Tag Archives: Autism

Polly Tommey poses as advocate for autistic adults

7 Apr

Polly Tommey is in the news again with this piece in the Guardian, Attention-grabbing antics for autism. It concerns her latest poster campaign, timed to coincide with the start of the General Election.
Hello boys polle tommey poster

I have left the following comment.

I have followed Ms Tommey’s attempts to present herself as a mainstream autism advocate for some time now on my blog, Action for Autism, and your headline,”Attention Grabbing Antics” is apt. If Ms Tommey wants us “to move away from the discussion about vaccines because she knows how divisive it is” she could make a start by removing her current Face Book campaign, “Mothers Supporting Andrew Wakefield’s Work.”

Ms Tommey complains about “bickering.” But other organizations have no problem working together. The Autism Act came about with the support of 15 autism organizations working together. Many of their members served on the External Reference Group for the Autism Adult Strategy for England which reported to the government. They mobilized their members to submit over a thousand responses to help shape government strategy. This will be reflected in the statutory guidance that will be published later this year. Ms Tommey’s contribution to all this was nil.

She states that “we haven’t a clue what to do with adults with autism.” That is because she and her supporters have spent the last 10 years arguing that autism is a biomedical disorder of childhood that is treatable with the untested and unproven interventions marketed by her husband. The National Autistic Society has taken a different stance with its Don’t write Me Off campaign Most of us are not interested in what to do with autistic adults. But we we are trying to find out what we can do for them and what they want for themselves.

Tags: , ,

A Nasty Little Franchise

15 Feb

Wakefield may have the highest public profile but he is just one of many who seek to profit from autism and he is by no means the worst. Remember the Geiers? This father and son team from Silver Springs in Maryland have an unsavoury record that makes Wakefield seem almost reasonable.

Wakefield breached the terms of his hospital’s ethics committee. The Geiers, operating out of the family home, invented their own IRB and granted themselves ethical approval for experiments on children with a powerful drug called Lupron. Lupron is used to treat precocious puberty, a rare condition in young children. It is also used is also used to treat prostate cancer in men, to treat endometriosis in women, and to chemically castrate sex offenders. The Geiers use it on autistic children and young adults.

Kathleen Seidel has catalogued their bad science, plagiarism, inflated academic resumes, the fraudulent IRB, cruel and unnecessary blood draws, attempted deals with TAP pharmaceuticals and the Lupron Protocol itself on her Neurodiversity website. Trine Tsouderos at the Chicago Tribune covers all the basics in her recent profile of the Geiers,  ‘Miracle drug’ called junk science.

The most disturbing part of Tsouderos’ story was the news that the Geiers were rolling out a franchise for others to cash in on their unproven and dangerous protocol. According to their website they offer the following

  • Genetic Markers (DNA Fragile X Syndrome, Blood Chromosome, Chromosome Microarrays, DNA Rett Syndrome, Angelman/Prader Willi Syndrome)
  • Mitochondrial Dysfunction (Carnitine, Lactic Acid, Ammonia, Hand Muscle Testing)
  • Hormone Imbalances (Total Testosterone, Free Testosterone, DHEA, DHEA-S, Androstenedione, Dihydrotestosterone, Total Estrogens, Estrone, Estradiol, ACTH, Aldosterone, Prolactin, FSH, LH)
  • Oxidative Stress/Inflammation (Neopterin, Lipid Peroxides)
  • Detoxification Pathways (Glutathione, Cystathionine, Homocysteine, Methionine)
  • Immune System Function (Immune Deficiency Profile, HLA-Testing, Immune Complexes, Food Allergies, Celiac’s Disease)
  • Heavy Metals (Porphyrins, Blood Metals, Urinary Metals)
  • Neurological Dysfunction (Brain MRI scans, Brain SPECT scans)
  • General Health Status (Comphrensive Metabolic Panel)

And this is the team that will deliver these services.

  • Maryland: Mark Geier MD, geneticist and David Young MD, Obstetrician and gynaecologist.
  • Springfield, llinois: Mary Young MD, psychiatrist and neurologist.
  • Ft. Lauderdale, Florida: David Claymore, neuroradiologist.
  • Parsippany, New Jersey: Paul King, industrial chemist.
  • Indianapolis, Indiana: Melissa Troutman, radiologic technologist.
  • Dallas, Texas: Janet Kern, RN, neuroscientist.
  • Louisville, Kentucky: Janet Pope, RN

And that is it. The only member of the American Academy of Pediatrics is Mary Young who has worked as a child psychiatrist. There are no board certified endocrinologists or anybody with the board certification to diagnose and treat precocious puberty in children.

