I have one final thought on this topic: when picking a time-line, or "start date" for the epidemic of autism, one must SUBTRACT at least 3 years from the peak on a chart, because that is typically the age a child is diagnosed and shows up in the "system". Maybe David Kirby has already mentioned this? and if he has, I'm sorry to be redundant ...

This has been brought up on this web site by Jake and a few others. It has confussed me to no end. I have had to think long and hard on all this quirky personality stuff/ autism/ aspergers.

Some one here said that they would give anything to have a asperger kid. I too prayed constantly for pretty much the same thing. I prayed so much that I worked myself up so emotionally that I made myself sick. So I know what you mean, I really do. I will pray for your child too Janet - I know what you mean.

In my own family:
My daughter born in 1981 developed Kawasaki's after her fourth DPT shot.
Afterwards she was moody, but at the same time she had lots of friends, and did more than fine in school. She did have a speech problem with the ch sound. She stuck her tongue way out to say it. The speech teachers pounced on her and put her in speech class. My daughter hated it and worked on her problem to get out of the class. She could however express herself very well - she was one of the top seven students graduating from a very large class. She has two degrees, one in nursing. She is successful at keeping a job, she works with mental/behavioral problems in a hospital setting.

But she is so depressed and moody, people gets on her nerves. She is spit fire and speaks her mind sooooo she has to take an antidepressant. She also takes ambien every night to sleep, she has to take Ultram and Ibuprophen 4-8 times a day for muscle pain,she has acid reflux so she sleeps with a bunch of pillows, She has high SED rates. She is smart but she is quirky. Since she was a small child she has had a pillow that she STILL has and even at age 28 carries with her! Now I do not know about you, but I can not imagine carrying anything around with me I had as a child stopping that at even the AGE OF 10?? She makes me recover that pillow every so often and she goes through all my material (I sew a great deal) and she decides always on a soft knit type material. She thinks it smells great and puts it under my nose all the time. She is not married, and I have figured out that her many friends are not lasting friendships and many take advantage of her. She is smart enough to know it and removes herself emotionally from them very quickly. Two weeks ago she brought home a 8 month old pit bull mix (huge animal)to help out the dog's owner- she was a woman that my daughter works with - and had this thing in an apartment with her three kids. I could have died!!! We have a farm with cows, calves, geese, sheep - we are very picky on the dog we have - we have a Australian cattle dog because it is suppose to guard, herd, and protect this stuff. The pitbull stayed a week before things worked out and my daughter took the dog back.
Now I am beginning to think she could be Aspergers on some scale?!!

On the other hand - my son really is dignosed with Aspergers-- NOW. However - he did not talk till he was in the third grade. He was full blown autism untill about the second grade when he stopped the spinning around,stopped watching wheels and tires, stopped trying to lay down in the road so a tire could run over him -(he wanted to feel the wheel)!!! HE stopped running off from his teachers, his teachers had to stop carrying him back from the swings while he kicked and screames, the teachers stopped losing him! He was then dignosed with PDD-NOS and stayed that way until high school and when he finally put on anti-epliptic medicine he was dignosed with Aspergers. He does has epilespy.

So here we are with one I believe is a truly quirky and maybe she too could be considered Asperger that was missed and then my son and there is no way he could have been missed - even now. Although he is going to a small community college,and drives.

When we are talking about a brain injury does it matter? I mean sure we rather have a mild brain injury compared to a severe brain injury. But a brain injury on any scale should not be happening.

These people trying to say we are just paying more attention to things that always be are looking for excuses. And WE are all considering their foolish thinking all the while an auto-immune disease takes humanity bit by bit.

Hi Lorene

Please also note my report on CHS about the UK figures:

http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/uksurveyautismlink/

John

Hi Janet

"Sure, many of us knew "quirky" individuals- very smart, socially aloof, maybe didn't talk until they were 4..."

I was not including these necessarily, adults with Asperger can be a lot more affected than this, essentially unemployed, depressed, suicidal, isolated with broken relationships or not at all. Many of them have had very significant problems in school and have been excluded. The point was that we have an adult population out there and we need to know a lot more about their longitudinal characteristics.

In addition, perhaps you can go back to my initial post, I stated clearly that there are others on the spectrum who are a lot more affected in their health and function and these individual constitute the true increase, almost certainly so. These are the kids who were not commonly seen 30 years ago.

In any case, in order to start talking about sub-groups, in order to define the ASD population at large, we need to define individuals, medically, clinically, behaviorally and developmentally.

I strongly believe there are very different issues going on in ASD/AS, a fixed population with Asperger and a growing number of regressive autism, who are sick, and happen to have a diagnosis of autism but have a different condition all together.

This would explain a lot, including why professionals, parents and asperger people strongly disagree on this all. Everyone sees their own truth, a truth for them, yes, but not one that is universal.

I have two kids with autism, my son born n 81 and daughter born in 87 (two girls inbetween, no autism). I believe that this epidemic was initated by biological agents like lyme or XMRV, and mothers were infected in the seventies (which fits the lyme Connecticut scenario), and or were contaminated by their vaccines by SV-40 or XMRV or any other unknown virus, and were having babies by this time. Vaccines in excess would crowd out the already busy B and T Cell lymphocytes, and could wake up the virus. Mercury would cause a collapse of immune function to handle the viruses, and whala, and epidemic. Of course around the same time, we introduced HFCS, MSG and such in our food supply.

Lorene-
I think you are following a tangent that may not be relevant. Sure, many of us knew "quirky" individuals- very smart, socially aloof, maybe didn't talk until they were 4...
and that is a separate argument, whether or not Asperger's and Autism should even be lumped together...
but in my case, and many others, we are not talking about anyone who would have been "missed" by the system. He cannot function. We are talking about perfectly normal toddlers who go on to completely lose developmental skills, stop talking, have profuse diarrhea, bang their heads against walls, poke their eyes with their fingers, bite at their skin, spin in circles, scream for hours at a time, stay up for the entire night, etc. - AFTER THEIR MMR.
We are talking about medical symptoms that earn the diagnosis of autism, yet many can be fixed using biomedical approaches. My child with autism would have never received a diagnosis of Asperger's years ago.

This article has some teeth to it. Hope it finally sinks in to certain regulatory agencies. love how David Kirby calmly, rationally, an logically considers all the angles. I have always suspected retroviral particles to be the culprit, but assumed it was the ALV. Every child with autism should be tested for antibodies to HERV-K RIGHT NOW!!!!