Dan Olmstead's claims about "no Amish autism" have been debunked.
The Amish do vaccinate, and they do have autism:
“The idea that the Amish do not vaccinate their children is untrue,” says Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at the CSC. “We run a weekly vaccination clinic and it’s very busy.” He says Amish vaccinations rates are lower than the general population’s, but younger Amish are more likely to be vaccinated than older generations.
Strauss also sees plenty of Amish children showing symptoms of autism. “Autism isn’t a diagnosis – it’s a description of behavior. We see autistic behaviors along with seizure disorders or mental retardation or a genetic disorder, where the autism is part of a more complicated clinical spectrum.” Fragile X syndrome and Rett Syndrome is also common among the clinic’s patients.
Strauss, along with Dr. D. Holmes Morton, MD, authored a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which described a mysterious seizure disorder that resulted in mental retardation and autistic behavior in nine Amish children. The study was published one year after Olmsted’s mythic voyage, so it would seem a story correction would be in order.
Dan Olmstead’s claims about “no Amish autism” have been debunked.
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I didn’t say “no Autism”, I said “almost no autism”
I also didn’t say that none of them vaccinated. However, they do have a large part of their population that is not vaccinated, and that makes them an important control group.
Plus, since your quoting Dr. Strauss, lets get the whole quote.
Strauss said the clinic treats “syndromic autism”, where autism as part of a more complicated clinical spectrum that can include mental retardation, chromosomal abnormalities, unusual facial features, and short stature, as well as Fragile X syndrome.
Strauss says he doesn’t see “idiopathic autism” at the clinic, which he defines as children with average or above average IQs who display autistic behavior. “My personal experience is we don’t see a lot of Amish children with idiopathic autism. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, only that we aren’t seeing them at the clinic.”
So, even he says that he doesn’t see the classic autism we have all come to know.