The Autism Rate is 3.5% in Israel? WTF!

UPDATE: This article was written carelessly... 3.5% was the rate of IVF in the general population... NOT autism. It should read: "a significantly higher number than the 3.5% IVF rate in the general Israeli population." Thanks Michelle.

But as the autism rate in the Minnesota Somali population is 1 in 28 and CDC, two years later, still can't find the time to go study them, and no one seems disturbed by that phenom... I don't think that my incredulousness over the blaze attitude with which dramatic changes in autism rates are met is unwarranted.

We have got to wake up..

Original Post: Talk about burying the lead!

This article on the high autism rate among IVF children in Israel (more than ten percent) almost casually mentions that autism, in the general population there is 3.5%! That is 1 in 29 children!

IVF Linked to Autism, Israeli Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2010) — The first "test tube baby" was born in 1978. With advances in reproductive science, an estimated one percent of all American babies are now born each year through in vitro fertilization (IVF). But IVF and other assisted fertility treatments may be solving one problem by creating another, suggests new evidence from Tel Aviv University.

In a recent study, Dr. Ditza Zachor of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine reported a strong link between IVF and mild to moderate cases of autism. Her findings were presented last month at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Philadelphia.

According to her research at the Autism Center at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Israel, which Dr. Zachor directs, 10.5% of 461 children diagnosed with a disorder on the autism spectrum were conceived using IVF, a significantly higher number than the 3.5% autism rate in the general Israeli population.

Where does this number come from? And why is this not on the front page of every newspaper in the world! A disorder that was only documented 70 years ago, when only 11 children in the world could be found by the father of child psychiatry over the course of 8 years, is now the dx of between 1 and 3.5 percent of the industrialized world? What the Fuck?!!!

The UK number is 1 in 60. The published US number is 1 in 90, but that is for 12 year olds, I don't even know what the rate is for my son's birth cohort in 2002, and I hear that in the halls of government the number 1 in 60 is being batted around as the real number in the US as well!

Last fall, the 09.09.09 campaign that the National Autism Association put on asked the question... when was autism going to be considered urgent.. it has gone from 1 in 250 to 1 in 90 since my son was diagnosed six years ago... NAA asked, does it have to get to 1 in 20 before people get upset and actually do something?

APPARENTLY NOT EVEN THAT HIGH A RATE WILL CAUSE ALARM!!! A 1 in 29 rate is buried in Science Daily?! I reiterate... WHAT THE FUCK!!

I can't help asking the question... are we seeing the beginning of the downfall of the human race? Remember the beginning of Shaun Of The Dead, how our hero was drifting through London not noticing that society was falling down around him? Is that happening here? What is happening?! Why is no one freaking out?!

CDC quietly revises autism rates to 1% of US children

... cdc quietly upped its autism numbers on their web site to 1 in 100 yesterday... sneaking it in on a friday... shhhh... don't wanna wake the press...

Tina Cruz caught them:

CDC quietly revises autism rates to 1% of US children

When I tried to verify the numbers, the CDC still lists the 2007 statistics of 1 in 150 in their official report, the new report has not been released) but the numbers on the webpage have been modified to reflect "1 in 100 to 1 in 300 with an average of 1 in 150" for prevalence in autism. The last modification that was made to the page was September 25, 2009.

Confirmation that the Autism Rate is now 1 in 100

...or if you are counting the kids who HAD autism but recovered, the rate is 1 in 63.

I am utterly speechless.

Because still... there is no sense of urgency... no rush to stop this. The entire country is practically shutting down over a mild flu, and yet brain damage to one percent of children garners still more yawns.

How many years have we been asking, "How high does the autism rate have to go?!"

Apparently higher than 1 percent of children.

Apparently higher than 2 percent of boys.

Will it be 1 in 50, is that the magic number that will finally wake up those in power?

Will it be 1 in 20? 1 in ten? 1 in two?

There should be rioting in the streets over this. Yet tomorrow will even one news network cover this?

UPDATE: Dr. Caroline Ward-Goldsmith left a comment that I should be read by everyone so I am adding it here:

I would like to comment and quote the exact figure which was officially given to me by the chair of the disabilities commission in brussels EU PARLIAMENT and it is

1 in 58 children as of Aug 2009

I have enjoyed reading your blog and look forward to another visit

Dr Caroline Ward-Goldsmith
EU Parliamentary Advisor
Director ATC TREATMENT IRELAND
www.atctreatment.com

Thank you Dr. for sharing this with us, and God help us all.

