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amTThe "Better Diagnosis" Con -- Pretending autism cases haven't exploded is a dangerous lie
This is a great article, I'd love to hear some of those who don't believe autism has grown out of control after reading this:
\>>FARGO, North Dakota—Of all the absurd arguments epidemic denialists deploy to explain away the autism explosion, none is more intellectually bankrupt than “better diagnosis.” It’s the go-to talking point for every vaccine industry spokesperson, every conflicted researcher, and every journalist too lazy to examine the actual data. And it’s complete nonsense.
Let me be blunt: If you believe that better diagnosis explains why autism went from affecting 1 in 10,000 children to 1 in 36, you’re either uninformed, repeating lies you’ve heard, or lying yourself.
# The North Dakota Study Destroys This Myth
In 1987, researchers published a prevalence study of autism in North Dakota https://substack.com/redirect/f395f024-f4c0-4c64-862e-881581bed11e?j=eyJ1IjoiMTdibW12In0.KX4oJ0WG7u979U_qbE_LGVsrXkK1xdYjZ25r8KwjvHk. hey looked at all 180,000 children under eighteen in the entire state. They assessed children in person. The data was peer-reviewed, published, and replicable. They found 59 children with autism—a rate of 3.3 per 10,000, or roughly 1 in 3,300.
Today’s autism rate is 1 in 36. That’s eighty-three times higher.
If you believe in “better diagnosis,” you have to believe those North Dakota researchers missed 98.8 percent of autism cases. You have to believe that pediatricians, psychologists, screeners, teachers, and parents across an entire state somehow let nearly all the kids with autism slip through the cracks. You have to believe these children were sitting in classrooms, and nobody—not the doctors, not the teachers, not even the parents—noticed.
It’s an impossible world. But it’s the one Paul Offit, Peter Hotez, and Steven Silberman want you to believe in.
Here’s the kicker: Those same North Dakota researchers went back twelve years later and checked their work. They followed the same cohort of nearly 200,000 kids and published their findings in 2000. How many children with autism had they missed in their original count?
One child. One.
They had undercounted by exactly one child out of hundreds of thousands. These researchers identified 98 percent of autism cases the first time around. So much for “better diagnosis.”
# The National Collaborative Perinatal Project
If that’s not enough to convince you, let’s talk about the most comprehensive study of child development ever conducted in the United States. Between 1959 and 1965, fourteen different hospitals associated with major universities followed 30,000 newborns from birth until they turned eight years old. The study was funded directly by Congress and supervised by the National Institutes of Health.
This wasn’t some small-scale screening. Researchers collected approximately 4,000 separate pieces of information on each child. Kids were evaluated nine separate times between birth and age eight, with screenings that included pediatrics, psychology, neurology, and speech, language, and hearing assessments. The original name? “The Collaborative Study of Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation, and Other Neurological and Sensory Disorders of Infancy and Childhood.”
The whole point was to find any aberration in childhood development. Missing autism in this study would be like missing a train wreck.
How many children with autism did they find? Fourteen. That’s 4.7 per 10,000.
If today’s rate of 1 in 36 had been accurate back then, the researchers would have needed to find 833 children with autism. They found 14. That means they would have missed 98.4 percent of cases—819 children.
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who analyzed this data, told me directly: “I find it very hard to believe that the people involved with the study missed that many children. They were very thorough.”
# Where Are All the Older Adults?
Here’s the simplest question that destroys the “better diagnosis” myth: Where are all the adults with autism?
If autism has always been here at today’s rate of 1 in 36, then roughly 2 percent of American adults should be exhibiting clear signs of autism. That’s 4.8 million adults over age thirty-five. Where are they? Where are the nursing homes, group homes, and mental institutions overrun with adults who can’t live independently, who are nonverbal, who need round-the-clock care?
They don’t exist. In Ontario, Canada, there are 7.34 illion adults over thirty-five. At a rate of 1 in 36, that would mean 204,000 adults with autism. But Ontario only has 18,000 group home spaces for adults with all forms of developmental disabilities combined—and autism represents less than half of all cases.
The math doesn’t work. The adults aren’t there. Because the epidemic is real.
# The First Autism Researcher Knew Better
Dr. Bernard Rimland founded both the Autism Society of America and the Autism Research Institute. He was the foremost authority on autism from the 1980s until his death in 2006. By 1995, he was already sounding the alarm, writing an essay titled “Is there an autism epidemic?” His answer: “Yes! There clearly has been a sharp increase in the number of autistic children.”
In 2000, he published an essay noting that while “there are a few Flat-Earthers who insist that there is no real epidemic of autism, only an increased awareness, it is obvious to everyone else that the number of young children with autism spectrum disorders has risen, and continues to rise, dramatically.”
Dr. Rimland saw the word “autism” for the first time in 1958, five years after he’d earned his PhD in psychology. He heard similar tales from physicians and special education teachers whose experience dated back to the early 1970s and before. “Autism was truly rare in those days,” he wrote.
# The Real Motive Behind the Lie
So why do people keep pushing the “better diagnosis” argument when the data so clearly refutes it? Follow the money.
