Autism increase due to
'change in' or 'better diagnosis' lie
Diagnosis
lie
Vaccines
& autism
[This is another way they try to suppress the vaccine autism connection: 'the increase is just due to better, or change in diagnosis'. Eg: "There are no known causes of autism and no known cure.....What we do know is that awareness has increased...(we) suspect the increase can be put down to the fact people are just more conscious of the condition."-----National Autistic Society (Daily Mail March 25, 2006). ]
See: Rationalization Medical Charities, Autism and genetics Late onset autism
Articles/letters
[From: "Clifford G. Miller"
Dear Professor Leventhal]
[Nov 2006 Letters] Peter Fletcher/Anne Dachel on the Autism Epidemic
bmj feb 2005
"Three Kinds of Lies" by Mark Blaxill, MBA
[F. Edward Yazbak, Letter BMJ Jan 2005--Autism diagnosis] Looking Out of Olmsted County
Hilary Butler. Letter BMJ 2005
[2006 letter] The Obfuscation of The Iatrogenic Autism Epidemic by Kenneth P Stoller
External
World
Autism Pandemic
Quotes
"If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs
Dr. Boyd
Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all
the twenty-year-old autistics?" (Excerpts from
Deadly Immunity)
Quotes
As a pediatrician, who has been a fellow of the AAP for two
decades, I find the AAP’s approach to the autism epidemic to be deeply
disturbing. Not only have they allowed the myth of better diagnosing (as
the reason for all the notice given to affected children) to be perpetuated, but
when they were put on notice at the CDC’s Simpsonwood meeting in 2000, that the
mercury in the preservative Thimerosal was causing speech delays and learning
disabilities, they obfuscated and hide that information. They never made good on
their 1999 pledge to have Thimerosal eliminated from vaccines and almost a
decade later joined in the protest against a fictitious TV show (Eli Stone)
because it was critical of mercury being in vaccine.
Out of 132 million doses of the worthless1 flu vaccine for the 2007-08
flu season, 8 million doses are Thimerosal free. That means 94% contain the full
amount of Thimerosal. LES INCOMPETANTS: OPEN LETTER TO
THE AAP By K. Paul Stoller, M.D.
Professor Sir Michael Rutter along with a troupe of psychiatrists now
or formerly associated with The Maudsley Hospital and The Institute of
Psychiatry at Kings have been working hard at telling the public autism is
solely genetic and denying there is a
world autism pandemic. .....Genetics
cannot account for the large rise we are seeing in autism since the mid 1980s.
So instead what we see are efforts by Rutter and the
King's Institute of Psychiatry other autism denialists to claim there is no
real rise in the prevalence of autism. This claim is unscientific and runs
counter to the facts documented in the formal literature.
The Institute of Psychiatry has or is home to more than its fair share
of doctors (psychiatrists mostly) who publish papers claiming autism is
genetic and denying there is an autism epidemic (the correct word is
pandemic - epidemics have far fewer victims). These doctors include Rutter,
Eric
Fombonne,
(now expert witness in the US in the thiomersal/autism
litigation when he had previously published nothing about it), Simon Baron
Cohen. It is also home to controversial "Gulf War Syndrome" psychiatrist
Simon
Wessely, director of the Centre for Military Health Research at King's
College London and who had been claiming ME/CFS is not a physical condition
but a mental one contrary to the definition used around the world......
Rutter was also an expert witness in Malmo, Sweden in an MMR autism
case where the key question was whether
autism was solely genetic and not
environmental. Rutter's expert evidence was that it was genetic.
Professor Sir Michael Rutter & The Drug Industry
Connections
It has been suggested that this not a real increase but is due to increased
awareness and/or new classifications. If that is so then there must have been
the same number of cases prior to the observed increase as there have been
since. All efforts to identify these earlier cases in both the USA and the UK
have failed. There are only two possible reasons for the absence of earlier
cases. They could all have been spontaneously cured in the intermediate period
(which would strongly suggest that they were not autism cases) or they could all
have died. Both of these possibilities seem remotely unlikely. The conclusion
has to be that the increase is real.
There are only two
possibilities to account for this increase. The cause could be due to an
inherent or "internal" patient factor or it could be an "external" factor. For
all practical purposes the only inherent cause would be genetic, either
congenital from a parent or a gene mutation in the child. Whichever may be the
case it would necessitate the coincidental occurrence, in about the year 1990,
of precisely the same genetic mutation in thousands of individuals in both the
USA and the UK. As far as I am aware this has never happened in the billions of
years of evolution so this would be a first of monumental proportions.
The observed increase in
autism in such a short period of time (15-20 years) therefore has to be real and
to have external causality.
