# Huge increase in autism diagnoses. Measurement issue or environmental causes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 24, 2006, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944 "2006-09-24T15:13:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/1 "2006-09-24T15:13:40Z")
[One out of 166 children will develop autism](http://sarasota.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:92004) (via fark) I would be interested in how much of this autistic cohort is “Asperger’s” specific as differentiated from autistic cases with more profound behavioral issues. > [@](#): > > Much of Mary Grace’s life is defined by the fact that she suffers from autism. When she was born, about one in 2,000 children developed the disorder. Today, autism is the second leading cause of disability in children, behind mental retardation. According to the Autism Society of America, as many as one out of every 166 children born today is autistic. The condition affects up to 1.5 million people nationwide and is the fastest-growing developmental disability; in the '90s alone, instances of autism rose 172 percent. > > Autism impairs a person’s ability to interact and communicate effectively. It carries a variety of symptoms, with no one-size-fits-all diagnosis. Autistic individuals often appear to be in their own world. They exhibit bizarre behaviors and usually have a secondary disability, such as mental retardation or epilepsy, that further muddles the signs of the disorder. Some, like Mary Grace, suffer from a lesser variation known as Asperger’s disorder and can learn to function in society. Others need round-the-clock care. And most individuals with autism are somewhere in between. > > What’s frightening is that scientists don’t know what causes the disease, or why the number of autistic children has spiked so dramatically over the past 20 years. “Research is pointing to a combination of genetic and environmental factors,” says Jose Cordero, director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. “Finding the cause is our highest priority.” > [@](#): > > It’s tough to find a cure for something when no one knows what causes it. > > The chief suspect for causing autism in the minds of many parents and some doctors is Thimerosal, a preservative that contains mercury that was once used in most vaccines. There is substantial anecdotal evidence that young children who appeared normal suddenly developed autism after they received vaccinations. > > For every study that seems to suggest autism is linked to high levels of mercury, another one suggests there is no connection. A study from Israel released earlier this month found that autism rates rise as fathers get older. Dads in their 40s, the study said, are six times more likely to have children with autism than men under 30. > > The fact is, no one knows for sure. The only given is that, in the last 20 years, something has triggered a disturbing increase in the number of children born with autism. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/2 "2006-09-24T16:12:23Z")
Or something has triggered an increase in kids diagnosed with autism. With the exception of Gabriella, doctors are incredibly thick and venal. Older fathers have more money to spend on quack doctors. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/3 "2006-09-24T16:32:09Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] With the exception of Gabriella, doctors are incredibly thick and venal. [/QUOTE] Going to avoid them when you have crushing chest pain or get hit by a truck, then? If so, it will enhance the opportunity for **Gabriela** to become your physician. ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/4 "2006-09-24T16:44:19Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] With the exception of Gabriella, doctors are incredibly thick and venal. [/QUOTE] Your contribution to this GQ thread has been substantial. Thank you. Moving on, my personal suspicion is that improved measurement and awareness of Autism-spectrum disorders (including the less severe Asberger’s, etc.) plays an extremely large role in the increase in the number of diagnosis, but it’s hard to compare our current population with a population from the 1920’s where virtually no one had heard of Autism and weren’t looking for it. Other explanations of just being an off or weird child sufficed. A physician that is told, hey, 1 in 200 kids has autism, (perhaps correctly) is much more likely to diagnose a, "quiet, withdrawn, socially inappropriate child"with autism or Asberger’s than a physician that is told, “oh, it’s probably about 1 in 10,000, really the type of stuff that only shrinks that work with the nutty kids are going to see.” Basically, there don’t appear to be any good and consistent measures of autism rates in children: [http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/1/e120?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=autism&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/1/e120?