And what of David Geier BA? He remains vice-president of the non-profit 501(c)3 Institute of Chronic Illnesses, Inc. and the non-profit 501(c)3 CoMeD, Inc. Much of the profit from the franchise will be directed to “these corporations dedicated to
autism research and advocacy efforts.” sure. So families or their insurers will be paying for treatments for their children that have been condemned by real autism experts as junk science. And the profits from this enterprise will be used to fund more junk science. Do they have a GMC in America? Do they want to borrow ours?

Tags: , , , ,

Eugenic Arguments in the Times

23 Nov

Today’s Times carries an article that suggests that people with learning difficulties should not be allowed to have children because it would cost to much to support them. The children would suffer and some of these parents are also autistic “which will make loving and consistent parenthood extremely difficult.”

The article is confused and wrong in so many ways. I do not have the time to take it on right now but I hope people can read it and add their comments.

Tags: ,

Political abuse and the abuse of autism

5 Nov

“Political autism” has emerged again in a row within the European Union (EU). Despite taking Britain into the EEC (the forerunner of the EU) in 1973, the Conservatives have always been vulnerable to disputes between their pro-European wing and the euro-sceptics who are mistrustful of European federalism and keen to defend British independence. The Labour Party has comparable factions within its ranks.

Thus political leaders of both the main parties have always had to perform a tricky manoeuvre, demonstrating their European credentials to a business community that knows where its markets lie and appealing to an electorate, many of whom prefer to blame faceless European bureaucrats for all our ills. This has led to an inconsistent approach that causes exasperation amongst some of our European partners.

This came to a head again this week over the lack of commitment by the Conservative Party leadership to the European Union. According to the Guardian

Pierre Lellouche, France’s Europe minister, described as “pathetic” the Tories’ EU plans announced today, warning they would not succeed “for a minute”.

Giving vent to frustration across the EU, which has so far only been expressed in private, Lellouche – who said he was reflecting Nicolas Sarkozy’s “sadness and regret” – accused William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, of a “bizarre autism” in their discussions.

He said: “They have one line and they just repeat one line. It is a very bizarre sense of autism.”

This is not the first time autism has been used as a term of abuse in politics. But the National Autistic Society launched an immediate complaint

Autism (including Asperger syndrome) is a serious, lifelong and disabling condition. Comments such as those attributed to Pierre Lellouche, France’s Europe Minister, in which he seemingly suggests the Conservative Party, and in particular, William Hague, demonstrate a bizarre sense of autism are therefore extremely unhelpful.
To use the terms ‘autism’ and ‘autistic’ in a derogatory or flippant manner can cause deep distress and hurt to people affected by the condition. The National Autistic Society (NAS) is keen to address this issue, in order that these terms are not used lightly, particularly by commentators or people in positions of power or influence.
Autism is much more common than most people think and affects over half a million people in the UK. To use the terms as a criticism, for dramatic effect or to try and gain political advantage only perpetuates the confusion and misunderstanding which people with autism have to cope with everyday. This is simply unacceptable and must stop.

Today’s Times ran with the story of Monsieur Lellouche’s apology.

France’s Europe Minister has expressed his deep regret at causing offence by calling the Conservative Party “autistic”, but also blamed a mis-translation for the furore today.

Pierre Lellouche said that he was voicing his real concern about the Tories’ Eurosceptic slide under David Cameron when he reproached the party for “a very bizarre sense of autism” in an interview with The Guardian.

He also called their hostility to the European Union “pathetic” and said that the party’s policies in the European Parliament had “castrated” them. Aside from the political row, the remarks were condemned by autism advocacy groups.

However, although the minister said today his remarks were “clumsy”, he claimed that the term, which is colloquially used in French to refer to a stubborn person who does not listen, is a common term of political abuse in France.

Leaving politics aside, this derogatory use of autism reflects some very primitive and harmful ideas that still hold sway in France. Two years ago I wrote about an abusive “treatment” known as “packing” that is still going on today

“A French treatment for autistic children with psychiatric problems which involves wrapping the patient in cold, wet sheets from head to foot is undergoing a clinical trial for the first time, which critics hope will see an end to the controversial practice.

The treatment, known as “packing”, involves wrapping a child in wet, refrigerated sheets in order to produce a feeling of bodily limitation and holding, before psychiatrically trained staff talk to the child about their feelings. Critics have called the procedure cruel, unproven and potentially dangerous, but its proponents say they have seen results.”

