Posted on 07/15/2008 5:08:57 PM PDT by jazusamo
"New Ways to Diagnose Autism Earlier" read a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal. There is no question that you can diagnose anything as early as you want. The real question is whether the diagnosis will turn out to be correct.
My own awareness of how easy it is to make false diagnoses of autism grew out of experiences with a group of parents of late-talking children that I formed back in 1993.
A number of those children were diagnosed as autistic. But the passing years have shown most of the diagnoses to have been false, as most of these children have not only begun talking but have developed socially.
Some parents have even said, "Now I wish he would shut up."
I did absolutely nothing to produce these results. As a layman, I refused to diagnose these children, much less suggest any treatment, even though many parents wanted such advice.
As word of my group spread, various parents would write to ask if they could bring their child to me to seek my impression or advice. I declined every time.
Yet, if I had concocted some half-baked method of diagnosing and treating these children, I could now claim a high rate of success in "curing" autism, based on case studies. Perhaps my success rate would be as high as that claimed by various programs being touted in the media.
If a child is not autistic to begin with, almost anything will "cure" him with the passage of time.
My work brought me into contact with Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University, who has specialized in the study of late-talking children— and who is qualified to diagnose autism.
Professor Camarata has organized his own group of parents of late-talking children, which has grown to hundreds, as compared to the several dozen children in my group. Yet the kinds of children and the kinds of families are remarkably similar in the two groups, in ways spelled out in my book "The Einstein Syndrome."
The difference is that Professor Camarata is not a layman but a dedicated professional, with decades of experience— and he too has expressed dismay at the number of false diagnoses of autism that he has encountered.
What Camarata has also encountered is something that I encountered in my smaller group— parents who have been told to allow their child to be diagnosed as autistic, in order to become eligible for government money that is available, and can be used for speech therapy or whatever other treatment the child might need.
How much this may have contributed to the soaring statistics on the number of children diagnosed as autistic is something that nobody knows— and apparently not many people are talking about it.
Another factor in the great increase in the number of children diagnosed as autistic is a growing practice of referring to children as being on "the autistic spectrum."
In other words, a child may not actually be autistic but has a number of characteristics common among autistic children. The problem with this approach is that lots of children who are not autistic have characteristics that are common among autistic children.
For example, a study of high-IQ children by Professor Ellen Winner of Boston College found these children to have "obsessive interests" and "often play alone and enjoy solitude," as well as being children who "seem to march to their own drummer" and have "prodigious memories." Many of the children in my group and in Professor Camarata's group have these characteristics.
Those who diagnose children by running down a checklist of "symptoms" can find many apparently "autistic" children or children on "the autism spectrum."
Parents need to be spared the emotional trauma of false diagnoses and children need to be spared stressful treatments that follow false diagnoses. Yet the "autism spectrum" concept provides lots of wiggle room for those who are making false diagnoses.
Real autism may not get as much money as it needs if much of that money is dissipated on children who are not in fact autistic. But money is money to those who are running research projects— and a gullible media helps them get that money.
I have a good friend of mine who was wrongfully diagnosed with Aspergers for this reason. He was frequently harassed and abused in school and was even raped by classmates. The school did nothing about it and the parents blamed him for what happened. They used the diagnosis as a club to abuse him even after he got out of school. But he had several jobs that required social skills such as working as a training manager, a salvation army soldier and a receptionist. But Despite overcoming a lot of obstacles from this his parents made him lose his job and he became homeless for a time on Skid Row Los Angeles of all places. Well despite claims he cant socialize he did alright there. He survived the ordeal and now lives in Omaha Nebraska and works a part time job but is still recovering.
Parents should be careful of this. Your child could be branded mentally ill or disabled simply for being a victim at school. Its just another example of how psychiatry is run amok.
How did you possibly make that diagnosis based on one short essay?
Dr. Sowell is always informative.
Autism is probably a food related allergy (casein and wheat gluten) compounded by vitamin d deficiency. Autistic kids represent high seropositivity for autoantibodies to casein and gluten (83.3% and 50% respectively). Normal kids seropositivity for the same autoantibodies are represented at 10% and 6.7% respectively.
No compelling evidence exists to support the assertion of causality between the vaccines (MMR and TCVs) and autism.
The dramatic increases of autism cases would be expected given the low serum d scenarious with women of color in northern continents.
I have an acquaintance whose grandchild was diagnosed with Autism. She’s a health pro herself, and said that there is a growing conviction among researchers of Autism that later-life parenting is a factor. She said that there are very few young parents (under thirty) of autistic children, and that even older fathers and young mothers have a higher incidence of austism than young parents.
You get more of whatever you reward.
Great book and I recommend it....and everything else that he writes.
In good conscience, I couldn't; because it wasn't true.
I had to seek outside the standard medical health care plan to protect my son and myself from the "state". It cost.
He was given the diagnosis of "aphasic" which is a subcategory of autism; and I agreed to use this phrasing because the Nanny state knew nothing about "aphasia"; and so could not force my son onto drugs, into a program, or me into jail or court.
Later, they tried again, this time trying to label him "autistic". He was placed in a pre-kindergarten class with other "autistic-ADD/ADH" little boys. Only boys. There were no little girls at that entire K-5, labelled "autistic" or "add/adh", then.
He was the only boy in that class who knew his name, could cite his phone number, and count to 20. And, they were at this point stirring him up in class to get him upset; and then telling me of his "obvious" autistic behavior. Yes, I did spy at the classroom windows, after my son telling me HIS side of the story. He wasn't lying. These special ed teachers had singled him out to stir him up.
I pulled him out, asap. Took only a month for the "set-up" to be revealed.
That little boy began college at age 11. He's extremely talented physically and musically, as well as academically.
I'm sorry to have contributed to the burgeoning "labelling business in the name of collecting dollars" for the state; but I truly had no other alternative, THEN, to keeping my son safe, and in my home with his family.
Republicans changed all this in following years, passing legislation in support of parents and their rights. I couldn't have been happier that they did this.
This little boy would play chess with me when he was 5. I shared this, about the chess and the late "speaking" morph to autism, in person with Dr. Sowell, about middle 90s. He knew. lol. He'd already gone through something similar with his own son being a "late talker". What he has seen is how the damned thing morphs. And it's always about the money, the taxpayer dollars, or the personal payments for parents to just go along with effectively pimping their kids.
The worst thing about these overdiagnoses? The real victims of autism and/or ADD/ADH get shuffled around and aside: The help and money doesn't go to where it would do the most good.
And because the numbers of "victims" just really wouldn't be that large enough sufficient to satisfy the demands of most teacher's unions and the politicians they support.
So true. And proof that often times things are not as complex as they are made out to be.
And before I get flamed by someone with an autistic relative in this thread, yes of course there is autism. That is not the point here.
In for a penny, in for a pound. This also applies in spades to ADD, ADHD and every other variation on that theme.
Thanks for relating that and I’m glad it worked out for you and especially your son.
I read a column of Dr. Sowell’s some time back on the over diagnosis of autism and the reasons that it’s being over diagnosed, they were a carbon copy of the reasons you stated. I briefly looked in my list of his columns and didn’t find it or I would have posted a link.
The hallmark of autism used to be the inability to make any kind of emotional contact with other people. To lump in kids with social problems of a less severe kind is to do a diservice to those children, not because it is “bad” to be autistic; but because real autism is different than what is now called Aspergers and which must be treated differntly.
What an interesting story. Thanks for sharing it. Years ago my deaf daughter was also diagnosed as autistic, by people who were “observing” her. The whole write up by the teacher was contradictory. I had to go to Gallaudet and speak with a professor there, and found a specialist near my home then (So CA) who had worked with mentally disabled or criminally insane deaf individuals to get this “diagnoses” refuted.
It was bloody awful; mood swings, etc. And then you looked at their siblings, and one could quite readily determine, but never openly opine, that the problem with their "autistic/add/adh" child was really more a parenting problem than there actually being anything amiss, physically, neurologically, with the son(s).
The art of good parenting continues to lose ground among the terminally aggrieved through some danged excuse or another; and the children get further damaged by the labelling and the treatment.
Good parenting. People seem to forget that before the whole "add/adh/autism" jazz began, there were at least two decades of people, and media, and culture BASHING parents. That parents were evil and oppressive. So fast forward to these times, and people are either confused about what parenting is, what it means, what it involves; or they better fear the state; or become a bone-fide supporter of the state.
But raise your children with the time-honored standards you may have received growing up? How ANTIQUATED! How possibly... ABUSIVE.
When I've met very non-add/adh/autistic children but labelled add/adh/autistic, yes, I've wanted so badly to shake that parent to wake up!!!
lol. Living in the heart of Liberal Mecca, SF Bay Area, permits one to see the unvarnished facts of any scam, in the name of “for the children”. Mr. Sowell lives in the SF Bay Area. ;>
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