Autism

MANIFESTO

A story that's been going around since yesterday has to do with increased incidents of autism in the US.

About one in 150 American children has autism, U.S. health officials said Thursday, calling the troubling disorder an urgent public-health concern that is more common than they thought.

The new numbers are based on the largest, most convincing study done so far in the United States, and trump previous estimates that placed the prevalence at one in 166.

The difference means roughly 50,000 more children and young adults may have autism and related disorders [emphasis added] than was previously thought -- a total nationwide of more than a half-million people.

It's the "related disorders" that've caught my eye. As one who first learned of Asperger's Syndrome when a young relative's symptoms cried out that something wasn't right, I can't help but think that the rules have changed regarding diagnosis.

I've known kids who were full blown autistics—kids who had absolutely no interaction with events going on around them. This is obviously what diagnosticians had in mind when the condition was first identified. Now, like many other conditions, the definition of autism has been expanded to include conditions that comprise a variety of social maladjustments—including, one assumes, something so mild as sweating before giving a speech.

It seems a truism that everyone is neurotic in one way or another. This report may do nothing more than justify people's going to therapists or parents' insisting that their children receive educational special services.