This cruel treatment has been condemned by advocates for neurodiversity and proponents of biomedical cures alike. I have made my feelings regarding Lorene Amet’s position on vaccines and biomedical treatments perfectly clear here and, more recently, here. But I agree with her that Packing is barbaric.

It is time that the French medical and educational systems came to grips with the reality of today’s autism. Placing autistic children in hospitals, under psychiatric surveillance, refusing their inclusion in proper educational systems, refusing their access to medical examination
and treatments, violating their human rights and dignity, and even worse still allowing interventions such as “packing” to be conducted in hospital settings is unhelpful and has to be stopped.

According to the Times French autism organizations have welcomed the NAS response and are equally condemnatory of the casual use of autism as a term of political abuse in France.

French autism groups said that the affair demonstrated how offensive was the current use of the term in French public discourse.

Patrick Sadoun, a member of the Sesame Autism Association, said: “The English are right to be shocked. I congratulate a country that reacts to this. I am horrified that French politicians, at the slightest occasion, call one another autistic.”

While autism is an acceptable term of abuse autistic people continue to be the victims of unacceptable physical and psychological abuse.

This post is also available on Action for Autism.

Tags: , , ,

Environment of Harmful Ideas

27 Oct

There used to be an email group on Yahoo devoted to the ideas in David Kirby’s book, Evidence of Harm? It was called Evidence of Harm or EOH for short. The book was ostensibly an exercise in investigative journalism.

  • Had there been a dramatic increase in autism amongst children born in the 1990s?
  • Was this increase caused by the increasing burden of mercury resulting from more thimerosal containing vaccines being added to the vaccine schedule at the beginning of the decade?
  • Was the government involved in a cover up?

Supporters of the vaccine-autism hypothesis saw the book as vindicating their beliefs. Hence the EOH group. But Kirby had always been clear about one thing. If mercury was a significant cause of autism then its removal from childhood vaccines should cause the numbers of new cases to fall. When the mercury was removed and numbers continued to rise Kirby wriggled a bit and then invoked environmental toxins as the reason. As a result the yahoo group Evidence of Harm changed its name to Environment of Harm. So now it was environmental mercury and not the mercury in vaccines. Well not any more. All versions of the Vaccine OS are a bit like Microsoft Windows . They have to be backward compatible with previous versions and are consequently laden with bloatware and very unstable. If you read the group today there are very few autism specific posts and lots of general anti-vaccine comments. This has slowed down the usual messages of sympathy for the perpetrator. But one member of EOH still managed this comment

But yesterday someone posted a link to yet another story of an autistic teen allegedly murdered by his mother. It is too early to speculate on the outcome and at least one newspaper has closed its online comment section on legal grounds until the trial is over. This has slowed down the usual messages of sympathy for the perpetrator. But one member of EOH still managed this comment. [edit]

To the group sadly I beleive we will see a rash of cases where , where they put there child to sleep. The same phenomena occured in england over a two year period , that force the UK gouv to increase funding Before they wake up , I suspect we will see many cases

Pierre

So murder is now “putting to sleep.” And heck it works! When parents went on a killing spree in the UK the government increased its spending on autism. I live in the UK I remember a few isolated cases of murder of autistics, no more, but sadly no less than what is happening in the rest of the world. I do not remember it leading to a growth in funding. What we have in the UK is a National Autistic Society that is committed to improving the lives of autistic people and their families. It operates across the lifespan. It does not demonize autism or cry wolf over vaccines and epidemics. Its campaigns section has enabled autistic people to talk directly to lawmakers and the law is changing. More services are on the way. But at no point were the deaths of autistic children exploited for campaign purposes. EOH is well named. If it can foster the sort of twisted thinking and disregard for the facts displayed by Pierre it truly is an environment of harm.

Tags: , ,

New research proposed for diet and autism

30 Aug

LBRB has a record of coming down hard on so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). We support evidence based treatments and therapies. CAM is all too often an opportunity for snake oil merchants to rip off parents and potentially harm their children.

It may be  that some CAM interventions are beneficial. Properly conducted research may provide the data to support the claims for a particular therapy. So far the record is not good. Secretin has been tried and found wanting. Facilitated Communication could not live up to the hype. Holding Therapy was not only wrong it was abusive. Chelation is based upon fraudulent challenge testing that has been dismissed by the American College of Medical Toxicologists.

