Note: I beg to differ with the MedPage article Anne presents. Medical schools are educating their students perfectly, 100% about autism. "It's not caused by vaccines."  Ta da! That's all they need to know. The actual CARE of individuals, aw, just leave that to the parents, the schools, the non-medical therapist.

By Anne Dachel

I recently found an absolutely bizarre story that proves how little the  medical establishment cares about autism and what it’s doing to children.

On February 7th Med Page Today published a piece entitled, Medical Schools Are Not Preparing Us to Care for Autistic Individuals— It's time for that to change

The gist of the article, written by two people in the medical profession, is that doctors AREN’T BEING TRAINED TO DEAL WITH AUTISTIC PATIENTS; REFORM IS NEEDED.

The authors were Reeda Iqbal, a medical student at Georgetown School of Medicine and Sherab Tsheringla, MD, MBBS, a child and adolescent psychiatry resident at the Yale School of Medicine.

Those are some pretty impressive places, and one would expect that top notch schools like Georgetown and Yale would have cutting edge training in something affecting one in every 36 U.S. children, one in every 22 boys.

Sadly, that is not the case.

One of the authors has a severely autistic sibling and for her, it’s a personal issue.

When I entered medical school, I quickly learned that there are important gaps in autism medical education. A 2019 study demonstrated that medical students report low knowledge of ASD, and more than 90% of students cite inadequate preparation for caring for individuals with autism. Medical students also report a greater need for increased education and training in ASD care. …

It does not help that 77% of primary care physicians rate their ability to care for an autistic adult as poor or fair. It is clear that our current medical system is not equipped to care for autistic individuals and their families.

The authors call for more training for doctors-to-be on all aspects of autism.

First, it is important for medical students to understand the heterogeneous symptom presentation of autism, including the different communication styles and sensory sensitivities that exist….

Second, for patients with profound autism, medical students can receive training on behavioral strategies that can be used to address behaviors that are challenging. …

Third, medical students should learn about the different co-occurring conditions associated with autism. …

Clearly Iqbal and Tsheringla accept autism as just part of the human condition. The rate of one in 36 children doesn’t set off alarm bells for them.

Their only concern is that doctors need to be better schooled in autism.

Utterly absurd

Several comments in the article show that they are not interested in doing anything to address autism as the epidemic is clearly is.

As autism prevalence continues to rise, it is increasingly likely that medical students will encounter and care for a patient with ASD.

Those are the code words for NO REAL INCREASE that officials have chanted nonstop for two decades.

The prevalence of autism is increasing, but never the incidence.

Iqbal and Tsheringla are part of the medical community that has unabashedly taken credit for each and every leap higher in the official autism rate.

How is it possible that doctors could have done that if they currently know nothing about autism? Neither of them address this.

Iqbal and Tsheringla write: “…one in three people with autism have profound autism…”

Doesn’t that seem to be an incredible statistic? IF a third of the one in 36 children with autism have severe autism, shouldn’t doctors have figured out what autism is years ago?

The truth is, doctors, along with health officials, have remained clueless about autism on purpose.

IF autism is affecting more and more children, something is causing it. Something has to be done to stop it. The possibility that this is an iatrogenic condition resulting from their childhood vaccine schedule never goes away.

No, the medical playbook will never recognize autism as a crisis. It’s a permanent puzzle, a curiosity we have all the time in the world to figure out.

Iqbal and Tsheringla are fine with the autism rate as it is, and they’ll probably be just as accepting when it’s one in 25 and then one in 20.

The ending of the piece proves my point.

As a first-year medical student, I am often told I am the future of medicine. As a sibling of an autistic individual, I believe it is critical that we enhance the training of future physicians to become competent providers for autistic patients.

Patients with autism deserve to be treated with the highest quality of care. Promoting greater inclusivity and neurodiversity means greater input from the neurodivergent community about how they want their care needs to be met, and building a healthcare system that can respond with humility and adroitness. This begins with the implementation of autism medical education at all medical schools, including my own. Next time I go to the doctor with my sister, I hope that her doctor will be knowledgeable, accepting, and prepared to provide the best care.

That’s the goal: “greater inclusivity and neurodiversity.”

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.