The United States Centers for Disease Control recently published statistics that indicate that 1 in 150 children within a certain age cohort, across 14 states, is autistic. This is way more than the previous official numbers, which placed the incidence at about 1 in 5,000 (or thereabouts) and even higher than previous estimates, which put it at 1 in 166.
The next shoe to drop is an acknowledgment of the obvious implication, namely that the increased incidence is due to environmental factors. Until now, mainstream medicine has held it to be a hereditary condition.
Most parents who have formed a conviction believe it's because of vaccination in general and the use of thimerosal in particular.
Public health authorities have put considerably more energy into refuting this hypothesis than developing their own, apparently hoping that the increased incidence was all an illusion, the result of hysterical parents' nuttiness. Ah, those pesky parents - always getting involved in health decisions about their kids.
I think the vaccination explanation is entirely plausible, and nothing I've read has effectively refuted it. Quite the contrary, the "evidence" to reject the hypothesis seems a lot more contrived than the evidence to support it.
The cost of raising and taking care of an autistic individual is enormous. The kids need constant attention and have a number of comorbid conditions, including GI problems, sleep problems, allergies, and of course lots of behavioral issues. There's a strong economic argument for finding the cause and cure for this, even if you aren't convinced by the humanitarian aspects.
If it turns out that the environmental factors are man-made and borne out of sloppiness (as thimerosal and vaccinations surely is), it's going to get ugly. There will, of course, be massive law suits, congressional hearings, and I'm sure people will go to jail. The government will have to develop a policy to fund all kinds of research in the first instance and take care of a large population of profoundly disabled people in the second instance. Parents will demand to be compensated for the hardship not just their children but also they have suffered.
There will be a massive confidence crisis in vaccinations in particular and public health measures in general.
Some doctors and "scientists" should be ritually defrocked and humiliated for the way they have treated parents. Which, by the way, they should be even if it turns out they were right.
Is there any chance that the extra autism is not happening, but that the people who make thier money by treating supposidly sick kids are looking for more work.
Posted by: Gary | February 16, 2007 at 12:06 AM