But that does not necessarily mean that all CAM therapies are bad. It does mean that they lack evidence and only research can provide that evidence. Note that evidence is not the same as the parent testimonials that CAM practitioners display on their websites and in their literature. Evidence is data collected by disinterested researchers whose methods and results are open to scrutiny. This is more reliable thsn testimonials, which may be influenced by all sorts of factors, including the placebo effect, recall bias and good old fashioned wishful thinking.

One researcher in the UK who has taken a scientific interest in CAM for autism is Professer Ann Le Couteur. She knows that lots of parents use CAM therapies and wants to investigate their effectiveness. In particular she is interested in parental and professional attitudes to dietary interventions, probably the most widespread alternative therapy for autism. To this end her department has sent out the following letter which is also available on the NAS website.

The study

Researchers at Newcastle University would like to find out about parents’ and child health professionals’ experiences of autism research and their attitudes to the use of the gluten- and casein-free diet as an intervention in ASD. We are carrying out two web-based surveys; one for parents/carers and the other for child health professionals who support children with ASD and their families. The results of these surveys will help us plan the design of UK research studies into biomedical and complementary and alternative therapies for children with ASD.

Participants

Parents/carers of pre-school or primary school-aged children with a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder, and child health professionals who support children with ASD and their families, are invited to take part.

What happens next?

If you are interested in taking part, please visit our website: PADIA. When you follow this link, you’ll go to a web page that tells you more about the study, and will ask you to enter some details.

We will then send you a letter of invitation with a unique ID number and the link to an information sheet. This information sheet has the link to the web-based survey.

If you would like any more information about this study, please contact:

Professor Ann Le Couteur
Tel: 01912 821 384
Email: padia@ncl.ac.uk

When I saw this my first thought was “What about the parents whose children have grown up? What about autistic adults? Do their opinions and experiences matter? So I wrote to Professor Le Couteur who promptly replied and gave me permission to share her reply.

MY LETTER

I recently received an invitation for parents of young children and health care professionals to complete a questionnaire that will assist you plan the design of UK research studies into biomedical and
complementary and alternative therapies for children with ASD. May I enquire if you are also interested in the opinions of parents of older children, and indeed of the adults themselves? Many of us have attempted to implement these therapies in the past or had them done unto us and our experience should not be ignored.

PROFESSOR LE COUTEUR’S REPLY

Dear Mike Stanton

I quite agree experiences of parents of older children and personal experiences are of great interest to us.

The research survey was funded for parents of primary school aged children only and the child health professionals that support them. However if you or anyone you know would be prepared to give us information about your/ their experiences in the past that would be really interesting. We cannot include the information in the survey but would be able to use the account to add to our knowledge and to inform our grant applications etc.

I also value personal accounts as these add great value to my talks and presentations if I have permission to share the experiences (in an anonymised form) for teaching and conference events

Thankyou for contacting PADIA

Your sincerely

Ann Le Couteur
Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Institute of Health and Society
Newcastle University
Sir James Spence Institute
Royal Victoria Infirmary
Queen Victoria Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 4LP

Tel: 0191 2821398 (University)
0191 2821384 (University Secretary)
0191 2196455 (Clinical Secretary)

So there you have it: an autism researcher who is open to personal accounts from parents, professionals and autistic adults in order to assist her in formulating and designing her research programme into CAM. This is a positive invitation and I hope people avail themselves of this opportunity in the spirit in whch it is proffered.

Tags: , ,

Unscientific Americans

25 Aug

In Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, Lori Kozlowski talked to Chris Mooney in an article headed ‘Bringing science back into America’s sphere.’ The piece is about a book that Chris has co-authored with Sheril Kirshenbaum “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.” It provoked such a lot of comments that they set up a blog so everyone could have their say.

Needless to say, as one of the book’s targets is the vaccine/autism camp and Chris mentions Age of Autism, that nest of anti-vaxers has dominated the comments with an orchestrated campaign. Here is my own attempt to stem the tide.

Those who have argued for a link between vaccines and autism adopt two contradictory positions. On the one hand we have those who point to the epidemiological studies as evidence of an autism epidemic whose growth is supposed to coincide with changes in the United States schedule for early childhood vaccinations. But when population studies fail to find a connection between vaccines and autism we get a different argument. Apparently there is a subset of genetically susceptible children that is too small to show up in population studies of vaccine safety. We have yet to hear a convincing explanation for this alleged genetic susceptibility to vaccine induced autism. But the parents who subscribe to this view are all convinced that, whatever it is, their child must have it.