[Nov 2006 Letter] Peter Fletcher
First please understand that autism is not an ancient disease. Autism was discovered by Leo Kanner and presented in some articles written in the 1940s. There were 11 children in the first of the Kanner studies, all born in the 1930s. Now looking at a much bigger picture, let me take you through a few basic epidemiological calculations. You can start with the history of reported cases of autistic children, all of them born starting in 1931. Prior to that date, autism had not been observed. Were you to pose the notion that autism is ancient, then you have to take the position that before Leo Kanner discovered autism, a certain mathematically calculable cohort of the population would have been autistic. There has actually been a study that's estimated how many people would be statistically likely to manifest this devastating illness. If you take the history of mankind up until Leo Kanner, close to 100 billion human beings had been born. And if you assume that autism is ancient, and you take the current diagnostic rate for autism of 30 per 10,000, then you can make the mathematical extrapolation that there were 300 million individuals, fully autistic individuals -- not Asperger's, not PDD-NOS -- 300 million who lived on earth before Kanner. There is no mention of these people anywhere in the history of man and literature and folklore and myth. In mid-to-late nineteenth century France, some of the finest neurologists who have ever lived explicated every abnormality they ever saw in exhaustive detail—but there was no mention of autism. We never see anything more than the faintest hint that a child exhibited behavior that could be interpreted as autistic. Where were these people? If autism is ancient, we would have overlooked 300 million people by the year 1930. I submit to you that that's an absurd concept. We should take Leo Kanner at his word that, in fact, autism was discovered in children born in the 1930s.....So the first lie to remember today is this: autism is ancient. It's not ancient, it's new. Conference Presentations: Mark Blaxill, MBA
There is an assertion--I like to call it The Lie That Autism Is Ancient--that we just changed our diagnostic standards. Or that we are now looking at smaller study populations. Or, in fact, it's just legislation. Since we introduced the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in 1990, now all the states are looking for money. And that's why we're discovering this autism. One of my favorite arguments is that a change in mating patterns has occurred--that there are increased rates of immigration or in fact what some call "geek" syndrome. This now has the fancy name "assortative mating," which basically claims, ladies, that as fathers we were truly unfit. And you just didn't pick up that we were autistic. These are all testable hypotheses. And every single one of them has failed every single test. They may seem funny. They are certainly absurd. But most importantly, they are lies. And it is important that we move past them. Conference Presentations: Mark Blaxill, MBA
In the debate on whether or not the increase in
Autism is real, there is something that has been forgotten. The people who
pontificate on these things are "medical" ~~* experts*~~ , who by and large, are
rotated in their jobs, and rarely have more than a decade in any specific area.
However, the people who can really answer these questions are people
like my husband, who spent the whole of his working life, until
retirement, in the school system.
He has also had 15 more years to sit back, watch and listen.
When I read the original article to him, his comments were revealing.
Along the lines of... "In my first three decades as a teacher, any
autistic spectrum disorder was such a novelty, that it was the major
focus of discussion at both regional and national conventions.
If the increase in Autism isn't real, but simply recognises that
medical people then, were too stupid to diagnose what was in front of
their eyes, then why did we not see it then? Were we stupid too? And
where are all these adults who should be walking around with autistic
spectrum disorders, that we never saw as kids?
And why is it that autism spectrum disorders are SO common now, that
rather than talk about them with interest at conventions, teachers are
exhausted off their feet. They are more likely to share desperation
tactics about how to try to devise workable systems in classrooms where
two or three of these children spend their time disrupting everyone
else's lives and thinking?"
As far as he is concerned, he can look back, and see a time when
teaching was very straightforward. Autism in actuality was so rare, that
the children got excellent care in his school. Why? Because there was
only likely ever, to be one, in any school, if that. Far more likely,
was the problem of highly bright children, held back by a system which
took away their self initiative and imagination. But at least Teacher
aide could be diverted when needed to provide the support that the rare
autistic child needed, when they needed it.
Now, there are so many autistic children, or children with
behavioural problems almost identical to autism, that Teacher Aides are
just about needed for normal children, let alone Autistic spectrum
children.
If the medical profession honestly thinks that the "increase" in
autism is an artifact produced by historical diagnostic ignorance, they
should think again.
Because in the minds of people who DO remember a time when Autism was
something you checked in the dictionary as to how to spell the word,
such a statement isn't just ludicrous; it also raises questions, and
these questions are:
What have doctors got to hide, that they want to try to persuade
people that a "real" increase (that we as long term teachers see as a
"real" increase,) was actually a result of their own stupidity?
Are doctors trying to tell us, that we, as teachers, were also so
stupid that we didn't see "autism" then, but do now?