Paul Offit made tens of millions of dollars when his rotavirus vaccine was accepted onto the US vaccine schedule. He holds the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology chair at the University of Pennsylvania—a position endowed by Merck, the largest vaccine maker in the world. Peter Hotez is a patent holder of several experimental vaccines. Eric Fombonne has served as an expert witness for vaccine makers, testifying against parents of vaccine-injured children in court.
These aren’t objective experts. They’re industry spokespople. And they benefit enormously from denying the autism epidemic, because if vaccinations are triggering autism in 1 in 36 children, the risk-reward equation for the vaccine program is destroyed.
If there’s no epidemic, there’s no environmental trigger. No need to look for what’s causing it. No need to change anything. No liability. No accountability.
# The Experts Who Actually Track the Numbers
Dr. Walter Zahorodny from Rutgers University is one of the principal investigators for the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. Unlike the CDC, which never offers an explanation for the ongoing rise in autism numbers, Dr. Zahorodny can’t seem to keep his mouth shut about what he’s seeing.
In 2020, he said: “One out of 20 boys have autism. That’s hard to get your head around. Sometimes I find myself checking myself and questioning, why am I saying that? Well, I’m saying that because the data are clear that that’s the case.”
He continued: “I just don’t understand why it was shocking for people to realize that 0.6% utism in Brick Township was an urgent problem, but three times higher rates across the network and 3% in New Jersey isn’t distressing or shocking. If we said that 3% of the children in our country had a hearing impairment or a visual impairment, I think that would be taken to be a real urgent issue that would call for lots of research and investigation.”
That quote says it all. The CDC understates the issue. The press repeats propaganda. And the claim that “better awareness” explains the problem is simply not sufficient.
# The Bottom Line
I’m fifty-five years old. As a child, I never saw or heard of even one peer with autism. My teenage children know dozens of kids with autism. Schools are bursting at the seams with special education classes. Ask any teacher, doctor, nurse, or coach who has been working for three decades or more, and you’ll hear the same thing: Something new and very different is happening with children today.
The “better diagnosis” argument doesn’t work. The facts don’t support it. Studies don’t support it. Common sense doesn’t support it. Even our congresspersons know it’s ridiculous.
Denying the autism epidemic denies the suffering of millions of children and their families. It denies the exploration into the true cause so the epidemic might end. It gives scientists an “out” where they can describe the autism epidemic as “up for debate.” It prevents a redirection of research dollars to find environmental causes.
In the end, saying the autism epidemic isn’t real—and that “better diagnosis” explains it all away—is simply a lie. And it’s a lie that extends the suffering of so many children.<<
#politics
source
This is a great article, I'd love to hear some of those who don't believe autism has grown out of control after reading this:
\>>FARGO, North Dakota—Of all the absurd arguments epidemic denialists deploy to explain away the autism explosion, none is more intellectually bankrupt than “better diagnosis.” It’s the go-to talking point for every vaccine industry spokesperson, every conflicted researcher, and every journalist too lazy to examine the actual data. And it’s complete nonsense.
Let me be blunt: If you believe that better diagnosis explains why autism went from affecting 1 in 10,000 children to 1 in 36, you’re either uninformed, repeating lies you’ve heard, or lying yourself.
# The North Dakota Study Destroys This Myth
In 1987, researchers published a prevalence study of autism in North Dakota https://substack.com/redirect/f395f024-f4c0-4c64-862e-881581bed11e?j=eyJ1IjoiMTdibW12In0.KX4oJ0WG7u979U_qbE_LGVsrXkK1xdYjZ25r8KwjvHk. hey looked at all 180,000 children under eighteen in the entire state. They assessed children in person. The data was peer-reviewed, published, and replicable. They found 59 children with autism—a rate of 3.3 per 10,000, or roughly 1 in 3,300.
Today’s autism rate is 1 in 36. That’s eighty-three times higher.
If you believe in “better diagnosis,” you have to believe those North Dakota researchers missed 98.8 percent of autism cases. You have to believe that pediatricians, psychologists, screeners, teachers, and parents across an entire state somehow let nearly all the kids with autism slip through the cracks. You have to believe these children were sitting in classrooms, and nobody—not the doctors, not the teachers, not even the parents—noticed.
It’s an impossible world. But it’s the one Paul Offit, Peter Hotez, and Steven Silberman want you to believe in.
Here’s the kicker: Those same North Dakota researchers went back twelve years later and checked their work. They followed the same cohort of nearly 200,000 kids and published their findings in 2000. How many children with autism had they missed in their original count?
One child. One.
They had undercounted by exactly one child out of hundreds of thousands. These researchers identified 98 percent of autism cases the first time around. So much for “better diagnosis.”
# The National Collaborative Perinatal Project
If that’s not enough to convince you, let’s talk about the most comprehensive study of child development ever conducted in the United States. Between 1959 and 1965, fourteen different hospitals associated with major universities followed 30,000 newborns from birth until they turned eight years old. The study was funded directly by Congress and supervised by the National Institutes of Health.