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=autism&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT) “Closer examination of these data to follow each birth-year cohort reveals anomalies within the USDE data on autism. The USDE data show not only a rise in overall autism prevalence with time but also a significant and nearly linear rise in autism prevalence within a birth-year cohort as it ages, with significant numbers of new cases as late as 17 years of age. In addition, an unexpected reduction in the rise of autism prevalence occurs in most cohorts at 12 years of age, the age when most children would be entering middle school. These anomalies point to internal problems in the USDE data that make them unsuitable for tracking autism prevalence.” [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/98515870/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0](http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/98515870/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0) “For decades after Kanner’s original paper on the subject was published in 1943, autism was generally considered to be a rare condition with a prevalence of around 2–4 per 10,000 children. Then, studies carried out in the late 1990s and the present century reported annual rises in incidence of autism in pre-school children, based on age of diagnosis, and increases in the age-specific prevalence rates in children. Prevalence rates of up to 60 per 10,000 for autism and even more for the whole autistic spectrum were reported. Reasons for these increases are discussed. They include changes in diagnostic criteria, development of the concept of the wide autistic spectrum, different methods used in studies, growing awareness and knowledge among parents and professional workers and the development of specialist services, as well as the possibility of a true increase in numbers. Various environmental causes for a genuine rise in incidence have been suggested, including the triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR]. Not one of the possible environmental causes, including MMR, has been confirmed by independent scientific investigation, whereas there is strong evidence that complex genetic factors play a major role in etiology. The evidence suggests that the majority, if not all, of the reported rise in incidence and prevalence is due to changes in diagnostic criteria and increasing awareness and recognition of autistic spectrum disorders. Whether there is also a genuine rise in incidence remains an open question.” Basically, there’s an enormous genetic component to Autism. Now, this doesn’t prove that autism is “natural” or that this genetic component isn’t simply a predisposition to some environmental factor, but I think that we’ll be better served in unlocking the secrets of autism by looking at autistic individuals instead of wondering about the increase in aluminum bakeware in society. [http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/113/5/e472?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=autism&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/113/5/e472?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=autism&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT) “There is convincing evidence that “idiopathic” autism is a heritable disorder. Epidemiologic studies report an ASD prevalence of ~3 to 6/1000, with a male to female ratio of 3:1. This skewed ratio remains unexplained: despite the contribution of a few well characterized X-linked disorders, male-to-male transmission in a number of families rules out X-linkage as the prevailing mode of inheritance. The recurrence rate in siblings of affected children is ~2% to 8%, much higher than the prevalence rate in the general population but much lower than in single-gene diseases. Twin studies reported 60% concordance for classic autism in monozygotic (MZ) twins versus 0 in dizygotic (DZ) twins, the higher MZ concordance attesting to genetic inheritance as the predominant causative agent. Reevaluation for a broader autistic phenotype that included communication and social disorders increased concordance remarkably from 60% to 92% in MZ twins and from 0% to 10% in DZ pairs.” Whatever it is, I can say with certainty that Thimerosal, the mercury containing immunization preservative, doesn’t _cause_ autism, as in you take away the Thimerosal and boom, autism will disappear overnight. It’s definitely a good idea to minimize children’s exposure to mercury and other neurotoxins, and I certainly cannot say that exposure to mercury or some other neurotoxic agent isn’t a contributing factor to autism, but there’s scant evidence for it. Many environmental factors have been suggested, none have panned out. The proof lies in Denmark. In 1992 Denmark discontinued the use of Thimerosal in vaccines and their autism rates have continued to increase along with everybody else in the Western world. [http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/112/3/604](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/112/3/604) So, no one really knows. A lot of professionals suspect it has to do with awareness and measurement but I wouldn’t say that has been proven by any means. It sure as hell isn’t Thimerosal. Good luck. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/5 "2006-09-24T16:53:34Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] Or something has triggered an increase in kids diagnosed with autism. With the exception of Gabriella, doctors are incredibly thick and venal. Older fathers have more money to spend on quack doctors. [/QUOTE] Re negative attributes, medical doctors may be tired, cynical & occasionally guilty of mopery, but I’ve never heard anyone attribute intellectual “thickness” to doctors. ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/6 "2006-09-24T17:11:19Z")
