Vaccination & epidemic

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

No, really?

Have you gotten your daily dose of personal pot-shots in today?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

And thus you have provided additional evidence that even today, kids who are a little "off" behaviorally, but not significantly developmentally delayed, are not diagnosed with autism when they shouldn't be. ADHD, perhaps. But we're not talking about the rates of ADHD, we're talking about the rates of autism.

I don't believe there are any studies that have looked at this specifically. Do you have any links to anyone who has studied the rate and diagnosis or misdiagnosis of ADHD, Developmentally delayed, vs autism of any kind?

I have two other friends with high-functioning autistic children... perhaps birds of a feather flock together? But I have never spent much time with their sons.

Oh, and my sister who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's is 45. We grew up together and have always been very close. I feel like I do have a little personal experience with dealing with people who have autism-spectrum disorders to draw from, you know?

[TheMercenary]

A few good friends of mine have high level functioning Asp kids. One mother is also most likely Asp as well although it was not being diagnosed per se at that time in any capacity.

[Clodfobble]

I do not have any online links, no. What I have is this:

The California Legislature commissioned the University of California's Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MIND) Institute in Sacramento to study the possible causes of the rise in the numbers of reported cases of autism in California.
...
In cohort #1, 88% met the current criteria for autism compared to 89% for cohort #2. There was no meaningful change in the CDER or ADI-R criteria over the intervening decade. Their conclusion: "There is no evidence that a loosening in diagnostic criteria has contributed to the increased number of autistic clients served by the Regional Centers."
...
They found that some children in the mental retardation group did in fact meet the DSM-IV criteria for autism. There were 18% in Cohort #1 and 19% in Cohort #2. Since both cohorts had similar numbers, misclassification could not explain the rise.
...
Their final conclusion was: "Without evidence for an artificial increase in autism cases, we conclude that some, if not all, of the observed increase represents a true increase in cases of autism in California, and the number of cases presenting to the Regional Center system is not an overestimation of the number of children with autism in California."

Finally, in 2004, the CDC published an autism "ALARM," acknowledging that the current rate of ASD in the US was one in 166. They also noted that a developmental disability and/or behavior problem was being diagnosed in one child out of every six.

No way to know how many are misdiagnosed, but if only 1 in 166 is being given the actual autism label, when that many are being diagnosed with other things, I'd say it's pretty likely the autistic kids actually have autism.



You get one guess where I copied those quotes from.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Sigh. No, you're not reading. The language development specialist at the school said that her language is not significantly delayed, but that she thought there was something going on, nonetheless. We were suspicious because of her behavior at home, which in the past would have been considered "high strung" or "difficult", as I was as a child. Therefore, we took her to a neurological center, where they confirmed that there is a significant neurodevelopmental delay and sent us on for further testing.

We discussed it with her pediatrician and the next step is finishing the intake process at OHSU and getting her tested at the neurodevelopment center. The pediatrician suspects high-functioning autism. It's up in the air until after the testing at OHSU, other than the fact that she has a very high IQ and a neurodevelopmental delay of some kind. The high IQ helps to "hide" the delay. I suspect strongly that high-functioning, highly-intelligent children are being diagnosed now due to higher awareness and better diagnostics, when they would have slipped through the cracks in the past.

Anyway, the only reason I brought it up was that you stated that I have never lived with a high-functioning autistic child. The fact of the matter is, my best friend's son is autistic and I had him after school every day for two years, plus he spends two nights a week here because my son is his best friend, and it is very possible that my youngest daughter is also autistic, so your statement was inaccurate.

I can easily see, from my own experience, how these children would have failed to be diagnosed in the past. Greater awareness and more resources mean that they are being diagnosed and helped now, rather than living their lives at half-potential.

If there is no significant language delay, it is not autism, by medical definition. Your daughter may end up with a diagnosis of Asperger's, ADHD, or any number of other diagnoses which are not autism, and they may rightly apply. If she ends up with a diagnosis of pure autism, then you must be correct, the diagnosis is being watered-down by some inexperienced medical professionals, because she does not have autism.

The fact remains that I have sat in a conference room with 50 other Pre-K autistic children all from my school district, all of whom had serious and obvious developmental delays, most of whom were completely nonverbal. Given the size of my school district, that works out to slightly less than the national rate of 1 in 150 (1 in 90 boys, because boys are affected 4 times more often than girls,) because of course this was a PPCD meeting and it didn't include any of the older autistic kids already in the system. If you could have sat in that room with me, you would understand the despair. None of these children could have slipped through the cracks in years past, ever. There are always going to be a handful of borderline cases that could persevere and cope on their own, but they are insignificant in the face of the total numbers. At any rate, I'm done discussing the topic with you, Tiki. I get enough of the "they'll grow out of it" head-in-the-sand bullshit from my older relatives, I don't need to subject myself to more of it here.

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

If there is no significant language delay, it is not autism, by medical definition. Your daughter may end up with a diagnosis of Asperger's, ADHD, or any number of other diagnoses which are not autism, and they may rightly apply. If she ends up with a diagnosis of pure autism, then you must be correct, the diagnosis is being watered-down by some inexperienced medical professionals, because she does not have autism.

The fact remains that I have sat in a conference room with 50 other Pre-K autistic children all from my school district, all of whom had serious and obvious developmental delays, most of whom were completely nonverbal. Given the size of my school district, that works out to slightly less than the national rate of 1 in 150 (1 in 90 boys, because boys are affected 4 times more often than girls,) because of course this was a PPCD meeting and it didn't include any of the older autistic kids already in the system. If you could have sat in that room with me, you would understand the despair. None of these children could have slipped through the cracks in years past, ever. There are always going to be a handful of borderline cases that could persevere and cope on their own, but they are insignificant in the face of the total numbers. At any rate, I'm done discussing the topic with you, Tiki. I get enough of the "they'll grow out of it" head-in-the-sand bullshit from my older relatives, I don't need to subject myself to more of it here.