What does such an "explanation" show about their new-found
intelligence today? ---[Hilary Butler.
Letter BMJ 2005
During the seventies when my own interest in this once very rare
disorder began to emerge, if I told people about this interest they
usually thought I was saying `artistic` as `autistic` was unheard of.
As Hilary Butler says, the incidence was SO low that the behaviours
we now see in front of us in every classroom - the BEHAVIOURS Camille,
not the DIAGNOSES - were confined to very few children who invariably
were found alternative schools as they could not be taught and managed
in the school system.
As the epidemic of autistic BEHAVIOURS has risen dramatically in the
last few years, the system has introduced various measures and sleights
of hand to make us all think that these BEHAVIOURS were all there before
but not seen. INCLUSION policies put pressure on everyone including
EDUCATIONAL TRIBUNAL PANELS to ensure these BEHAVIOURS are not viewed as
autism but MISINTERPRETED as something else - anything else but not
autism given the legal challenge/iatrogenic issue - and increasingly
seen to be the fault of the parents. Independent professionals such as
myself are targeted.
Teaching hospitals are removing diagnoses and reinterpreting the
BEHAVIOURS which now have teachers and assistants on their knees trying
to cope yet forced into saying they can cope - especially in Educational
Tribunals.
Tried and tested intensive methods and facilities which used to be in
place when the numbers of autistic children were manageable are now
being removed from schools with staff forced into introducing wholly
ineffective `BEHAVIOURAL` policies with `the child must take
responsiblity for his own BEHAVIOUR` at their pivot. This is because the
numbers of children with autistic BEHAVIOUR problems has sky rocketed,
so its cheaper and easier to blame the child or the parent to limit the
resource costs. It also conveniently shifts the focus of the real
causes.
The system has polished up its methods for focusing on parents who
are blamed for causing their children's disorders, but it dare not
introduce the methods to help the children as this is not only expensive
but tantamount to admitting what it refuses to accept - that there is an
epidemic of autistic spectrum disorders and that there must be an
explanation.
Focused, intensive but costly interventions delivered by specialists
are being replaced by general `programmes` drawn out of the cascade
model after someone attends a one day seminar then passes on information
on a photocopied sheet to be delivered by classroom assistants on the
lowest hourly rate of pay.
The whole thing is a massive, massive scandal.[Lisa C
Blakemore-Brown Letter BMJ Feb 2005]
As a pediatrician, who has been in practice for over two decades, I find it more than a little insulting as well as disturbing to have someone say that these children were always there. ..... For years the vaccine division at the CDC and others have said the reason for the dramatic increase in autism is due to "better diagnosing" and "greater awareness." They have encouraged those like Paul Shattuck to manufacture uncertainty. .... There are no studies that have found the previously undiagnosed or misdiagnosed autistic individuals among older Americans. They simply aren't there. We need to address the real reason for the alarming autism rate. No more secrets or truth-spinning. This is not a faux epidemiological epidemic, nor an infectious epidemic, nor a genetic epidemic (as there are no genetic epidemics). That leaves an epidemic linked to some sort of exposure. [Schafer Autism Report--Pediatrics article May 2006] The Obfuscation of The Iatrogenic Autism Epidemic
The propaganda
[
Steven Novella used in his
The Increase in Autism Diagnoses: Two Hypotheses piece.]
Taylor B. Vaccines and the changing epidemiology
of autism. Child Care Health Dev. 2006 Sep;32(5):511-9.
Community Child Health, Royal Free and University College Medical School,
UCL Hampstead Campus, London, UK. brent.taylor@medschool.ucl.ac.uk
BACKGROUND: The epidemiology of autism has been rather confusing, with very
variable published prevalence figures and no clear incidence data. The cause of
autism is unclear; vaccines have been incriminated. METHODS: Literature review
and interpretation. RESULTS: The recorded prevalence of autism has increased
considerably in recent years. This reflects greater recognition, with changes in
diagnostic practice associated with more trained diagnosticians; broadening of
diagnostic criteria to include a spectrum of disorder; a greater willingness by
parents and educationalists to accept the label (in part because of entitlement
to services); and better recording systems, among other factors. The cause(s) of
autism remains unclear. There is a strong genetic component which, along with
prenatally determined neuro-anatomical/biochemical changes, makes any post-natal
'cause' unlikely. CONCLUSIONS: There has (probably) been no real increase in the
incidence of autism. There is no scientific evidence that the measles, mumps and
rubella (MMR) vaccine or the mercury preservative used in some vaccines plays
any part in the aetiology or triggering of autism, even in a subgroup of
children with the condition.