CDC May Release 1 in 100 Autism Incidence and Call Autism Epidemic

One autism mom is reporting the following:

"We had an ASA Board member go to the national ASA Convention-new CDC numbers are 1:100 births. CDC considers it an epidemic...soon to be released, but not sure when. 1:66 births in military families. I just want to cry. How long until there are MORE people ON the spectrum than people NOT on the spectrum??!?"

Let's see if she is right and CDC is ready to start to actually calling a duck, a duck.

Autism Rate in the UK is now 1 in 88

... and 1 in 54 boys.

Autism catastrophe
Published Date: 28 November 2008
The Scotsman

...The most recent government study confirmed that the rate of autism in the UK now stands at one child in 88, with the rate for boys, who are most likely to be affected, around one in 58. Make no mistake, this is a public health catastrophe.

As a result of parental demand, Autism Treatment Trust opened a clinic in Edinburgh in 2006 and to date has arranged comprehensive testing and commenced treatments for more than 300 autistic children. The results of the tests have been striking and a remarkable pattern is emerging: gastrointestinal issues are common, particularly inflammation; food intolerances and allergies feature regularly, as do immune abnormalities and heavy metal toxicity. Many of these children are very ill. All are treatable.

The belief that autism is solely genetic in origin is unsustainable; environmental factors must be at play. You do not get genetic epidemics.

BILL WELSH
President, Autism Treatment Trust
Stafford Street
Edinburgh

David Kirby: US Medicine: 97% of All Autism Cases Went Undected - Until Now?

David Kirby explores the VERY Hidden Horde:

US Medicine: 97% of All Autism Cases Went Undected - Until Now?
May 9, 2008
Huffington Post

If autism has always been with us in the same high numbers that we see today -- as some scientists and academics contend -- then we should be able to identify the 1 in 150 adults currently living with autism in places like the US and UK...

But still, by any currently available measure, there appear to be many more people under the age of 18 with autism than there are adults with the disorder....

Investigators could only find, "a total of 645 adults diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders in Scotland,"...

...Is it possible that only one in every 110 adults with autism in Scotland is standing up and being counted?...

Read the whole thing.

Autism: The Non Urgent Crisis.

I thought Anne Dachel's response to this piece deserved a good read.

Autism Center Helping Families Cope With Disorder
WISC, WI - Oct 11, 2007

The story on the new autism school called Common Threads gave us some disturbing information. We're told that one in every
150 children in the U.S. now has autism. WISC-TV calls autism "a crisis" yet they can give us no reason why so many children
are affected with this devastating disorder.

Associate Dean of Research for the Waisman Center Dr. Susan Ellis Weismerm tells us that "in the past 10 years, there has been
an explosion in autism research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and much of it is being done at the Waisman Center.

Actually, there's been an explosion in the number of children with autism from one in 10,000 in the 1970s to one in every one
150 kids today, including one in every 94 boys, but the Waisman Center has long told us that there is no "crisis" or any
increase in autism.

A Spectrum of Disputes - New York Times

What's happened according to the Waisman Center is "better diagnosing" by doctors and an expanded spectrum of autism disorders. In other words, we've always had so many kids with autism, they were mislabeled. The problem with that claim is that no one asks people who make that claim to prove it. Why isn't there even one study that can find the misdiagnosed/undiagnosed adults with autism at a rate of one in 150?

When we talk about autism, we're talking about kids with autism. The rate of one in 150 came from studies of eight year olds, not eighty year olds. That simple fact should be scaring us all. Most adults never knew anyone labeled autistic or who displayed autistic behavior when they were young, but anywhere you bring up the subject, people start talking about kids they know with autism.

Research has shown that eighty percent of Americans with autism are under the age of eighteen. That means that within the next five to ten years these autistic kids will be adults dependent on the taxpayers for their support and care. Imagine what it will be like when one in every 150 eighteen year olds isn't going to work, or to school, or into the military, but applying for Social Security Disability for life with autism.

Right now the impact of the autism epidemic is being felt in our schools. Boston Globe reporter Carey Goldberg for example, wrote the story on July 5th, With rise in autism, programs strained - The Boston Globe in which we were told, "Statewide, the number of schoolchildren diagnosed with autism has nearly doubled over the last five years, from 4,080 to 7,521, according to soon-to-be-published data from the Department of Education."

