Vaccination & epidemic

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

I think decades ago (at least over here) they were simply seen as problem children and spent a lot of time being caned.

Originally Posted by Tiki

Yep.

Like I said, you've never lived with one. Surely, you've seen this by now?



And that, my friends, is a high-functioning autistic child. Seriously, think about it from the schools' perspective. Special Education costs much, much more than regular education. If a little discipline would keep these kids in line, they would do it. Or they would kick them out. When your child doesn't ever speak in words, that is not the same as a miscreant. If you'd like, get rid of the diagnostic labels all together: there is now a record number of children who are completely unable to function in a classroom setting, and must be in a special ed class. And the numbers are not holding steady, they are growing.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I think it might be a bit of a reach to lump "mental retardation, pathological speech delay, etc." as the only sources of mis-diagnosis of autistic children in a historical sense. We have come a long way in the last 30 years from when I first entered health care in the categorization of and appropriate diagnosis and treatment of various psychological and physiological disorders in children. I support your attempts at research and respect your tenacity.

As I've said, every rational argument you can imagine has been made by plenty of people before, and they are all covered in the book I linked. All of them. Even the argument that California had a disproportionate number of autism cases because all the nerds had moved there for the computer industry and were inter-breeding. It takes the time to disprove that theory too. I am eagerly awaiting Undertoad's opinion of it.