the 1 in 150 figure. For the 1 in 81 figure, the article relies on a chart made up from data from public school districts around the country. (You can see the chart here via a parent’s website.) The parent of an autistic child, Dan Hollenbeck, arrived at this figure by finding the number of cases of autism services provided by each state’s public schools and then dividing this by the number of children enrolled. The figures that Hollenbeck arrived at provide an idea of how many children who are classified under the code of autism are receiving services in school districts across the US. But, it should be noted that school districts around the country vary in how they classify children as needing to receive services for autism, and services and programs for autistic children in public school vary widely from state to state (and within states—that’s certainly the case here in New Jersey–between rich and poor school districts, for instance). More than a few children classified under the autism code wouldn’t be diagnosed with autism if a full diagnostic assessment was done.

Further, Hollenbeck is the Director of Technology at Thoughtful House, an Austin-based center which is “fighting for the recovery of children with developmental disorders through the unique combination of medical care, education, and research.” Dr. Andrew Wakefield (the figure at the center of the MMR-autism controversy) is on the research staff of Thoughtful House, which says that we are “in the midst of an epidemic of developmental disorders that includes autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), pervasive development disorder (PDD), and nonverbal learning disorder (NLD). And, Hollenbeck and his wife, Laura Hewiston (the researcher behind a certain infamous poster presentation on monkeys and vaccines) are listed as litigants (see #437) in the Autism Omnibus proceedings in which some 4800 families are claiming that vaccines injured their children and causes them to become autistic.

In other words, there is some motivation for Hollenbeck to offer data that suggest that the rates of autism have risen “epidemically,” and especially due to vaccines or something in vaccines. (And, CityPages needs to make a few clarifications about the data that it is using.)

The 1 in 81 figure suggests that educators in Minnesota are very aware about autism and about providing services for children. And that’s certainly also the case in New Jersey which, according to Hollenbeck’s figures, has 1 in 115 children with autism, which is rather counter to the CDC’s 2007 figures, and rather counter to what the “Jerseyan in the street” would tell you about autism here. Down here at the shore on Tuesday morning, my son Charlie got over-stimulated in a bakery—chock full of vacationers and display cases—-and someone who is probably the owner appeared from the back; he has an autistic grandson. (We’d always noted a collection jar for autism events on the counter.) Last week, there was a young autistic man in the waves with his father every day, and this week there’s a boy a bit older than Charlie. And there’s Charlie himself; when we tell the lifeguards about why it’s so hard for him to understand about “swimming flag to flag,” saying “autism” is pretty much all that needs to be said. Back home, there’s our school district which has a quite high rate of autistic students compared to the overall total of students—-because it’s a district with a very strong autism program and also special education services, and many families (like us) have moved to it for that reason.

No discussion of autism rates among students (and no discussion of the so-called “autism epidemic“) is complete without keeping in mind Washington University Paul Shattuck’s 2006 article on The Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Prevalence of Autism in US Special Education,” in which he found that, as the rates of the autism diagnosis increased from 1994 to 2003, the rates of diagnoses of mental retardation and learning disabilities decreased. George Washington University anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker’s 2007 book Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism further explains how historical and cultural factors have led many to feel and even to believe that there is an epidemic of autism, in no small part due to our better understanding of autism, broadened and refined diagnostic criteria, and a huge increase in public awareness. There’s more and more research going on about the causes of autism: The August 19th KQED has a report on northern California researchers who are studying the causes, especially environmental ones , of autism. A blog details a video report, which can be seen here. Researchers are studying seemingly everything from dirty diapers to carpet dust in an effort to find if there are any “risk factors” that an expecting mother might encounter, that might be linked to her having an autistic child.

Having gone from Minnesota back to Jersey by way of California in this post, I have to note that we’ve connections to all three of these states. Charlie was diagnosed in Minnesota, has receive most of his school education in New Jersey (Jim’s native state), and I’m California born and bred, and there’s no question that, in all of those states (and in Missouri, where Charlie was born), we’ve encountered many autistic children. But then the chicken or egg question arises: Is the increase in autism is due to something specific that can be pointed to, something external and in the environment; or is it because of our being able to better detect and diagnose autism, significant changes in the diagnostic criteria for autism, the steady rise in public awareness about autism, and the increase in services, schools, therapies for autism (and college students)?

We’ve got the technology to measure Michael Phelps winning his seventh gold medal by .001 of a second—surely we’re better able to count cases of autism?

Autism incidents rising, is the headline for an August 9th story in the Grand Rapids Herald-Review. Two different school districts report having 35 and 52 students diagnosed with autism, versus five and maybe two students ten years ago: It’s been the past ten years that have seen the results of changes in the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders and a concurrent rise in diagnoses.

Though, isn’t it “autism incidence” that is meant in the headline for that Grand Rapids Herald-Review article?