By Anne Dachel 
Read Anne's commentary and view the links after the jump. The Dachel Media Update is sponsored by Lee Silsby Compounding Pharmacy and OurKidsASD, an online supplement retailer for patients with special needs.
Some advocates are deeply skeptical of this point of view and still wholeheartedly endorse the “autism epidemic” thesis. Writer Anne Dachel, of Age of Autism, wrote in response to the kind of research I’ve been citing:
WHERE ARE THE ADULTS?
Where are the hand-flapping, head-banging, nonverbal autistic adults in adults?
Where are the adults who started out as normally developing babies and toddlers and then suddenly and inexplicably lost learned skills and regressed into autism?
Playing with the numbers in epidemiological studies proves nothing.
She argues that it’s just obvious that more children are around today with the symptoms of autism than ever before. But that’s actually very hard to figure out, given that diagnostic criteria change, many problems have been historically ignored or unrecorded, and individuals with diverse intellectual and behavioral challenges have often been lumped together. What we need is rigorous, analytical research, and what we have suggests that there’s little evidence for an “autism epidemic.” (Dachel also appears to subscribe to the thoroughly debunked belief that vaccines cause autism.)
First of all, everything in this article is designed to downplay autism and leave it a permanent mystery we just can't figure out, while assuring us that autism is nothing to worry about. It seems that autism has all the urgency of finding Big Foot, or exploring black holes in outer space--a curiosity, not a crisis.
Cody Fenwick goes after those who would say that autism has become a modern day epidemic, namely Age of Autism and more specifically, Anne Dachel. According to him, all the autism is just diagnostic substitution--in other words, these people like this have always been around, we just called them something else.
Fenwick uses term like "mental health diagnoses," "mental illnesses," "mental health services" when discussing autism, which is proof that he is completely out of touch with what autism is doing to our children.
Fenwick quotes me asking where all the adults are who display the same symptoms of autism that our children do, and he never answers the question: WHERE ARE THE AUTISTIC ADULTS? Fenwick argues that they're out there and that autism is such a diverse condition.
So what? WHERE ARE THE ADULTS WITH CLASSIC AUTISM? I've worked with these children for years. I can pick them out in the mall or in an airport. I don't see 40, 50 and 60 year olds doing what our children are doing.
The truth is, IF these adults were really out there, CNN's Anderson Cooper would be parading them on the news for all the world to see. The problem is, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN ABLE TO SHOW US A SIGNIFICANT POPULATION OF ADULTS WITH AUTISM---ESPECIALLY ADULTS WITH CLASSIC AUTISM, WHOSE SYMPTOMS WOULD BE EASY TO RECOGNIZE.
Every parent I've talked to is most afraid about the future for their autistic child. After high school these kids are set adrift in a system that has nothing for them. Programs for people who have what was called "mental retardation," don’t apply to people with autism. Autism is a disorder with a specific set of symptoms affecting social behavior and communication skills.
In addition, Fenwick can't explain regressive autism, why the rate continues to increase despite the fact that Asperger's Syndrome was added to the DSM in 1994, or why we have to train police, EMTs, teachers, and social workers so they can deal with affected individuals.
If autism has always been here, just called something else, we'd be used to people like this.
The autism rate is ALWAYS based on studies of children, most often eight year olds. That should tell us something. Officials know that this rate doesn't apply to Americans across the population.
And as for the comment, "(Dachel also appears to subscribe to the thoroughly debunked belief that vaccines cause autism)," Fenwick is wrong on that too. In 2008 medical experts at HHS conceded that case of Hannah Poling, the Georgia girl who was vaccinated for nine illnesses in a single doctor's visit and had a vaccine reaction. That reaction caused a number of health problems, including regressive autism. Her father, Dr. Jon Poling, appeared on CNN and made it clear that the U.S. government agreed that Hannah's autism was caused by her vaccines.
The pretense that there is no link between vaccines and autism, and that autism has always been a condition affecting two percent of the population are what I call, "The Really Big Lies About Autism."
Meanwhile a generation of disabled children is on the verge of adulthood with nowhere to go. According to Fenwick, that shouldn't be happening. Please, Cody Fenwick, show us where all the autistic adults in their 40s, 60s, and 80s are living and working. Thousands and thousands of parents desperately want to know.
The Dachel Media Update is sponsored by Lee Silsby Compounding Pharmacy and OurKidsASD. Lee Silsby is one of the most respected compounding pharmacies in the country and is committed to serving the needs of the Autism community. OurkidsASD is an online retailer for nutritional supplements for patients with special needs. OurkidsASD carries thousands of products from more than 60 brands and offers free ground shipping on all orders.
Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism and author of The Big Autism Cover-Up: How and Why the Media Is Lying to the American Public, which is on sale now from Skyhorse Publishing.
My mom is 68 years old. I was recently taking to her childhood friend who spent her entire career working in a state run facility for the developmentally disabled, from which she recently retired. I asked her if she saw there in her earlier years the rate of severe autism we have now she said no way, not even close. Every once in a while someone came through with those traits, but not like now.
Posted by: AnaB | August 14, 2015 at 05:27 PM
Aye Ted copied below,lovely reptiles that they aren`t..
"The cost forecasts in the study are based on the assumption that effective interventions and treatments for ASD will not be identified or widely available by 2025."
Autism Spectrum Disorder Care Costs Could Top $500B by 2025
7/29/2015.
WEDNESDAY, July 29, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- The annual cost of caring for Americans with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might reach $500 billion by 2025, with outside estimates approaching $1 trillion, according to a study published online July 17 in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Health economists at the University of California, Davis, analyzed national data and concluded that costs will range from $162 billion to $367 billion in 2015, with $268 billion being their best estimate. "The current costs of ASD are more than double the combined costs of stroke and hypertension, and on a par with the costs of diabetes," senior author Paul Leigh, Ph.D., a professor of public health sciences and a researcher with the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at UC Davis, said in a university news release.
By 2025, ASD costs will range from $276 billion to $1 trillion, with $461 billion being the researchers' best estimate. The cost estimates include health services, residential care, in-home care, special education, transportation, employment support, and lost productivity. The cost forecasts in the study are based on the assumption that effective interventions and treatments for ASD will not be identified or widely available by 2025.
"There should be at least as much public research and government attention [paid] to finding the causes and best treatments for ASD as there is for these other major diseases," Leigh added. He stressed the need for significant policy changes that emphasize early intervention to reduce ASD symptoms, along with employment and other programs to support independent living for adults with ASD. "This approach would ultimately save money that otherwise would be spent on expensive custodial care," Leigh said.
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | August 14, 2015 at 01:20 PM
No worries - in ten or twenty years there'll be plenty of adults with autism.
Posted by: Ted | August 14, 2015 at 12:27 PM
FIVE AUTISM LIES - A CONVENIENT SUMMARY
1. There is no autism epidemic.
2. Autism is genetic and has always been with us.
3. Autism is nothing to worry about. It is just another way of being.
4. The belief that vaccines cause autism has been thoroughly debunked.
5. Those who claim to know otherwise are nutjobs. Best to ignore them.
These lies, when repeated by those who believe them, are symptoms of ignorance, shock, and denial. How long can this go on?
Posted by: Dan Burns | August 14, 2015 at 11:31 AM
And the costs go up year on year and going by Merck its all new exciting business..
Autism Spectrum Disorder Care Costs Could Top $500B by 2025
http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/news/external/2015/07/29/19/23/autism-spectrum-disorder-care-costs-could-top-500b-by-2025
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | August 14, 2015 at 11:28 AM
Who is Cody Fenwick, and what are his credentials?
Posted by: Barry | August 14, 2015 at 06:34 AM
Congressman Posey's CDC revelations on the House floor revoked the vaccine injury deniers' license to lie. Since July 29, ignorance is no excuse. Thanks for calling out Cody Fenwick and exposing the Really Big Lies.
Posted by: Dan Burns | August 14, 2015 at 04:09 AM
it is precisely this sort of blatant dishonesty that is why the most effective strategy when talking about safety is not to ramble on about studies and ingredients and whatnot but to put them on the spot for their cowardice and hypocrisy.
Say this:
If an 80kg adult were to get the equivalent dose of what an infant is expected to get then they would receive around 500 vaccines over 18 months. I would never get that many vaccines for myself and I have yet to observe any supposed believer in the safety of vaccines roll up their sleeves and take them so until at least one of them does (and comes out unscathed) I will continue to believe that: a) vaccines are not safe; and b) those who claim they are cannot be trusted.
Posted by: rtp | August 13, 2015 at 09:22 PM
If they were diagnosed as having other conditions, name those conditions and show that the incidence in adults aged 40+ adds up to 1 in 68 adults. That ought to be easy to do - if it was true.
Posted by: Linda1 | August 13, 2015 at 06:31 PM