A recent story from the Canadian (thank you jypsy) Globe and Mail tells us:
Each child diagnosed with autism will accrue about $3.2-million (U.S.) in medical and non-medical costs over his or her lifetime…
The story leads off with this fact and continues with such vitally important things as:
“But we need to ask the question: Does investment early on have significant economic benefits later?” Dr. Bryson said.
Vital, I think you’ll agree. How about this one:
Earlier research estimated that autism costs the U.S. economy about $35-billion annually, and the Canadian economy $3.5-billion.
Wow. So this must be what it feels like to actually have a price on your head.
Anyway, this reminded me of something, this talk of money and the idea of people having a monetary value. Then I remembered:
The english translation reads:
60000 RM, this is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the Community of Germans during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too.
This was used to promote Hitler’s T4 Euthanasia program.
Maybe its just me but when people start using identical rhetoric to the Nazi’s I get a little bit nervous.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Uh, Kev, The Globe and Mail is Canadian, not American (“US”). In fact it calls itself “Canada’s National Newspaper”. I believe it is published in Toronto (they believe themselves to be the centre of Canada). The US may have a “Globe and Mail” but this article was from the Canadian one (sadly)
What people don’t think about here is how much money is used per annum on things like printing magazine full of useless drivel. If people think a lot of money is spent on helping people they should think of how much is used to promote junk food or celebrity based entertainment.
“Dr. Bryson said it is not clear if investing in behavioural therapy like ABA/IBI in childhood will ultimately result in adult autistics who are more able to be independent and to work.
“But we need to ask the question: Does investment early on have significant economic benefits later?” Dr. Bryson said.”
Funny that I have yet to hear any outrage directed Dr. Bryson’s way after daring to state such a thing.
(Emphasis no doubt on “yet”)
I have been thinking about blogging about the economics of autism, and how early money could very well be cost effective (vs. increased costs of supports later on).
But I’ve refrained from doing so just because of this issue. It’s too easy for people to then proceed to a position of ultimate economic sense, namely, eliminate the “problem” from society.
It’s hard to crunch any real numbers right now, what with the definition of what constitutes autism changing, and the full effects of earlier intervention and greater inclusion in society yet to be felt. But my gut sense is that society shoots itself in the foot economically by not assisting autistics early on, as well as thru life.
I just blogged about Rick Rollens talking about how expensive we are, and also mentioned the T4 killing program. It’s getting quite scary how widespread this is becoming.
If anyone is interested in reading the full text of the peer-reviewed article, it is available for free here.
I’d like to see Vernon Smith (Nobel prize winning economist and Asperger’s autistic) crunch the numbers. My ASD child might not be adding to the economy, but I am, and me and my autism spectrum ex-husband produced a typical adult child who is paying taxes… I like to think that the fact that my typical kid was raised by such an ethical and nerdy mom that this typical kid would never become a drain on society like all the *typical* kids who grow up to be gangsters, drug addicts, and corporate raiders.
Has anyone counted the cost of someone like Britanny Spears to society? Sure she’s making money, but what kind of bad effect has her plastic teenage sexuality had on others? The way she is now, it’s easy to see how she could end up on the street in a year. Money has a way of evaporating, maybe someone will end up paying to take care of her kids. And there are plenty more “normal” women who end up leaving their kids in bad shape. What cost to society is there in that?
How about the ill-effects on humanity and the economy created by a person like Donald Trump? How about all the corporate raiders who go around laying off thousands of working class people who then get sick from stress and maybe even kill themselves because they no longer have a job… that sort of thing… How about the people who set up factories that pollute the air and water and kill off their neighbors (I’m thinking about Eastern Europe and Russia at the moment)?
How about the drain on an economy caused by a slowing of vaccine uptake? How about the expense of the public taking care of the “ooops, sorry” cases of alternative medicine gone wrong? How about the expense of people being killed by alt medicine? I blogged about a woman who didn’t trust big pharma but took alternative pills that happened to contain strotium and lead, among other stuff. How many of those people don’t die, but end up being cared for by the tax-payers? Anyone look at that one?
These human and economic outrages are probably not being perpetrated by the small minority of autistic people, whether they are Nobel prize winners, average employed people, or supported by tax payers.
Ms. Clark, you took the words right out of my mouth.
I am Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay again.
I am visiting your blog more often than I thought as an inquisitive intruder. May be out of some kind of gratitude or may be because of something else. But here is my message….
The Creator creates Human Beings.
Human beings label each other. Thus some become autistics, some become down syndromes and some become neuro-typical. We human beings love to classify each other, be it by religion, or by character, or by race or by degree of disability!
The Creator smiles at the knowledge-use of human beings and waits to see what happens next. Interesting things always happen.
Regards
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Hi Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay,
I have been meaning to ask you how you prefer to be addressed. I see you have a preference for a friendly kind of formality. I want to show you the kind of respect you show others and I am afraid that addressing you as merely “Tito” might be too informal.