In Massachusetts, one in every 130 kids has autism officially. Goldberg wrote, "Autism programs are faced with enormous needs and no one feels like we have enough programs to meet the up-and-coming numbers of children," said Rita Gardner, executive director of Melmark, in Andover, which serves children in its school, in their homes, and in public schools. "I would argue that this is one of our biggest public health crises in this country.

"A few years ago, when state public health authorities began providing autism services to children under 3, they expected about 500 children to enroll. At last count, they are serving more than 1,100.

Goldberg also reported that educating all these disabled children costs the state over $3 million dollars a year. Does anyone seriously think that this is happening merely because doctors are better at diagnosing? The same autistic children who are bankrupting school districts and on endless waiting lists for services will be overwhelming Social Security in the next five to ten year.

These are the current statistics on autism in the U.S. based on Dept. Education figures. http://www.vaprojec t.org/autismasds tatistics. html The explosion in the autism rate is clearly evident. Now imagine a similar increase in the number of young adults applying for Social Security Disability. This is also a double blow. These disabled young people are meant to be the replacement work force to help support the retiring post WWII generation. Not only won't they be paying into Social Security, they'll be living off of it for the rest of their long lives.

Findings by Michael Ganz at Harvard makes a chilling prediction of the future cost to our society as more and more autistic kids become autistic adults. His findings are felt by others to be a gross underestimate of the eventual autism price tag.Autism Has High Costs to U.S. Society, press release of Tuesday ....
It can cost about $3.2 million to take care of an autistic person over his or her lifetime. Caring for all people with autism over their lifetimes costs an estimated $35 billion per year.

See other figures from Lifespire: http://www.a-champ.org/documents/Lifespire%20Costs%20rev.2-23-06.ppt.pdf

Lifespire puts lifetime cost for a single autistic person at $10.125 million.

For more information on the cost of autism, contact Robert Krakow <rkrakow@earthlink.net>

At the height of the polio epidemic in the 1950s, one in 3,000 Americans was affected. That was a national crisis. A major effort was made to address it. Autism affects far more people, but no one seems concerned about what's going to happen to all these children. The most important comparison to be made with polio is the fact that most of the victims of polio recovered and went on to lead productive lives. The same won't be said about the victims of the autism epidemic. They will need support and care for life.

The words of Laura Bono of the National Autism Association are a grim forecast for the future: "As those children reach adulthood, the U.S. is ill-equipped to care for them. Not only do we not have enough services for adults now, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. Frankly, we don't know what we're going to do."

Anne McElroy Dachel
Chippewa Falls, WI USA

The California Numbers: Autism Declining Among Three Year Olds

During a presentation Kirby gave in May, he mentioned that someone had paid California to study only the three year olds and that in the first quarter of 2007 their autism rate declined.

This quarter they went down again.

And how sad is it that a private citizen had to pay California to run autism numbers on 3 year olds? If they wanted to know what was going on with the children in that state, they would have run the numbers on their own.

Is Autism Declining?
David Kirby
HuffPo
Posted July 12, 2007 | 02:28 AM (EST)

For quite some time, the American government, health establishment and mainstream media have repeated the mantra that mercury containing vaccines were eliminated "several years ago," yet the number of autism cases continues to climb - the inference being that injecting organic mercury into newborn babies has now been proven to be 100% safe.

The problem, though, is that there is no proof that mercury was eliminated "years ago" and, more importantly, now there are signs that autism rates among the youngest children might actually be falling.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Developmental Services released data from the second quarter of 2007, showing that the number of 3-5 year olds with autism in the state system increased by 169 children over the first quarter of 2007. This is about the same quarterly increase seen in the state over the past several years.

But it turns out that a private citizen has paid the state each quarter to analyze the autism numbers according to year of birth, and not just by age group. State law requires that such privately funded analyses be made available to anyone else who asks for it.

So I asked for it. What I got was rather interesting.

After breaking down the current data among 3-5 year olds by year of birth, you notice that the number of cases among children born in 2002 (who are now roughly five years old) and 2003 (or roughly four years old) continued to go up.

But among those kids born in 2004 (who are now turning three years old) the number of cases has fallen, as compared to kids born in 2003.

For example, at the midpoint of 2006, there were 2,250 children born in 2001 (or roughly, five-year olds) with autism counted in the system. By the same period of 2007, the number of kids with autism born in 2002 had risen to 2,490, an increase of 240 children, or 10.7%.

Among "four year olds," the increase was even more dramatic, with 326 more kids diagnosed with autism midway in 2007 than in 2006, a startling jump of 17%.