[QUOTE=astro] occasionally guilty of mopery [/QUOTE] Mopery? > **[Mopery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mopery)** > > Mopery (/ˈmoʊpəri/) is a vague, informal name for minor offenses. The word is based on the verb to mope, which originally meant "to wander aimlessly"; it only later acquired the sense "to be bored and depressed". The word mope appears to have first been used in the 16th century, and appears in William Shakespeare's works. It has occasionally been put into use by police as a charge to bring when no other legitimate charge seems appropriate. It has also been used for satiric or comedic effect in In... “Mopery is a vague and obscure legal term, used in certain jurisdictions to mean “walking down the street with no clear destination or purpose”. Like loitering and vagrancy laws, it can be used legitimately by law enforcement to detain unsavory types before they have committed a clearer or more dangerous crime, or illegitimately, to harass otherwise law-abiding citizens.” [**bangs on windows, shakes fist**] \*\*Quagop, \*\* get the hell out of my bushes! ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/7 "2006-09-24T17:12:44Z")
Oh, crap, I’m sorry for butchering your name. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/8 "2006-09-24T21:04:12Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] With the exception of Gabriella, doctors are incredibly thick and venal. [/QUOTE] **FRDE** , your comments are out of line for GQ. Please do not repeat this. Thanks. - **xash** General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/9 "2006-09-26T22:13:35Z")
[QUOTE=xash] **FRDE** , your comments are out of line for GQ. Please do not repeat this. Thanks. - **xash** General Questions Moderator [/QUOTE] Yeah. I resent that remark. I’m incredibly thick and venal, too. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2006, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/10 "2006-09-26T22:46:51Z")
Could the increase in late pregnancies be relevant? Women are increasingly putting off getting pregnant, and doesn’t the risk of problems increase dramatically after a certain age? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/11 "2006-09-27T00:49:29Z")
There’s been a change in diagnosis, as in, what doctors now look for. Mrs. Kunilou has been a special education teacher for 30 years. The teachers have a term for students for which there is no formal diagnosis: FLK (funny lookin’ kid.) Upon more rigorous testing, many of those children are now diagnosed with having behavior associated with Asperger’s or mild “brushed with autism.” True, that could simply be a case of finding a name to fit a set of symptoms, but the children also seem to respond to the types of therapy commonly used with more severe (and easily diagnosed) cases of autism, so it could be that the diagnostics are now better at recognizing degrees of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/12 "2006-09-27T01:38:40Z")
[I thought the increase was due to the redefinition of autism.](http://www.kevinleitch.co.uk/wp/?p=194)😕 ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/13 "2006-09-27T02:23:35Z")
[This guy](http://www.slate.com/id/2149002/) seems to think the cause is televison: > [@](#): > > Beginning in about 1980, TV watching in early childhood began to rise, coincident with the proliferation of affordable VCRs and cable channels offering nonstop cartoons and kids’ shows. The child’s brain is self-organizing in the first few years of life, and visual stimuli have much to do with how it organizes. Humans evolved while responding to three-dimensional visual stimuli. The advent of ubiquitous TV for young kids amounts to an unplanned experiment that exposes developing brains to tremendous doses of colorful, moving, two-dimensional visual stimuli. Coincident with this experiment, there has been a sharp rise in the number of children who, through autism, lose their ability to relate to the three-dimensional, normal world. Of course, that doesn’t explain why autistic children don’t seem to continue to relate to television after they reject the “three-dimensional, normal world.” It also seems counterintuitive that (in my personal anecdotal experience) lower income families wherein parents are frequently prone to using the TV as a babysitter don’t seem to have an inordinately high percentage of the autistic kids; if anything, I’ve seen more autistic kids in well-off homes than in poor homes. But, whatever, we all have our pet theories. - Max, uncle to an autistic 8-year-old. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/14 "2006-09-27T09:49:55Z")
