In recent years we’ve continually been hearing about increases in prevalence of autism/autism spectrum disorder, to the point that it’s been labeled an “epidemic”.
Among potential environmental triggers, some have repeatedly blamed vaccines, noting recent additions to the vaccine schedule for children (i.e. rotavirus, varicella, hepatitis A, pneumococcus and influenza).
According to a newly published systematic review, however, claims of an expanding autism epidemic in recent years are groundless:
*"A systematic review was conducted for epidemiological data (prevalence, incidence, remission and mortality risk) of autistic disorder and other ASDs. Data were pooled using a Bayesian meta-regression approach while adjusting for between-study variance to derive prevalence models. Burden was calculated in terms of years lived with disability (YLDs) and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), which are reported here by world region for 1990 and 2010.
Results In 2010 there were an estimated 52 million cases of ASDs, equating to a prevalence of 7.6 per 1000 or one in 132 persons. After accounting for methodological variations, there was no clear evidence of a change in prevalence for autistic disorder or other ASDs between 1990 and 2010."*
This would seem to confirm what many have been saying all along - that jumps in the rate of diagnosing autism are attributable to greater awareness and changes in diagnostic criteria, not actual increases in autism.
This does not affect the need to establish better testing and treatment for autism, identifying susceptible children and the genetic and possible enviromental links to the disorder. Having a better handle on just how commonly autism occurs and avoiding finger-pointing at the wrong targets is also essential.
It’ll be interesting to see the reaction to this study.
Huge systematic study after huge systematic study has shown this for at least the past ten years. The one you link is not particularly revelatory. It’s good to have more confirmation of a fact that has essentially been proven for years but …
… the people who want to stoke fear – or who want to be afraid themselves – do not care about actual evidence. As Smeghead notes. This will make no difference to them. It’s just another study on the mountain of studies that they’ll ignore.
As a person who grew up with ASD in the 1940s, my personal experience suggests that there has been a distinct change in the recognition of the disorder. I was simply thrown into the school environment with the expectation that I would learn to fit in, and I really wasn’t offered any other choices. The ways in which I was “different” was simply regarded as a gradient along the scale in which everybody is different in their own way, some more conspicuously then others.
Nowadays, I would be bludgeoned to death with diagnostic procedures, and made to wear a badge of my disorder.
In those days, children presented all kinds of uncorrected birth defects, and those with limps or hare lips or stutters or strabismus just went into the mix and we all got along fine. Social fairness among kids was self-regulating, without the necessity for adults choosing up sides for us. ASDs were a lot closer to the center of the bell curve, so were less conspicuous.
When I was in my 60s, I heard someone mention that her son had been re-classified, from ADD to Aspergers – a word I had never heard before, so I googled it. Holy shit, this is a perfect description of whom I have always been, no wonder my social life has always been so uneven. I cycled back through my life, and found a dozen people who also fit the description – all merrily rolling along blissfully unaware that they were wired wrong and living their lives with daily workarounds.
Well, it shows that the anti-vaxxer’s have been effective at bringing the crisis under control. Think of how many cases there would have been if all those kids had been vaccinated.
When I said “we all got along fine”, I meant with each other, and children with disabilities were incorporated into the fabric of childhood socialization. As I clarified in my next two sentences.
If by “incorporated into the fabric of childhood socialization” you mean the weak, crippled, and mentally disadvantaged were bullied, beaten, and taken advantage of when not being ostracized or mocked, sure.
If your experience was different, bravo, but it would have been an exceptional time and place and not the rule.
Yes, the 1940s was an exceptional time. Before adults took over the administration of play, the kids organized and enforced the rules with the paramountcy of fairness, so everyone played in a framework of dignity. Kids are, by nature, very fair and generous and sensitive to the feelings of others, and only learn cruelty and competition from adult supervision. When the little kid struck out, everyone said No, that was only strike two.
Adults say “play nice”, and kids know they mean it as a phony veneer of social posturing. Left to themselves, kids play nice because it is in their heart to do so.
LOL BULLSHIT! This wasn’t true in the 80s/90s so I can’t believe it was true in the 40s, kids are mercilessly cruel.
I was probably part of the last group of kids not diagnosed or helped, part of it was being born in the early 80s and also having very old parents still stuck in the 50s culturally. I wasn’t even talking normally until age 6, basically non-verbal.
I just wish my mom would acknowledge to me that something was weird, because she insists nothing was wrong with you! But my sister tells me my whole life my mom has told her something was seriously wrong with me, like retarded. Thanks mom!
He said he had ASD, so his perception of the social order is surely influenced by that. If he didn’t notice any cruelty, so much the better.
Do you think you would have benefitted from interventions, and if so, which ones?
I don’t really know, I think I would have benefited from not having my limitations held against me. And instead encouraged to use my strengths instead.
I wish my parents didn’t think of me as a retard, I think my dad died thinking of me as retarded. It is like they have never been able to view me as more than that non-verbal child they wrote off.
I do know I have always sought out challenges that pushed me beyond my limitations.
Maybe they had bigger problems than you did. If they wrote off a six-year-old and somehow ignored that you did start speaking at some point, they must have been pretty dysfunctional.
I hope this study is correct and the autism epidemic is a myth. Today my friend expressed concern that his daughter is likely autistic because she has not yet made eye contact with anyone. The baby is six weeks old!
Oh they are/were and how, I suspect my mom is on the spectrum too(a woman in her 70s asks you why do people get emotional about death) and my dad was like a definition of co-dependent.
My mom once talked to my mother in law on the phone, after my MIL asked me if there was something wrong mentally with my mom. I asked why she would ask, and she said she talks about you like a …five year old… I told her oh yea my mom is nuts, she said oh ok makes sense.:smack:
