CFLarsen said:
...(groan....) You are simply willingly obtuse.
This is one reason why I have stayed away (including the fact that the only issue he picked out of my post was the Ratbags reference, not the questions about incidence and the DSM IV).
Whish are actually addressed here:
http://www.dds.cahwnet.gov/Autism/main/incidencrptfinal.pdf
Other reasons are that I will being taking my autumn absence soon (soccer is a 6 day a week affair for us) --- PLUS this is the birthday week of both sons.
Now one of those sons is turning 16 -- and since he had seizures as an infant with some resulting neurological development issues, I have been sideline witness to many of the changes in Special Ed issues over the years.
First off... since he had seizures, he could not be vaccinated with the DPT, but only the DT... because the pertussis portion had actually been verified with good reliability with causing seizures in children prone to seizures. This was the cause of one wave of anti-vax fever --- but that should have been answered by the introduction of DTaP (but in reality the folks, including Barbara Fisher who started the anti-DTP bit, have been conveniently forgetting that the DTP has essentially been replaced with DTaP).
Now... my son was evaluated for special ed because of his total LACK of speech. He was placed in a classroom which included kids like him with speech/language issues that had a couple of autistic kids diagnosed under DSM III.
At this time (around 1990 or so), it was very very hard to get kids early intervention for something as simple as "no speech". We were "lucky" in that the seizures gave a clue that the "lack of speech" was not just a case of a "late-talking child" (Thomas Sowell coming out with his book on "Late-talking children" did not help many who wanted to get early intervention for their kids). Many people who I talked to in person or online on the Compuserve Dyspraxia Forum were often disuaded by relatives and doctors from seeking speech therapy, always with the advice to "wait and see". The old misguided adage that Einstein "didn't talk until he was 3, 4, 5 or 6" is one reason I have read at least three biographies on the man (oh, he was speaking by the time his little sister was born when he was 2 years old, something I wish MY kid could do!).
Anyway... on to when he was going into 1st grade, right after the DSM IV came to be used. WOW!!! There was an incredible change of conversations on the Compuserve forums, and in the general Special. Ed. community that I hung around (school, Scottish Rite Speech Clinic, University Speech and Hearing Clinic and child neurologist's office). Now kids were being diagnosed and frequenting those places that I would never had seen before.
At least one is my daughter's age (who was born in 1994)... and he plays and communicated beautifully with her. BUT... he is in the small, quiet, well ordered classroom that the school district has set up for these kids who have this particular kind of diagnosis. These kids who his mom claims has "astronomer's syndrome"... since his dad is an astronomer (unemployed now), and is just like the astronomers that they have socialized with over the years.
THEN... dum..de..dum --- It seems to me since the DTP issue was addressed with DTaP, AND that more vaccines were being introduced than before (chicken pox, HiB, HepB), that someone discovered that there was a perservative included in the vaccines. AH HAH!!! That was the culprit (actually in the USA). Thoughts sped back and forth on Usenet and the listserve I joined for my son's disability. So... it was removed, despite very little evidence.
(I should note that my daughter was the only kid to get the HepB at birth... and was the ONLY one to not require speech or language services. Therefore HepB prevented a language disorder --- okay, in reality it is because she is a girl: by the way, younger boy only had a couple years of language services).
Okay, so they removed thimerosal... all is okay. Okay, dokay.
BUT THEN.... in 1998 some UK doc looks at a dozen kids (many provided by the lawyer who hired him to gets some data for a lawsuit). He concludes that even though he ONLY looked at measles in the guts of these kids, that the MMR is to blaim.
So now MMR is the bad guy... So now the electronic messages start clamoring about MMR (in the UK) which collide with the thimerosal concerns (in the UK)... which sometimes end up with the cause of all things being "the thimerosal in MMR". Of course, if anyone tries to interserse a notion that "thimerosal has NEVER been in the MMR", you are accused of being a danger to children (trust me, I have been so accused).
Anyway, it has been interesting to watch this all unfold over the past (cough, cough) 14 years. I have seen posts on Usenet and on the Healthfraud listserv from the Schlafly brothers and Jane Orient (who IS the AAPS), which has been enlightening.
Sorry, it took so long... but I must leave. See you after the winter holidays.
Merry Christmas if we don't see you before then 