Quartz writes: \> Could the increase in late pregnancies be relevant? Women are increasingly \> putting off getting pregnant, and doesn’t the risk of problems increase \> dramatically after a certain age? It’s true both for men and women that children born to either older fathers or older mothers tend to have a higher proportion of autistic (including autistic-spectrum) children. It’s not a big enough difference though to explain the huge increase in children diagnosed with autistic-spectum disorders. Yes, the average age of fathers and mothers has gone up, but not by a huge amount. It’s really more likely to be a matter of the change in diagnosing autism. It’s not even completely clear that the reason that older fathers and older mothers are more likely to have autistic children is that older sperm and older eggs tend to be slightly more degraded and hence tend to have more defects. That’s probably true, but the studies done so far haven’t adjusted for everything. For instance, suppose it’s true that men or women who get married later are more likely to be socially awkward. Suppose it’s true that some of that social awkwardness is autistic-spectrum disorder. Then some of the increased proportion of autistic children of older fathers and mothers would be caused by the fact that autistic-spectrum fathers and mothers are more likely have autistic children. The best guess though is that this doesn’t explain most of the difference though. The best guess is that older sperm and older eggs tend to be more often degraded. ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/15 "2006-09-27T10:05:31Z")
[QUOTE=OP] Today, autism is the second leading cause of disability in children, behind mental retardation. [/QUOTE] Does this mean that more than 1/166 kids are mentally retarded? If not, what does it mean? Also, I was under the impression that sever autism and mental retardation kind of overlap. Is that true? ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/16 "2006-09-27T10:26:03Z")
I remember reading an article in that august medical journal [Wired](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html) a while back. They were of the opinion the rise in Autism was in part due the rise in the number of nerds who are successfully reproducing these days. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/17 "2006-09-27T11:40:12Z")
I think a lot of it is “overdiagnosing”. People who used to be “shy” or “asocial” are now “Asperger’s”. It’s a new label for an old thing… but, unlike the old labels, this one May Sell Pills! Over 90% of my college class would be Aspergies as per the lists of symptoms (c’mon, “is good at math”? “learned to read on his/her own”?\<- which in languages easier than English can be as high as 30% of the population). 100% of us are engineers 😛 My peeve with these things I see as overdiagnosing (this, or trying to stick any wiggly kid as ADHD) is that I think they hurt both the misdiagnosed people and those who really suffer from whatever. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/18 "2006-09-27T13:03:34Z")
Respecfully, **Nava** , Asperger’s and other forms of the spectrum disorder at the “high-function” end are quite real, even\* if not necessarily “crippling”\* in the sense of incapacitating the person from leading a normal life in society. Now, sure, there are a number of people who do not bother with a proper diagnosis and just gratuitiously stamp the Aspie or ADHD label because they don’t bother to look closely – e.g. your example of your engineering class; but that’s another problem. And for the very high-function end, there are not necessarily any “pills to sell”, you can apply cognoscitive-behavioral methods: it’s all in proper diagnosis. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/19 "2006-09-27T13:06:13Z")
Note – I know you did mention the distinction between misdiagnosing/overdiagnosing and real diagnosis: my point was that even people who do have the syndrome may not really be _hurting_ from it. ---
**Author:** ![Spoleto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Spoleto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoleto)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2006, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944/20 "2006-09-27T13:09:12Z")
[QUOTE=astro] [One out of 166 children will develop autism](http://sarasota.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:92004) (via fark) [QUOTE] In my own research I learned that the increase has steadily increased since the mid 60’s. My older brother served in Nam and few months ago was invited to participate in an on-going Agent Orange study. Now I learned that his 3yr old grandson has been diagnosed as austistic… I guess I’m wondering if there might be a correlation between those exposed to Agent Orange decades ago and the rise in autism. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-measurement-issue-or-environmental-causes/373944.md?page=2)