In Vitro Infidelium
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My comments where based entirely on the limitations evident in both the studies from which the articles you quote were 'extrapolated'. Perhaps you would demonstrate how my comments are wrong in those terms. Your notion of chidren 'falling out of school' seems misguided given the failings of the US primary education system, see: http://www.nrrf.org/essay_Illiteracy.html#thegrimstatistics and http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read/Nice try but totally wrong. It is wishful thinking and part of autism mythology .... for one these are the kids that are UNABLE to follow curriculum without special support, ie would have fallen out of the educational system in those massive numbers in the past as simply unable to sit in the class etc etc etc, so no they were not 'invisible' in the past but simply not there. Or else we would have known about 1 in 50 children being kicked out of primary schools.
The study makes no disctinction on the basis of moderate or severe so I assume you are making a distinction between AD and AS-NOS classifications - these do not make distinctions based on severity. Your logic re: the relative rates is opaque to say the least.Secondly the massive increase noted by NJ study mostly includes moderate to severe autism types, again this is the type of autism that is very dysfunctional and that you would never ever miss, not in a million years. If these kids were just 'misdiagnosed' in the past then prevalence of those misdiagnosed disorders would be falling in last few decades. But they remain static.
The pecularities of the UK 'statementing' process is hardly relevant to articles based on studies in the US and Israel. In the US education support is is directly linked to diagnosis, see: http://www.autismnj.org/resources/school_aged and http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec04/autism.aspxThirdly the diagnosis itself does not give one access to special services or educational support, actually the diagnosis itself is practically worthless in many areas of real life. Education support is given according to need and is not linked to diagnosis etc. In the UK for example the diagnosis does not give one automatic access to any services or benefits whatsoever.
I didn't say it was 'right', but that AD and ASD are constructs of the BPS model - take the BPS away and you don't have a condition on which to base a head count or claim the numbers are increasing. I'm not defending the BPS construct - but if you don't like the BPS model then you have nothing on which to base your support for claimed increase beause all the statistics are about the BPS model. I'm just asking that we have some logic in to what was is being argued for.As for the BPS model of autism - it is totally wrong again because autism is just a surface manifestation of abnormal medical/ pathological processes - take away those abnormalities and you take away autism ...Keeping autism in DSM a means of reinforcing the myth and keeping autism in the realms of psychology. Totally wrong and totally tragic.