Mr. Mukhopadhyay?
TR Mukhopadhyay? 🙂
To: Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Thank you for responding much more eloquently than I could have spoken.
——
So I have sons who are burdens on society…outlaws with a price on their heads…problems to be cured…perhaps eradicated? Strange, I thought they were intelligent boys [humans] with futures…if only people would allow them…
I wonder what “numbers” these “people” would dish for my son who lives with bipolar disorder/ADHD?
To: Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Its good to see and read your words again. Interesting things do indeed always happen.
After you cure autistic people, they don’t cost society a dime.
Talking about the “cost” of autism is really as relevant as talking about the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin unless you have a way to change that cost. As I see it, there are only three ways to do that:
[1] Euthenize autistic people – ethically unacceptable (reprehensible, actually) and currently socially unacceptable as well.
[2] Cure autistic people – possible also an ethical problem, at least for those autistic people who express a preference to not be “cured”. The biggest bar to this solution is that there is no “cure” available. Despite much blathering on about “cured” and “recovered children”, there is still no data suggesting that any of the purported “cures” do much at all to alter the developmental trajectory of autism.
[3] Stop providing services to autistic people – also ethically unacceptable, as well as being currently socially unacceptable. In many ways, this is simply a more cruel and prolonged version of choice [1].
So, now that we know – or think we know – the “cost” of autism, what do we do with that information? That is the real question, isn’t it? And I think that the answers will demonstrate the character of the people who propose them.
Prometheus
Duplicate comment deleted
Prometheus –
I respectfully disagree with your cost analysis. At least one more option exists – to provide reductions to the current cost structure that supports treatment.
Right now, the “front-line” treatment recommendation is intensive, Lovaas-esque ABA therapy. This is, by its nature, extremely expensive. And not shown to be effective. I think parent training (let’s assume for the sake of this argument that the parent training would be appropriate and ethical)could be very, very effective in improving the lives of autistic children as well as their families, by increasing levels of understanding. It could be done in a group format, dispersing costs over several families simultaneously.
There are plenty of other examples for cost-effective ways to augment “services” while reducing costs (such as career development “coaching”), but the current model is not designed to work this way.
And, as other commenters here have alluded to, the best way to eliminate costs related to services provided to autistics is to offset said costs with contributions by the same individual. Our society is still in the “dark ages” on this point, as the general public, I believe, do not understand or appreciate the contributions that autistic individuals make to our society each and every day.
Not Brain Dead:
“After you cure autistic people, they don’t cost society a dime.”
Patently untrue and economically ignorant. Is that you Fore Sam? There are very few people left on this Earth, especially in western-industrialised societies that can be called Survivalists. Did you build your own house? Do you grow and hunt your own food? Do you make your own electricity with some device you built yourself aswell as all other utilities you use?
I don’t think the answer to most or all of them will be in the affirmative, you will have had to rely on others to provide these things for you. Capitalism believe it or not invokes a level of Democratic Socialism just as DS involves a level of Capitalism. All those things are expensive, though the system of distribution means you don’t readily recognise the cost, the amount of resources expended in relation to your own contribution.
The system is streamlined to suit you as a non-disabled and Neurotypical person, allowing you to give a net contribution whilst having many aspects of your life subsidised in an economically sustainable way. Disabled people, including Autistics have always asked for this and much of the time have been dismissed and refused the oppotunity to succeed as they are.
In fact, it’s extremely likey in my view that Autistics use less resources per head than Neurotypicals do. The net contribution however is only ever moved into minus numbers for an individual when intolerance prevents them from ever having the equal oppotunities to provide for themselves.
It’s amazing to me, Lovaas did the calculations on what it cost the state to keep an autistic person in an institution for life.
Then he did the calculations on what his therapy cost (very expensive) and wrote, “see? paying me and my minions is cheaper than sending these people to an institution.” Never mind all the autistics that never would go to an institution with or without “services,” because they didn’t fit criteria for “institutionalization” or because their family wouldn’t stand for such a horrible thing, or just didn’t know about it as an option…
So now we have this sort of Lovaas inspired blackmail that the Canadians are especially good at repeating, “a few hundred thousand dollars now or a few million dollars later…”
But Lovaas claim that he was curing 47% of his 40 hour a week “Cadillac therapy” kids is a pile of horse feathers, to put it nicely.
Even if it was true, how to does the balance sheet work out if he’s curing less than half and the rest are going to the institutions anyway (which would be a stupid thing to think).
Then they trot out the 1 in 150 number (or 1 in 100) and say that all of these kids need that much “intervention,” when so many of them don’t even get the ASD dx until they are like 9 or 10 or even older. Why? Because they aren’t THAT different from normal kids or because they had a different dx when they were younger (no access to the right clinicians or whatever).
