The increase in autism in a worldwide phenomenon, therefore all doctors and parents in all countries would have to be making the same mistake. America doesn’t have the highest autism rate. Studies differ, but South Korea is usually found to have one of the highest. There it’s looked down upon and something parents try to avoid their children receiving said diagnosis.
“The increase in autism in a worldwide phenomenon, therefore all doctors and parents in all countries would have to be making the same mistake.”
Well, that’s what tends to happen when you change the diagnostic criteria. And when America changes her diagnostic criteria, most countries in the world eventually tend to follow our lead. 60 years ago, I’m sure countries around the world were diagnosing men with homosexuality as a mental disorder at a non-trivial rate, and now that isn’t happening. What changed? Well, we changed the diagnostic criteria, more radically in that case, but still, that was the only actual change that needed to happen to provoke this result.
“Studies differ, but South Korea is usually found to have one of the highest. There it’s looked down upon and something parents try to avoid their children receiving said diagnosis.”
It’s an interesting anomaly, but anomalies are often not illustrative of the root causes, but some other tangential factor that is causing the anomaly. Better to look at data from very comparable areas (like say, 2 Midwestern states that are equivalent in nearly every way, but still have different rates of diagnosis) and then you have a better chance of determining what is actually causing the increase in most cases.