Comments on: Adults, Autism and Scotland

By: Autism Blog - Presto Chango | Left Brain/Right Brain

Autism Blog - Presto Chango | Left Brain/Right Brain — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:51:23 +0000

[...] it was something of a surprise to see that the article Sullivan discussed written by David Kirby had undergone a mysterious and totally unremarked upon [...]

By: Ms. Clark

Ms. Clark — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:40:58 +0000

Did David Kirby change the numbers on the Huffpoof blog after reading Sullivan’s article here? The numbers are still wrong on that other blog with a slightly different version of Kirby’s huffpoof article.

By: Ms. Clark

Ms. Clark — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:46:21 +0000

This is roughly what the graph would have looked like had it really indicated that there were 34,000 Scots kids with an ASD as found in that survey (instead of 3,400). Some people seem to lack a sense of proportion. :-/

By: Sullivan

Sullivan — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:33:27 +0000

Ms Clark—
the word “pandemic” suggests to me that the email you received was pointing to the same place that Mr. Kirby got his information.

To give Mr. Kirby his due, he did not take the same language of that site. In specific, “pandemic” wasn’t mentioned. Neither was the discussion that “these adults simply do not exist” when discussing the uncounted adults with autism.

And, yes, the Scots do make good biscuits. However, I skipped the McVities Hobnobs this time in favor of Pocky: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky)

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:53:58 +0000

Ah, I almost forgot. David Kirby has admitted in the past (perhaps unintentionally) that administrative counts can be underestimates:

But the national autism rate within IDEA is only 25 per 10,000 among 3-5 year olds, far below the estimated rate of 60 per 10,000. Ohio has only 9 cases per 10,000, Puerto Rico just 7, and Oklahoma just 4 (about 1/20th the rate of Maine).

Clearly, we need to let the diagnosing and reporting catch up before drawing any solid conclusions about autism,

(source)

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:49:11 +0000

That's a good catch, Sullivan. Administrative adult counts need to be contrasted with research that exists on undiagnosed autism in adults. It's quite naive of Kirby, at this stage in the debate, to continue to claim that administrative counts might be close to accurate.

By: Ms. Clark

Ms. Clark — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:16:15 +0000

A couple of days ago, Rick Rollens sent me a link to a website that says something about an autism pandemic. The graph that showed up in David Kirby’s blog (the one with 3,400 Scots ASD kids) was on that website. Rollens thought I might be impressed by the website with the word “pandemic” on it, I suppose. I suspect he might have sent the same link to Kirby, though it might have been circulating at the time among fans of the epidemic idea. At any rate, the web page seems to indicate that the graph came from a pdf file (the document that Kev quoted from, I believe), but that graph isn’t in that pdf. So I’m not sure who made the graph.

I think the data are correct, even if I don’t know where the graph originated.

The funny thing to me is that the 3,400 kids in Scotland are by definition supposed to represent a tragic and staggering number of kids. But it represents only 1 in 300 of all the kids of the same birth cohort in Scotland, if I have estimated correctly (I used official census data).

The Scottish Society for Scotland shows on their website that they reckon that there are about 1 in 110 people in Scotland who are autistic.
http://www.autism-in-scotland.org.uk/Figures.pdf

That’s 1 in 110 80 year olds, 1 in 110 70 year olds, 1 in 110, 60-50-40-30-20 year olds.

Surely it’s an estimate but that’s what they are using. They see a rate that is flat and exceedingly un-tsunami-like going back decades and they use the same rate to predict into the future how many ASD people they expect will be in Scotland, and with nary a trace of panic. Imagine that!
http://www.autism-in-scotland.org.uk/

They don’t seem to be interested in driving people away from vaccines, either.
http://www.autism-in-scotland......Autism.php

Too bad it’s so far away. I think I might like to live in Scotland far from the maddening autism hysteria. I hear they make good biscuits.

By: HCN

HCN — Sat, 10 May 2008 07:49:32 +0000

For those who should know more about the historical aspects of diagnosing autistics a couple of reading suggestions:
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Even.....1582344787

and
http://www.amazon.com/Unstrang.....0465027644

... For those who need a real life critique of the “I’ll do anything to help my child” therapy route:
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-.....914797565/

By: HCN

HCN — Sat, 10 May 2008 07:43:48 +0000

Excuse me, but I have an American teenager in my house who has never been diagnosed as autistic. Yet, in his last year of high school the school psychologist mentioned that he would now qualify as autistic with the NEW guidelines.

The “new” guidelines is a key point. Many of the folks who have not lived through dealing with a disabled child (like Kirby or Olmsted), have no idea what a factor like “Guideline” or “diagnostic criteria” have in a parent seeking therapy and educational placements for a child who is not normal is like!