Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Skyrocketing autism rate, still no search for cause...

According to today's Sydney Morning Herald, the number of students in NSW schools who have been diagnosed with autism is now 4 times what it was 8 years ago. (See link at the bottom of this post.)

Not only that, but rates of diagnosed depression and other mental illness among schoolchildren, according to the article, have almost doubled during the same time.

Mental illness aside, this staggering autism increase must surely be awakening questions in the minds of even the staunchest believer in the 'better diagnosis' myth. Could past medical practitioners really have been so ignorant a mere 8 years ago? Could diagnostic differences really have allowed them to miss 3 out of 4 cases?

Even now in Australia, the possibility that autism has environmental causes is rarely discussed in public, and seldom without massive controversy. The certainty with which people declare that autism is a predominantly genetic ailment, and that questioning environmental toxins like mercury (whether vaccinal or not) is wrong, is astonishing when so little else about autism is fully known.

The suggestion that earlier diagnostic methods failed on such a grand scale remains the most curious aspect of the authorised account. Think about it. In order to defend the present system, authorities are admitting that they have comprehensively failed autism as recently as 2003.

Surely if the medical system failed autism in the past, then the system is not infallible now. But instead of failing diagnostically, it may well be failing even more comprehensively at the level of investigation and research.

I wonder how long the 'better diagnosis' myth will last if the rates keep climbing? Will it still be clinging on when the autism rate hits one in two? Or will a majority have finally worked out what seems inescapable to me: that something causes autism?

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/rise-of-autism-puts-strain-on-public-school-budgets-20111025-1mi5g.html

2 comments:

  1. Something causes autism, I also believe the signs may not show up right away, Its hard to tell if its caused by any number of things, "prenatal vitamins, immuzation shots, food, dairy, powdered milk, etc"

    Its scary and frightning, I just read autism cases rose 78-79% from a decade ago, Yet there is hardly any true research being done, maybe the truth is, the answer has been found and the goverment as usual knows it would cause histeria and anger amongst citizens to find the true source, because something is causing it, its not a gene thats missing its a something thats a causing something
    !

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for sharing this. As a parent of an autistic child, I think it is very important that information about autism is spread. For more information about raising an autistic child check out http://onlineceucredit.com/edu/social-work-ceus-pcs. I hope that other autism parents find some helpful information from this website.

    ReplyDelete