But among the very youngest kids counted, the story was the opposite. At the end of June 2006, there were 688 children born in 2003 with autism diagnoses. This June, the number of kids born in 2004 with autism was 632, a statistically significant drop of 56 children, or 8.1% less than last year at this time.

This marks the second drop of its kind among the youngest children in California (which tracks "full spectrum" autism only, and not milder forms of the disorder). It follows the first quarter of this year, when 251 children born in 2004 entered the system, compared with 264 kids born in 2003 who were enrolled in the first quarter of 2006 - a modest decline of 13 students, or 4.9%.

Keep in mind that these drops are being reported despite the fact that:

1) Rates among kids born just one or two years earlier continue to spiral upward

2) California has experienced a recent baby boomlet (the number of 0-4 year olds rose by 9,369 in 2002, according to census estimates; but jumped by 62,393 in 2004).

3) Legal and illegal immigration continues to rise from countries that still use the full amount of mercury in childhood vaccines.

4) Aggressive early intervention campaigns have consistently brought down the average age of autism diagnoses.

Intriguing though the numbers may be, it is far too early to know if this refreshing downward movement will turn into a bona fide trend. The deficit of 56 children could be made up by the end of the year.

But the decline does not come in a vacuum. Minnesota, for example, tracks autism among children as young as two years of age, (though the counting is done through the school system, and is considered less reliable than California's data).

The rate of two-year-olds diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Minnesota peaked in 2003, at 4.45-per-10,000 kids. By 2005, the rate fell to 3.88-per-10,000, and last year it was 3.55-per-10,000, a drop of 20.2% since 2003.

We will have to wait until these kids get a bit older to see if the decline holds true.

Meanwhile, back in California at the massive Kaiser Permanente healthcare, officials reported that, among 5-9 year olds in their system in 2006, the rate of ASD was 93-per-10,000. But among the youngest kids, 2-4 years old, it was 66-per-10,000 - some 40% lower.

One would naturally expect to see fewer 2-4 year olds than 5-9 year olds with an ASD diagnosis. But in 2004, Kaiser began recommending routine ASD screening for all children at 24 months of age. Presumably, the majority of the 2-4 year olds in the system have now been screened for ASD, which must, by definition, appear before age 3 for a diagnosis to be made.

Sadly, more 2-year-olds at Kaiser will end up with ASD, and some stragglers among the 3-and-4-year-olds will also turn up. But whether they can make up the 40% deficit compared with their older siblings remains to be seen.

Are autism rates dropping? I would never say they are for sure. We simply have to wait and see.

But there are tantalizing hints that autism is indeed starting to decline among the very youngest children, born and vaccinated more recently, when mercury was transitioned out of most shots.

Which brings us to the, mercury was removed "several years ago" mantra, whose best retort is probably: "Says who?"

According to the Boston Herald, the last mercury-containing shots given to US children expired back in 1999. The Washington Post, meanwhile, put the date at 2001, the FDA said it was 2002, the Institute of Medicine and the Immunization Action Coalition said 2003, and the Council of State Governments claimed it was "early 2004."

Who's right? We may never know. But we do know that companies were still manufacturing mercury-containing shots for American kids in 2001, and most vaccines have a shelf life of about two years. And we know that 90% of flu shots given to pregnant women and infants still contain the full amount of mercury today.

The number of California kids born in 2004 who have autism is, by any measure, still too high. True, we don't know how many of those 632 children were exposed to mercury in routine vaccines overseas, or flu shots here at home. But with numbers this lofty, it's highly unlikely that thimerosal alone was responsible for the entire autism epidemic.

If mercury is but one cause of autism, there must be other causes as well.

Let's say that autism cases among three-year-olds fall by 10% or so by year's end. Could thimerosal be the cause of 10% of autism cases? That would still mean tens of thousands of Americans injured by mercury in their vaccines. Moreover, identifying the cause in just 10% of cases might help us discover what is causing the other 90%.

But I am writing way ahead of myself here.

Regardless of one's position on the mercury-autism contretemps, I hope everyone can agree that an actual drop in the numbers, no matter what the cause, would provide a welcome respite from the endless chorus of grim news we all seem to face these days.

[At the request of Kristina Chew and David Kirby I had removed the following two updates. I have since thought better of it and replaced them. I thought it was a move to keep the peace, but as no peace has been kept, I will repost it. Censorship, especially after the fact, is rarely a good idea, and I am sorry that I did it. I will be offering a full discussion on the matter in another post.