This wasn’t some small-scale screening. Researchers collected approximately 4,000 separate pieces of information on each child. Kids were evaluated nine separate times between birth and age eight, with screenings that included pediatrics, psychology, neurology, and speech, language, and hearing assessments. The original name? “The Collaborative Study of Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation, and Other Neurological and Sensory Disorders of Infancy and Childhood.”
The whole point was to find any aberration in childhood development. Missing autism in this study would be like missing a train wreck.
How many children with autism did they find? Fourteen. That’s 4.7 per 10,000.
If today’s rate of 1 in 36 had been accurate back then, the researchers would have needed to find 833 children with autism. They found 14. That means they would have missed 98.4 percent of cases—819 children.
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who analyzed this data, told me directly: “I find it very hard to believe that the people involved with the study missed that many children. They were very thorough.”
# Where Are All the Older Adults?
Here’s the simplest question that destroys the “better diagnosis” myth: Where are all the adults with autism?
If autism has always been here at today’s rate of 1 in 36, then roughly 2 percent of American adults should be exhibiting clear signs of autism. That’s 4.8 million adults over age thirty-five. Where are they? Where are the nursing homes, group homes, and mental institutions overrun with adults who can’t live independently, who are nonverbal, who need round-the-clock care?
They don’t exist. In Ontario, Canada, there are 7.34 illion adults over thirty-five. At a rate of 1 in 36, that would mean 204,000 adults with autism. But Ontario only has 18,000 group home spaces for adults with all forms of developmental disabilities combined—and autism represents less than half of all cases.
The math doesn’t work. The adults aren’t there. Because the epidemic is real.
# The First Autism Researcher Knew Better
Dr. Bernard Rimland founded both the Autism Society of America and the Autism Research Institute. He was the foremost authority on autism from the 1980s until his death in 2006. By 1995, he was already sounding the alarm, writing an essay titled “Is there an autism epidemic?” His answer: “Yes! There clearly has been a sharp increase in the number of autistic children.”
In 2000, he published an essay noting that while “there are a few Flat-Earthers who insist that there is no real epidemic of autism, only an increased awareness, it is obvious to everyone else that the number of young children with autism spectrum disorders has risen, and continues to rise, dramatically.”
Dr. Rimland saw the word “autism” for the first time in 1958, five years after he’d earned his PhD in psychology. He heard similar tales from physicians and special education teachers whose experience dated back to the early 1970s and before. “Autism was truly rare in those days,” he wrote.
# The Real Motive Behind the Lie
So why do people keep pushing the “better diagnosis” argument when the data so clearly refutes it? Follow the money.
Paul Offit made tens of millions of dollars when his rotavirus vaccine was accepted onto the US vaccine schedule. He holds the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology chair at the University of Pennsylvania—a position endowed by Merck, the largest vaccine maker in the world. Peter Hotez is a patent holder of several experimental vaccines. Eric Fombonne has served as an expert witness for vaccine makers, testifying against parents of vaccine-injured children in court.
These aren’t objective experts. They’re industry spokespople. And they benefit enormously from denying the autism epidemic, because if vaccinations are triggering autism in 1 in 36 children, the risk-reward equation for the vaccine program is destroyed.
If there’s no epidemic, there’s no environmental trigger. No need to look for what’s causing it. No need to change anything. No liability. No accountability.
# The Experts Who Actually Track the Numbers
Dr. Walter Zahorodny from Rutgers University is one of the principal investigators for the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. Unlike the CDC, which never offers an explanation for the ongoing rise in autism numbers, Dr. Zahorodny can’t seem to keep his mouth shut about what he’s seeing.
In 2020, he said: “One out of 20 boys have autism. That’s hard to get your head around. Sometimes I find myself checking myself and questioning, why am I saying that? Well, I’m saying that because the data are clear that that’s the case.”
He continued: “I just don’t understand why it was shocking for people to realize that 0.6% utism in Brick Township was an urgent problem, but three times higher rates across the network and 3% in New Jersey isn’t distressing or shocking. If we said that 3% of the children in our country had a hearing impairment or a visual impairment, I think that would be taken to be a real urgent issue that would call for lots of research and investigation.”
That quote says it all. The CDC understates the issue. The press repeats propaganda. And the claim that “better awareness” explains the problem is simply not sufficient.
# The Bottom Line
I’m fifty-five years old. As a child, I never saw or heard of even one peer with autism. My teenage children know dozens of kids with autism. Schools are bursting at the seams with special education classes. Ask any teacher, doctor, nurse, or coach who has been working for three decades or more, and you’ll hear the same thing: Something new and very different is happening with children today.
The “better diagnosis” argument doesn’t work. The facts don’t support it. Studies don’t support it. Common sense doesn’t support it. Even our congresspersons know it’s ridiculous.
Denying the autism epidemic denies the suffering of millions of children and their families. It denies the exploration into the true cause so the epidemic might end. It gives scientists an “out” where they can describe the autism epidemic as “up for debate.” It prevents a redirection of research dollars to find environmental causes.
In the end, saying the autism epidemic isn’t real—and that “better diagnosis” explains it all away—is simply a lie. And it’s a lie that extends the suffering of so many children.<<
#politics
source
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