Delays in communication and social interaction are part of the diagnosis, not just language development.

Language delay is subjective for each child, based on where the child *should* be for their abilities. That is my point; that is why very intelligent, high-functioning autistic children have great difficulty being correctly diagnosed, and why there is reason to believe that in the past many did not get diagnosed with anything at all. Aspergers is included in the overall statistical rise in autism figures, as it is a form of autism.

The school language development specialist said there is no significant delay compared to statistics for her age group (there is a slight delay compared to average, but not enough to be considered pathological) but when assessed as an individual by the neurology center and by our pediatrician, she was found to have significant delays compared to where she should be based on her IQ. She was performing at an average for the general population, but was delayed for where she, as an individual should be. J, my friend's child, had the same difficulty with getting the school to recommend testing... because his extremely high intelligence was masking his disorder, he was able to function at a reasonable average despite the fact that without the disorder he would have been performing far beyond his peers in all areas, including communication.

This is why there is a disconnect between what schools will perceive as an indication of a disorder, and what specialists, treating each child as an individual, will perceive as an indication of a disorder. The schools are basing their expectations on an average, and any child who meets that average is assumed to have nothing wrong with them.

There is a question about whether high-functioning autism can really be distinguished as a separate disorder from Asperger's, because, as a spectrum disorder, there is no clear line at the high-functioning end that divides the two. J, for instance, has a diagnosis of autism rather than Aspergers largely because he exhibits classic hand-flapping, pacing, and aversion to touch. He is also unbelievably articulate for a ten-year-old, though there are long pauses in his conversation.

You might find some of these links interesting:
http://www.autism-help.org/points-autism-epidemic.htm
http://ww1.cpa-apc.org:8080/Publicat...r/tidmarsh.asp
http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopo...?d=1049&a=3337
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-sym...vel-autism.htm
http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec04/definition.html
http://www.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/aspergers.html
http://www.autism-help.org/

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Tiki

You might find some of these links interesting:

Yes, because if there's one thing I haven't done, it's research on the internet.

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Yes, because if there's one thing I haven't done, it's research on the internet.

Some of your statements indicated to me that your understanding of the autism diagnosis was incomplete, so I thought I'd try to be helpful by providing more information. Sorry about that.

[Flint]

Oh, come on...

I know. Posting informative links that reinforce what I'm trying to convey about autism diagnosis was bad, wasn't it? My mistake.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I know. Posting informative links that reinforce what I'm trying to convey about autism diagnosis was bad, wasn't it? My mistake.

I think it was the part where you tried talking down to someone with superior knowledge that got you in trouble.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Griff

I think it was the part where you tried talking down to someone with superior knowledge that got you in trouble.

Cite, please.

[Griff]

She has a diagnosed child in her home. That trumps web searches. Based of previous discussions she knows the disability, Tiki was taking a potshot because clod didn't cut and paste the entire DSMIV.

Originally Posted by Griff

She has a diagnosed child in her home. That trumps web searches. Based of previous discussions she knows the disability, Tiki was taking a potshot because clod didn't cut and paste the entire DSMIV.

What previous discussions? Am I supposed to be automagically up to date on every conversation ever had on this forum?

And the fact that Clod has an autistic kid and has researched autism as it related to her family doesn't, actually, have a lot of bearing on whether she's research autism as it relates to MY family. If we are dealing with two different points on the spectrum, why would she have read up on my end of the spectrum? I certainly haven't read up on hers.

My personal experience is four years of being very close (daily caregiver, frequent overnights & weekends) with one now-ten-year-old high-functioning autistic boy who was not diagnosed for several years because the "experts" in the school refused to believe that a child could be autistic and yet be as functional as J is, one older sister with recently-diagnosed Aspergers, and one six-year-old daughter with a PDD which has not yet been pinned down. Of course, while caring for J, and during his diagnosis, I have done a lot of research on high-functioning autism.

You can scream that I'm being condescending for bringing up my research and my personal opinion, or that I should just shut up because Clod knows more because one of her kids is autistic, but frankly, none of that makes any sense.

I know what I've researched, and the lines between HFA and Asperger's are not very clearly defined, and there is additional complication that very intelligent children, like J, function well enough that sometimes they are not recognized by educators as having a problem, even though once in the hands of specialists they are easily diagnosed.

Clod was trying to tell me that because the language development specialist at my daughter's school said that she was within averages for linguistic development, therefore she is by definition not autistic. She also said that something seemed wrong, and referred us to a neurologist. Both the pediatrician and the neurologists say she definitely has a pervasive developmental delay despite testing within average. It will take more testing to figure out what form, exactly, the PDD is in.

I clearly am not doing a very good job of explaining this, but some of the links I posted did a better job. Some children evade diagnosis because their extreme intelligence causes them to appear not to have a delay, when in fact they do.

There is also something distinctly odd about her father, who is an extraordinarily brilliant programmer, a former award-winning competetive jazz pianist, and a true musical savant who can play several instruments, and hear a song once and then play it perfectly... however, his ability to relate to other people is minimal, he has very little empathy, and his "life skills" kind of make me fear for his ability to make it on his own. So who knows. Maybe it's some inheritable thing.

It seems like the only thing we are arguing here is whether some people with autism have in the past evaded diagnosis. I have posted my reading and my experiences which explain why I am sure they have. Clodfobble disagrees, but instead of posting an actual argument why, I'm getting "she knows better than you, so shut up".

How does that help anything, or anyone?