It is difficult to see how this latter group could be persuaded to abandon their belief that that in their individual cases correlation does indeed equal causation. But I am at a loss to understand why they are willing to make common cause with the autism epidemicists, who are clearly and demonstrably wrong.

Regarding prevalence we have a very good idea why prevalence used to be 4 in 10000 and is now approaching 100 in 10000. In 1966 Victor Lotter carried out one of the earliest epidemiological studies in the county of Middlesex in the UK. He used a very narrow definition of autism in which only children who actively avoided human contact and engaged in elaborate repetitive behaviour qualified for diagnosis. When his students Lorna Wing and Judith Gould repeated the study in 1979 they found a similar rate of between 4 and 5 in 10000. However they also discovered a larger group who also engaged in repetitive behaviour but did not avoid human contact. However they did show difficulties in social communication and interaction. Wing and Gould defined ther problems within the triad of impairments, which also explained the aloof behaviour of the more typical Kanner type autistics. The newly identified members of the autistic spectrum numbered around 15 in 10000. Thus a simple broadening of the criteria lifted the numbers from 4 to 20 in 10000.

Lotter, Wing and Gould had all studied children excluded from mainstream education. In 1993 Stephan Ehlers and Christopher Gillberg went looking for children with the triad of impairments in mainstream education in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. They found a rate of 71 in 10000 for children with an IQ greater than 70. The children who were identified were known by their teachers to be having social and/or educational problems but the nature of their difficulties had not been recognised prior to the study.

So, as early as 1994, on the basis of epidemiological studies by Wing and Gould (1979) and Ehlers and Gillberg (1993) it was apparent that autism in all its manifestations including the classic Kanner type and the Asperger type affected at least 91 in 10000. The National Autistic Society in the UK issued a fact sheet to that effect. The modern version is available on our website.

In 15 years the figure for all autistic spectrum disorders in the UK has moved from 91 in 10000 to 116 in 10000 (Baird et al 2006). Thus it has remained flat at around 1 per cent for the whole period of the so-called autism epidemic. And that 1 percent represents the whole spectrum with perhaps a fifth to a quarter consisting of people with recognizable learning difficulties that are moderate or severe. The rest are more able.

I see no reason to doubt that the CDC estimate of 1 in 150 and the figures from recent studies that more closely approach the overall prevalence figures from the UK contain within them similar proportions of more and less able individuals. It is a shame that it has taken health and education services on both sides of the Atlantic so long to catch up with the true prevalence of autism amongst our children and begin to tailor services to meet their needs.

That still leaves those more able adults, often living a life less ordinary without the benefit of diagnosis and support, but still experiencing difficulties in their daily lives. The recent I Exist campaign by the National Autistic Society in the UK has influenced our government to take adult issues seriously

Comments are still open. Please visit and counter the collective lunacy of the anti-vaxers.

Tags: , ,

Dr John Briffa is wronger than wrong on vaccines and Hannah Poling

30 May

Media nutritionism is a crowded field, but John Briffa has managed to carve out a niche for himself. And Briffa’s take on vaccines stands out, even among media nutritionists. JDC takes a broader look at Briffa’s take on autism, but I’m going to focus on Briffa’s claim that:

the US Government recently looked at such evidence relating to just one girl (Hannah Poling) and concluded that vaccination had contributed significantly to her autism.

As readers of this blog can probably spot, almost every word of that statement is inaccurate: impressive work, indeed. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Dore UK and Australia are now both in administration

23 May

As noted on this blog and elsewhere, Dore has been marketed as a treatment for ASDs (not to mention dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD) based on extremely limited evidence. Dore UK and Australia have now both gone into administration. In Australia, it is unclear whether clients and staff will get what is owed; in the UK, Dore has stated that they “are presently exploring alternative arrangements to ensure every client is cared for” without (as far as I can see) making clear whether staff will get paid. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Autism Epidemic Meme is Behind Almost All Autism Woo: A Call for Additional Research

13 May

After learning former US president Bill Clinton had indicated he believes that “the number of children who are born with autism [is] tripling every 20 years” (hat tip Orac), an understandable reaction might be to point out his ignorance. Understandable, yes, but I think we are looking at a bigger problem than lack of scientific literacy or political pandering in this case; a problem that is going to have to be addressed in a manner that is clear and generally convincing.

