RFK Jr promises to find “the” cause of autism
We’ve known for decades that the risk for autism is mostly heritable, i.e., genetics. Certain environmental inputs can enhance the expression of autistic traits, but the cause lies in genetics.
“The rise in prevalence, many researchers say, is predominantly caused by an increase in diagnoses rather than a true rise in the underlying symptoms and traits. “We don’t see an epidemic of autism, but we see an ‘epidemic’ of diagnoses,” says Sven Bölte, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatric science at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.”
There you have it. The cause of autism is autism diagnosis, just like the cause of dawn is roosters crowing. If physicians just stop diagnosing autism, it will go away, right?
epidemic of autism diagnoses
“The rise in prevalence, many researchers say, is predominantly caused by an increase in diagnoses rather than a true rise in the underlying symptoms and traits. “We don’t see an epidemic of autism, but we see an ‘epidemic’ of diagnoses,” says Sven Bölte, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatric science at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.”
There you have it. The cause of autism is autism diagnosis, just like the cause of dawn is roosters crowing. If physicians just stop diagnosing autism, it will go away, right?
epidemic of autism diagnoses
If we stop listening to RFK lower-case j maybe RFKj will go away?
I fear for my grandson. I fear for myself, and I don’t fear easy …
Our oldest son was diagnosed ASD 13 years ago. My wife and I have learned and thought a lot about autism over the years. I understand the logic that the large increases could be artifacts of changing diagnosis criteria plus greater screening. I think that’s a partial explanation, but chances are good that ASD has increased in the last few decades apart from those factors. For example, the linked article shows data for US boys of rates of 11 cases in 2002 going to 50 in 2022. It also highlights a Danish study estimating the impact of changed diagnosis at about 60%. A little apples to oranges, but applying that Danish estimate to the US data gives you “corrected” 2002 data around 35, so you still get an indication of maybe a 43% increase not attributable to diagnosis. Could the 43% be 25%? Sure. Or 50%. But 0% feels unlikely. One of the professionals we work with has decades of experience in Wisconsin. Her professional opinion is that while screening has been “compressed” to younger ages, that by 8 years-old (birthday) there would be no significant difference in the group “selected” for potential ASD diagnosis than 20 years ago. She also observes that -in an imperfect manner – the financial obstacles for adults to get services they can afford have gone down this century, the numbers seeking services hasn’t gone up much. ASD has no cure. Once in a great while a person seems to almost spontaneously are no longer on the spectrum, but very, very rare. So the “diagnosis” hypothesis ought to include a sizeable population of 40+ undiagnosed individuals that could be diagnosed. While I can understand that finding these folks won’t be a top priority, the evidence that there is a good sized population that got missed is, so far, not strong. I’m keeping an open mind.