Slate Article on The "Autism Epidemic"

[LostAngeles]

"Why There's No Autism Epidemic"

I was reading this on Slate and I thought this might be another nice source for those of you battling the Anti-Vax crowd.

...For parents who are convinced that vaccines cause autism, it is significant that autism did not exist as a diagnosis until the Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Leo Kanner first described the disorder in a 1943 journal paper—several years after children started receiving vaccines that contained minuscule amounts of a mercury preservative. But Kanner merely gave a name to a condition that probably always existed. Children with behaviors that would be called autistic today are scattered through the literature of past centuries.
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That's the start of a really interesting paragraph that lists some examples of what could likely be reports of autism throughout history. Here's another nice quote from the end of the article.

..."I am not sure why people are so resistant to the idea that true autism rates may have remained stable," Grinker writes. "Perhaps they don't want to give up on the hope that, if only we could find the cause of the 'epidemic' we could help these children. We could eliminate the toxins, hold big corporations accountable, do something to reverse the trend. If there is no real epidemic, we might just have to admit that no one is to blame."...