A lot of the discussion in the autism community centers around the anti-vaccination movement. It is true that anti-vaccination could potentially become a major problem for the world as a whole, and it is also true that it is a source of stigma for autistics. Some of us have taken it to be our fight, even though it should probably be the CDC’s or the WHO’s fight, if they were not, as it seems, asleep at the wheel. Nevertheless, I think the persistent autism epidemic meme is a much bigger issue as far as the autism community is concerned. Not only is the notion of an epidemic stigmatizing, but it results in ideas that are more than just theoretically harmful to autistics, such as the idea that autistic adults don’t exist. These ideas will be around regardless of the existence of an anti-vaccination movement.

In my regular blog I have discussed the evidence against the notion of an autism epidemic at length. If I may say so myself, I might have even managed to half persuade a few people from the other side of the debate.
What I want to do here, however, is to essentially critique the evidence I’ve discussed thus far. Let me explain why.

Those of us who are immersed in scientific discussions involving autism are well aware, for example, of diagnostic substitution, of an apparently high prevalence of autism in adults, of the changing characteristics of autistics over time, of regional prevalence differences that resemble time-dependent differences, of the stability of cognitive disability as a whole, of the stability (even the decline) of institutionalization rates, of what went on in the past, and so forth. Taken as a whole, this evidence is overwhelming and convincing to someone such as myself who has studied and perseverated on it for years. Fundamentally, though, it is evidence that has a number of problems: It is too numerous, complex, disjoint and most importantly, lacking in precision; none of it is decisive on its own. We are talking about many bits and pieces of evidence that need to be put together and thought through in order to arrive at the conclusion that there is no such thing as an autism epidemic. I don’t expect someone such as Mr. Clinton to be aware of this evidence, understand it, or think through it, much less be able to analyze some of the publicly available data that is not yet available through the scientific literature.

You see, there’s no such thing as an IOM report on the autism “epidemic.” While I’m personally not that fond of basing my beliefs on what authority tells me I should believe, I think a pronouncement by major authorities on the matter would help inform the general public of the state of the debate and the evidence. For this, however, I believe additional research that specifically addresses the matter in a clear way is needed. Allow me to propose some avenues of future research that could potentially answer the remaining questions once and for all. I encourage readers to propose their own ideas.

1) Replicate Lotter (1967). We know that the prevalence of autism as currently defined is relatively high. We also know that the prevalence of autism as defined in the 1960s was relatively low (4.5 in 10,000). What we don’t know is whether the prevalence of autism ascertained using Lotter’s operationalized criteria and methods is still relatively low in 2008. I think it should be feasible to replicate Lotter’s methodology and criteria today and find out the prevalence, not of DSM-IV autism, but of autism as it was thought of in the past. Without meaning to be disrespectful, this should preferably be done while Lorna Wing is still with us. She claims to know which kinds of children Vic Lotter considered autistic and which he didn’t.

2) Determine the prevalence of autism in adults. This one is non-trivial, as there are some ethical issues to consider, but it seems they will attempt it in the UK. I hope it’s not another case of trying to find how many adults are diagnosed with autism or receiving services under an autism category. This wouldn’t teach us anything new and would just be fodder for David Kirby’s blog. I also hope they don’t assume all autistics must be psychiatric patients, for example. They should find a lot of autistics in the general population, and there is evidence they should find many who might not be diagnosable with autism despite meeting criteria, for various technical reasons. Of course, they also need to look in institutions and group homes, since a ready rebuttal will be that “low functioning” autism must therefore be what’s rare in adults.

3) Determine if regional differences in prevalence are real. When you study administrative databases in some detail, one thing that immediately jumps out is that there are huge disparities in the administrative prevalence of autism between certain regions, be it states, regional centers or counties. I have reasons to believe these differences are not real. If these differences are not real, I’d suggest it would be reasonable to hypothesize that time-based differences in administrative autism prevalence are of the same nature. I have suggested, for example, screening children with mental retardation from different regional centers in California to determine, at the very least, if there are real discrepancies in the prevalence of autism within the population with mental retardation. Another question that needs to be answered is why population density correlates so well with administrative prevalence (independently of things like environmental pollution, as I’ve recently found).

4) Explain the changes with a mathematical model. The plausible mechanisms that explain the rise in diagnoses of autism have been discussed at some length. They might include increased awareness, changes in official criteria, an increased availability of specialists, an increased availability of certain services, changes in cultural beliefs, and so on. I have even discussed the internet as a potential driving force behind increased awareness, particularly in the 1990s. But let’s face it, these are all essentially unproven mechanisms. No one has done a multivariate analysis that gives us a coefficient for each variable. Granted, some things are hard to quantify. It would be a lot like trying to quantify word of mouth. But some of this should be doable.

Tags: , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →