[dennisw]

Not so fast....I work in the medical community and I do not wish to disclose in what capacity because then people will be asking for alot of advice. I can say I am not a pediatrician, but the diagnosis on autism is all subjective. I wish I had the time to listen to Michael Savage’s radio show because he is 100% correct on this issue. The labeling of kids has to stop somewhere and I praise him for bringing this out in the open so we can have dialogue on this subject. Too many parents want to pin a label on the their kids to make them feel better about themselves because they failed as parents. 20 years ago it was asthma, 10 years ago it was add (and still is) and today we have autism. When will this stop? My heart goes out to all the children who are being drugged when they just need a hug (I know, extreme, but making a point). I think Mr. Savage brought up this point before, not sure. But if Einstein was a child today, he too would of been labeled with having all these bogus dianosis and probably made up new ones. And we all know the impact that would have on us today if that were to take place. Just because we notice someone acting out of the norm (and just what is the norm these days anyways) does not mean we have to label them, then drug them.

I have a close relative who is a child psychiatrist
He says diagnosis of mental retardation are way down and for autism are way up.

What used to be called retardation is now called autism and autism can get the kid on SS!

Of course some children are genuinely autistic though as you say this is hard to define

[miliantnutcase]

Agreed. Did you hear about this autism scale that some professionals want to implement? How can we create a scale for this when we don’t even understand autism yet? I like his analogy he used, “If we had a similar scale for blindness would people with glasses considered blind?”.