They finally admit autism is on the rise

[Guest guest]

Quote from the article below:

" Autism can't be diagnosed unless you're looking for it "

Why? Because it's becoming the norm?

Here is the whole article:

Autism Cases on the Rise

Study Shows Increase Is Real, Not Just Due to Changes in Diagnosis

Criteria

By J. DeNoon

WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Jan. 8, 2009 -- Environmental factors may be partly behind

California's eightfold rise in new cases, a new study implies.

Many researchers have believed that the continuous increase in autism

cases over the last decade -- particularly the huge increase seen in

California -- isn't real, but can be explained by " artifacts. "

Among these artifacts are the recent broadening of the diagnostic

criteria for autism and greatly increased diagnosis of autism at

younger ages. Both these factors could make it seem like there are

more autism cases than there were before.

These artifacts do explain part of the rise in autism cases, shows a

rigorous study by Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, chief of the

division of environmental and occupational health at the University

of California, .

But even taken together, they don't explain even half of the huge

increase in cases.

" When you put it all together, this doesn't come close to explaining

the increases in the last 10 years, " Hertz-Picciotto tells

WebMD. " The more you whittle away at this increase, the more you have

to say that what is left over is real. ... Given that autism cases

keep going up, and can't be fully explained by artifacts,

environmental factors deserve serious consideration. "

Hertz-Picciotto notes that her study does not account for one

potentially huge artifact: The fact that today's parents are vastly

more aware of autism than they were a decade ago.

Autism can't be diagnosed unless you're looking for it -- so parent

awareness has a huge potential effect on the rise of autism, says

W. Goldstein, president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute

and professor of environmental health sciences at s Hopkins

University.

" There is an enormous increase in awareness. Everybody knows about

autism now, and they didn't 16 years ago, " Goldstein tells WebMD.

" The awareness thing is very hard to quantify, " Hertz-Picciotto

says. " But at some point, as more and more parents became aware of

autism, the increase should have leveled off. Instead we see a

continued increase in autism. "

Hertz-Picciotto notes that the lion's share of autism funding is

going to genetic studies. She argues that it's high time more effort

was put into looking for environmental factors that cause autism in

genetically susceptible individuals.

" Time is passing and science has a lot to do to find the real causes

of autism, " she says. " A lot has changed in the environment over the

last 10 to 15 years. And I paint with a broad brush when I say

environment: These changes include things like medications people

take and assisted reproduction technology as well as what is in soaps

and pet shampoos and toothpaste and so forth. "

Autism expert L. Cuccaro, PhD, associate professor of human

genetics at the University of Miami, praises Hertz-Picciotto's

systematic study of the rise in autism cases. He agrees with her that

it's time to consider environmental factors as part of the cause of

autism.

continued...

" I don't think it is premature to look for environmental risks, "

Cuccaro tells WebMD. " There are environmental risk factors that give

rise to a wide range of developmental conditions, and there's no

reason to think autism isn't one of them. And papers like this are

critical to get to this point. Because you have to convince people it

is not explained by all these other factors. "

Environmental studies are already under way -- and research

organizations are eager to fund them, Goldstein says. But the

difficulty goes far beyond funding.

" We only have 20,000 to 25,000 genes. But we have a hundred thousand

environmental exposures. How do you control for that? " he says. " And

your genes stay the same, while environmental exposures may have come

and gone. It is difficult to do these studies -- the problem is not

that it isn't thought to be important. "