The whole thing is just so stupid. My kid who probably would have gotten a PDD,nos dx as a child if people were aware of less than “stereotypical” descriptions of autism (head banging, no speech, no eye contact….) back then, got tiny bits of speech and occupational therapy and never had a 1:1 aide in the classroom, and was just mainstreamed with “resouce room” help for an hour a day or so.
My kid got tons of one on one EARLY “therapy” with me as the mom doing pretty much regular mom and kid stuff with an emphasis on reading and math skills to some extent because I wanted to have smart kids.
I give this as an example of a spectrum kid who didn’t need tons of expensive therapies paid for by the state, and who will never go into an “institution,” though probably won’t be gainfully employed, either, for reasons that expensive “early intervention” wouldn’t have changed.
The state isn’t supporting me in an institution or group home, either. And lots of the currently dx’d spectrum kids will end up like me, if they aren’t tormented horrendously (or killed) in their childhood’s and teens. And lots of spectrum kids will end up as scientistis and engineers, making tons more money that I ever will, and getting them to that point won’t involve hours of ABA therapy, but education and encouraging them to be good autistic citizens and to enjoy and exploit their sometimes prodigious and lucrative talents (hello, Stephen Speilberg, Bill Gates, Dan Akroyd and all the other known wealthy spectrumites, none of whom got 40 hours of Lovaas ABA, thank goodness).
The majority of the “cost” of an autistic person is in lost wages. The article carefully accounts for the fact that some people with autism will be working and “contributing” to society. But there are many contributions to society that do not involve paid work. If we were to do a similar analysis of stay-at-home mothers, we’d find them a huge and I mean HUGE drain on society, even worse than autistic people. After all the paper assumes that autistic people have a shorter than average life expectancy, and do not live past about 66. So, they do not consider their old age health-related expenses. But no such argument could be made about stay-at-home mothers. They’d cost millions of dollars each.
I point this out simply to show the insanity of dividing out some sub-set of society, and asking if they are “paying their way?”
Oh, man…. where does that put an autistic stay-at-home mother like myself?!
Michelle Dawson has an excellent blog on this subject and references the current situation in India, where the cultural custom is that daughters must be provided with dowries, whereas sons are not.
The result? Advertisments for in utero gender testing, “pay 600 rupees now, save 50,000 rupees laterâ€.
Friend in CA,
Thanks for spotting one I missed; let me amend my post with the following:
[4] Reduce the services provided to autistic people – which might be either good or bad. “Good”, if the “services” which are cut are those that are neither effective nor helpful and “bad” if the opposite.
[5] Find more cost-effective means of providing services. Who can argue with that? As long as it isn’t just a euphemism for [4].
Finally, the whole validity of the “cost” estimates for autism hinges on how they calculate the “costs”. If they are counting the costs of “treatment”, then that begs the question, “Do we count all treatments, or just those that have been shown to be effective?”
As Camille mentioned above, much of the impetus behind the “cost of autism” estimates is to promote therapies – therapies which their promoters claim will “cure” (or “recover”) autistic children (I haven’t seen many that claim to “fix” autistic adults) and thereby eliminate the need for expensive services later in their life.
This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that none of the proposed “therapies” (not even ABA, sad to say) have been shown to “cure” (or “recover”) autistic children (Lovaas’ claims to the contrary notwithstanding).
I submit that a far better use for the “cost of autism” estimate would be to stimulate further research into the actual causes of autism and also to develop a system to support people with disabilities (all disabilities) so that they can be as independent and productive as they possibly can.
If these were the desired outcomes behind all of the “cost of autism” scares, I’d be much more tolerant of them. Sadly, the point of these scare headlines is to sell more papers (magazines, get more TV viewers, etc.) and to promote marginalized, low-probability “cures” and causes.
Prometheus
jypsy,
You are a woman whose price is above rubies. In the real world, which is not the same as the accountant’s world!
As far as “lost wages” go, it would seem my Aspie son is ahead of the game. He’s held full time seasonal (summer) employment for the last 4 summers, since he was 13, and has been working part time through the school year this past year.
Thanx Jennifer 🙂
“WANTED
DOOKIA TI’KALINS (fake name)
DEAD OR ALIVE
320,000,000 beli
Go slaughter her becuz she’s autistchic and costsh us too much…..:((((((((
MARINE”
…
That’s the impression I get from reading this….maybe I’ve just read too much One Piece, though, which would explain the “MARINE” and “beli” parts……
I am Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay again.
Madam Clark, call me Tito. I do not want to put extra burden with the spelling of my last name. (I was on a vacation trip with mother and could not read any post.)
Yes, about the ‘cost of therapy’.
Before that we must know the reason behind therapies.
The reason is ‘fix autism.’ And trying to fix a cube inside a triangular hole can be a cost effective matter.
While trying that, we forget that the triangle is also an existence. It has its own unique property.
We want to see the triangle turn into a cube.
regards,
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Thanks, Tito. 🙂