Mark Blaxill has updated his prevalence slides to reflect the most current data. The slides are at the end of this post. The article below from The Defender quotes Mark, who is AofA's Editor-At-Large and co-founder.

1 in 36 Kids Have Autism, CDC Says — Critics Slam Agency’s Failure to Investigate Causes

One in 36 (2.8%) 8-year-old children — 4% of boys and 1% of girls — have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), based on an analysis of data from 2020, published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One in 36 (2.8%) 8-year-old children — 4% of boys and 1% of girls — have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), based on an analysis of data from 2020, published today (actual date, 3/23/23) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The latest findings, reported in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, show an increase from the last report, which found 1 in 44 8-year-olds (2.3%) had autism in 2018.

Since the CDC started collecting the data, prevalence estimates have skyrocketed from 1 in 150 in 2000, to today’s estimate of 1 in 36 children.

The trend has persisted for decades. Autism prevalence in the 1990s, which was 1 in 1,000 children, already represented a tenfold increase over the condition’s estimated prevalence in the 1970s.

Commenting on today’s report, Mark Blaxill, from the Executive Leadership Team at Health Choice, told The Defender:

“As the American culture wars have intensified, the harsh reality of the autism epidemic has been tucked away into obscurity as attention has turned to a whole new set of health concerns.

“Today’s new report from the CDC’s ADDM [Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring] Network places the latest ASD rate at 1 in 36 children born in 2012, but that’s not even the largest number out there (a recent survey using NHIS data reported a rate of 1 in 29 children in 2020).”  READ MORE AT THE DEFENDER HERE.