I listen to Savage occasionally, but his style is not my cup of tea. But a couple of nights ago I tuned into his radio program because he was talking about this autism flap.
His position is NOT that autism is a phony disorder, but that many therapists are misdiagnosing kids as autistic who are not. Simple as that.
Maybe you should listen to his side of the argument before swallowing whole the media matters BS. http://www.savageonautism.com/
It bothers me that any conservative would believe ANYTHING that “Media Matters” says. They’re a far left propaganda mill funded by George Soros, who routinely pounce on a few words out of context and extract a pound of lies from an ounce of truth. Savage probably did exaggerate and use hyperbole in talking about this — when you are talking constantly for 3 hours it’s going to happen.
A percentage of kids diagnosed with autism are probably not autistic.
Is it 99% ... no. That is an exaggeration.
Maybe its 30% .. or maybe 50% .. or maybe less.
But Savage's larger point is well taken, which is that more and more kids are being diagnosed with autism in todays' world, and there must be some reason.
Savage may be wrong, but you make an assertion that’s unprovable. The mechanism for autism is unknown. Toss in “autism spectrum”. Now you have a mess ripe for the universities to guilt us into insisting our lawmakers provde more funding for “research” which will never bear fruit because then the grants will end.
He should not have used a percentage, but much of the “autism spectrum”, like Asperger’s (with which my cousin has been diagnosed) is overblown.