Friday, March 30, 2012

Autism epidemic, anyone?

From Reuters, “About one in 88 children in the United States has autism or a related disorder, the highest estimate to date and one that is sure to revive a national argument over how the condition is diagnosed and treated. The estimate released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention represents an overall increase of about 25 percent since the last analysis in 2006 and a near-doubling of the rate reported in 2002. Among boys, the rate of autism spectrum disorders is one in 54, almost five times that of girls, in whom the rate is one in 252.”

Earlier this month I was preparing for the new autism numbers from the CDC to drop. In anticipation of how bad the new autism prevalence could be, I began to wonder at what moment the world would finally see autism as a medical epidemic.

We all remember how quickly everyone got on board in dealing with the supposed pandemics of bird flu and swine flu. The whole world seemed to be talking about the flu and quickly mobilizing to deal with the perceived problem.
Well, where the hell is the concern over autism? The only people I ever hear talking about autism are autism parents. I hardly ever hear or see feedback from anyone else. Autism parents aren’t vocal because we want to be, or because we like to talk about autism. It’s because we have to be. We are fighting for our kids AND we are fighting for your kids.

I guarantee that those who think autism will never touch their life have another thing coming. It will cross their path at some point. So, we better all open our eyes and recognize that there is a problem.

When is an epidemic really an epidemic? When will the public at large wake up from their ignorant slumber? What does the incidence rate of autism need to be before we see national and global change to combat this epidemic? Does it need to be 1 out of every 10 kids? We are headed there quickly.  
The thing that frustrates me the most is that the “new” CDC data and the subsequent “new” rates generated from that data is NOT NEW AT ALL! The data is OLD!

The study was conducted in 2008 (yes, that is 4 YEARS AGO!) on what were then 8-year olds. Those children were born in 2000 and are now 12 years old. As a result, almost none of the children I know on the spectrum (including my own boys) are included in that data set.

Want to know something else about that? My children wouldn’t have been included in the data anyway. Want to know why? Because they only collected data from 14 locations across the US! And, none of those locations were in my state.

Is it just me, or is it insanely tragic that the CDC is reporting “new” data that is horribly out of date from just a small handful of locations?
This does not sit well with me.

When I saw Facebook go full tilt yesterday with all of the articles and stories about the new autism numbers and the links and comments from all of my autism mommy friends, I started feeling more and more depressed about it. I actually had to turn off my computer and walk away because I couldn’t take it anymore. I did not expect to react that way. I mean, this is not a shock to me or to any parent of a child with autism. We all know in our hearts that the numbers are hideously underreported. I see a higher prevalence of autism in my own zip code for crying out loud! 

So at this point, instead of continuing my rant and getting more upset, I will focus on some selected quotes from some articles I read yesterday about this “new” data. Check out the articles and let me know how you feel about the CDC’s announcement.

From ABC News:  “The data was collected by The Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring network, an organization funded by the CDC to track autism rates. For this report, the ADDM reviewed medical records of 8-year-old children from 14 different areas across the country. The study focused specifically on 8-year-olds because most autism spectrum diagnoses are made by the time a child reaches their eighth birthday.”

“The CDC study released Thursday is considered the most comprehensive U.S. investigation of autism prevalence to date. Researchers gathered data from areas in 14 states - Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin. They looked specifically at 8-year-old children because most autism is diagnosed by that age. They checked health and school records to see which children met the criteria for autism, even if they hadn't been formally diagnosed. Then, the researchers calculated how common autism was in each place and overall.”

So, they are only looking at SOME records of SOME 8-year olds in a FEW scattered places. We need to seriously consider doing some research like they did in South Korea that was population based and reflected an incidence rate of 1 out of 38. I would venture to say that their study is more indicative of what the true number could be here in the US.

From Reuters:  “CDC investigators warned, however, that the 14 sites are not ‘nationally representative.’ As a result, the rate of autism being reported on Thursday in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, ‘should not be generalized to the United States as a whole,’ they wrote.”

You got that right. The rates are probably much higher!
 
“Scientists had long estimated that 90 percent of autism risk was genes and 10 percent reflected environmental factors. But a 2011 study of twins by scientists at Stanford University concluded that genes account for 38 percent of autism risk and environmental factors 62 percent.”

Um, duh. Most of us parents have known this for years, since a majority of us do not have autism anywhere in our families.

From the Associated Press:  “The study also found that autism disorders were almost five times more common in boys. And that an increasingly large proportion of children with autism have IQs of 85 or higher - a finding that contradicts a past assumption that most autistic kids had IQs of 70 or lower.”

And now for the exceedingly annoying quotes...

From USA Today: “A professional group is now considering changing the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders, eliminating some people on the milder end. If the formal definition is changed next year, the rate of autism will certainly fall, experts said.”

DO NOT GET ME STARTED on this quote. Don’t you just LOVE the idea that they can get rid of the autism epidemic by changing the criteria and eliminating some of those higher-functioning kids right off the spectrum? Grrrr…

From ABC News:  Dr. Isabelle Rapin, professor of pediatrics and neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine said, “Not only physicians, but parents, teachers, therapists and the public are much more aware of the symptoms of autism, and I suspect some may apply the diagnosis based on one symptom, which is inadequate.”

Oh, good Lord. The things I could say about this quote. What I will say is that diagnosing professionals (pediatricians, neurologists, psychologists, etc.) have to follow the DSM IV criteria. If the proper criteria are not met, the child does not have autism. Period. To say that professionals are handing out autism diagnoses like lollipops is preposterous to me. Autism cannot be diagnosed based on one symptom. Anyone who does this is not a reputable and should be held accountable for medical malpractice. To allude that this is commonplace is just ludicrous.

From CNN:  Mark Roithmayr, president of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, says more children are being diagnosed with autism because of “better diagnosis, broader diagnosis, better awareness, and roughly 50% of ‘We don't know.’”

Uh huh. Better and broader diagnosis? Nope! The diagnostic criteria HASN’T CHANGED IN YEARS because the DSM IV hasn’t changed in years! The DSM IV was published in 1994 (with a revised edition published in 2000). We have had the same version for diagnosing children for 18 years! Doctors should know this manual inside and out by now. I cannot see how this is an issue, unless we have a huge pool of rogue diagnosticians making up their own criteria for autism (see quote above from Dr. Isabelle Rapin).
Then, there is the matter of this 50% that “we don’t know.” I will admit that there is a lot that we don’t understand about autism, but more children are being diagnosed with autism because more kids have autism! It’s not a diagnostic anomaly. It’s not a genetics thing. The huge increases seen in autism rates cannot be accounted for by genetics or better diagnostics.

Our kids are sick. And, not just neurologically sick. Most of them have significant medical complications that accompany their autism diagnosis. We have a systemic problem that crosses all boundaries, demographics, classes, races, and locales.

I know that there are many more kids with autism than the CDC will admit to, or can even begin to account for with their current reporting methods. We’ll just have to sit back and wait for them to report on today’s kids…years from now.  I wonder what the autism rates will be when they catch up to my kids? I shudder to think of it.

Want to know what the autism rate is at my house? 2 out of 2. 100% of my children have autism. And, that’s all I need to know.
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