Autism has become the new bogeyman, besides cancer, that every pseudoscience tries to tie things too. Anti-vaxxers, unfortunately, are not unique in this stigmatizing, degrading, and exploitative misuse of autism which only further harms the lives of autistic people. Being autistic is not like cancer. Being autistic is not a fate worse than death. Being autistic is a-okay: In a stunning defeat for food crazies, it was revealed late last week that autism and autism spectrum disorder has not changed in years. Researcher Amanda Baxter from Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research found that autism has remained at 7.5 per thousand from 1990 through 2010. You can read a PBS summary here and the complete paper in Psychological Medicine here. As you might expect, the only difference in the past 20 years has been that more attention has been paid to the disorder, and identifying people that have the disorder has become easier. This is sure to be a blow to all the bloggers and alarmists who blame what we eat on increases in autism.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 21:13:50 +0000
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