3508 Autism statistics

Many of us over age-50 parents are stunned by the autism statistics we see in the TV PSAs and news stories. Where were all these autistic kids when we were growing up or when our children were in school? Children with learning problems were not hidden away in the 1970s--they were side by side with my children, and I was a volunteer in the classroom. For one thing, there has been a redefinition--now thousands of children that use to be called retarded (or one of the challenged words), or ADD or ADHD, are now being called autistic. It seems that any kind of attention deficit or repetitive behavior has to be pathologized, which then qualifies a child for special classes or teachers or programs. A pediatrician, David Safir, had a letter in the USAToday last week saying that in the 1990s the definition of autism began to include many children with a milder collection of symptoms--now called autism spectrum disorder, and this new umbrella definition has created hysteria and an epidemic of austism.

I checked his letter on-line, and he is being attacked by the true believers, the blame the vaccines crowd. I wonder how loud they'd be yelling if they lived in the days when children were mutilated by small pox eating their flesh, or crippled by polio? And this mommy has the best advice: "My son will never die from Autism, but he could die from childhood diseases if not vaccinated. Or he could die from the flu, as has 4 other children already this season in the state I live, because they did not vaccinate. Stop arguing and start helping our little ones to be accepted and to get the proper therapies they need."