AND new report From American control and disease prevention centers (CDC) suggests that autism diagnosis indicators are still growing in the USA, causing inflammatory rhetoric of state officials, while experts largely attribute a tendency to improve screening and better understanding of this state.
CDC announced on Tuesday that one in 31 eight-year-olds in the USA has autism, using data from 14 states and Puerto Rico in 2022. Previous estimates-from 2020-one in 36.
CDC checked health and school records for eight -year -olds in terms of its estimates, because most cases are diagnosed at this age.
The boys are still diagnosed more than girls, and the highest indicators belong to children who are Asian/Pacific Islander, native and black.
CDC admits that his report does not cover the whole country or generate estimates of the dissemination of “representative in the country (autism spectrum disorder).”
The numbers also differ depending on the location – from one to 103 in Laredo in Texas, to one in 19 in California.
CDC researchers say that this may result from differences in the availability of services to early detection and assessment. For example, in the initiative in California, hundreds of local pediatricians trained for research and directing children for early assessments, and the state also has numerous regional centers that provide assessments.
In response to the report, the secretary of the American health and human service (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stated in a statement that “the epidemic of autism is crazy” and its “risk and costs … are thousands of times more dangerous for our country than Covid-19”.
Why are numbers growing?
Autism Society of America claims that the increase in 2020 can reflect several factors, including greater awareness and improved screening and diagnostics.
“This increase in dissemination does not signal” epidemic “, as narratives say,” reflects the diagnostic progress and the urgent need for political decisions rooted in science and the direct needs of the autism community, “the organization said in a statement.
Canada The latest numbers They come from 2019, when Public Health Agency of Canada said that one in 50 children aged 1-17 was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and men were diagnosed about four times more often than women.
Remi Yegeau, a Canadian chairman of research in the field of critical disabled studies and communication at the University of Carleton, claims that the CDC report is only a “snapshot” and does not give a full history of numbers.
Yegeau says that clinicians have become more adapted to recognize autism and different ways in which autistic features manifest themselves in humans.
“People like to make comparisons, saying,” When I was a child, there were no autistic people, “said Yegeau. “They forget about such things as institutionalization and a way of changing the diagnosis, so people who could have been diagnosed in a different state have been diagnosed.”
For decades, the diagnosis was rare, given only to children with serious communication or contact problems and people with unusual, repeated behaviors.
In the early 1990s, only one in 10,000 children was diagnosed with autism. Around this time, the term became an abbreviation for a group of related conditions known as ASD and the number of children marked as the form of autism, the balloon began.
In the first decade of this age, US estimates increased to one in 150. In 2018 it was one in 44. In 2020 it was up to one in 36.
Rhetoric of “dehumanization”
Yegeau says that “panic language” tends to follow these reports and worries about the damage to Kennedy's “dehumanizing” rhetoric.
“There is a very real way in which this type of panic translates into great results for autistic people – such as the perception of disability and disabled people as something you can fear,” they said.
“When people create this rhetoric of panic, they create accompanying rhetoric, which we need to do everything in our power to solve it. And really bad things can happen when you take this specific approach from this perceived desperation.”
Kennedy swore last week that the Supreme Health Agency in the country would determine the cause of autism until September and promised “to eliminate these exhibitions” in the announcement that it raised concerns among medical experts and supporters.
Supporters of Kennedy and Anti-Departen have long been pressed discredited theory about childhood vaccines, pointing to preservative called thimerosal There is no longer most childhood vaccines or theory that autism can be a cumulative effect of many vaccinations.
The decades of research did not find any connections with vaccines and showed that genetics play a big role in autism, but that there is no specific “autism gene”. There is no blood or biological tests about autism, which is diagnosed by judging a person's behavior.
The American National Institutes of Health, which spends over $ 300 million a year on autism examination, lists some possible risk factors, such as prenatal exposure to pesticides or air pollution, extreme premature or low birth mass, some problems with mother's health or parents developing in old age.
Kennedy hired David Geier, a man who has repeatedly applied for a relationship between vaccines and autism, and who was punished by a fine by Maryland for practicing medicine on a child without a medical license, in order to conduct research.