As I cannot repost the deleted comments from Ms. Chew and Ms. Clark, I invite them to repost them to the comments section if they wish.]

UPDATE: Roy Grinker, epidemic denier at GW, leaves an comment on the HuffPo piece, but doesn't use his real name. Kirby calls him out and offers a public debate.

RE: This comment on Huffpost:

“Unfortunately, Mr. Kirby continues to believe that California's DDS enrollment figures constitute epidemiological data. They do not. The author even makes a claim about statistical significance! He also introduces a new term into the discussion -- "full spectrum" -- (which he suggests is equivalent to Autistic Disorder) -- and states that the DDS counts only Autistic Disorder, not PDD-NOS, or Asperger's, or Down's Syndrome children with autism, or any other phenotype. This is absolutely wrong. Not even the best epidemiological studies are particularly good at distinguishing among the subtypes. It is truly disappointing to see the Huffington Post continue to publish phony epidemiology.”

Signed: Mfano

But “backstage” I see that his email is actually rgrink@gwu.edu

If Dr. Grinker would like to debate this subject out in the open, using his real name, I would be more than happy to take part. You would think that someone of his stature would have more pressing things to do with George Washington University’s time and bandwidth than send anonymous, erroneous comments to national political blogs.

Update: From "celiacdaughter" on the EOH list:

...If you search some of his (Mfano) previous posts you will also note that he enjoys using the third person when discussing himself:

"So Foresam, tell us: how Grinker should look for autistic adults? The woman Grinker and Chew wrote about in the blog wasn't on record anywhere as autistic. Grinker doesn't say, but she probably bit herself and smeared feces too. No one missed her. She was called mentally retarded and given lots of treatment and care. She just wasn't called autistic"...

Update: Back to the original point. A mom in Iowa says Autism rates are dropping there too.

"It seems to me, there is a story in the Iowa stats as well. Iowa being the first state to remove/ban thimerosal, with exception to influenza, and our rates reflect a 20% decrease."

http://www.vaproject.org/statistics/autism-statistics.html

National Autism Prevalence Trends from United States Special Education Data

The following is taken from the official State statistics produced by the Department of Education in the United States, for numbers of children aged 3-5 served by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) who have autism. It compares the increase over five years between 2000-01 and 2005-06:

State	2000-2001	2005-2006	Percentage Increase
Alabama	84	178	112
Alaska	27	X	X
Arizona	94	287	205
Arkansas	95	106	12
California	3,422	7,968	133
Colorado	53	157	196
Connecticut	152	412	171
Delaware	62	101	63
DC	16	39	144
Florida	847	1,598	89
Georgia	272	550	102
Hawaii	88	149	69
Idaho	28	86	207
Illinois	670	1,256	87
Indiana	456	777	70
Iowa	128	102	-20
Kansas	87	172	98
Kentucky	168	270	61
Louisiana	121	294	143
Maine	150	311	107
Maryland	371	641	73
Massachusetts	231	1,370	493
Michigan	631	1,212	92
Minnesota	345	1,159	236
Mississippi	34	69	103
Missouri	134	283	111
Montana	40	44	10
Nebraska	37	154	316
Nevada	89	422	374
New Hampshire	55	112	104
New Jersey	397	734	85
New Mexico	6	96	1,500
New York	2,244	X	X
North Carolina	261	780	199
North Dakota	17	39	129
Ohio	326	397	22
Oklahoma	9	57	533
Oregon	429	782	82
Pennsylvania	594	2,063	247
Puerto Rico	147	116	-21
Rhode Island	48	121	152
South Carolina	121	281	132
South Dakota	35	80	129
Tennessee	153	416	172
Texas	1,108	2,123	92
Utah	58	247	326
Vermont	14	48	243
Virginia	222	548	147
Washington	64	409	539
West Virginia	14	33	136
Wisconsin	410	485	18
Wyoming	21	37	76
Total	15,685	30,171	92

Source: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act data, US Department of Education.
X - Figures not available

Bill Welsh of Autism Treatment Trust Shames UK Epedemic Deniers

Give'em Hell, Bill!

Undeniable Fact of Autism
The Scotsman
Wed 11 Jul 2007

It will come as no surprise to parents that one child in 58 in the UK has autism (your report, 9 July). The diagnosis of this devastating childhood condition has increased to such an extent since 1990 that many families are now affected. What is very worrying is that it has taken so many years for the "experts" to even concede that there is an autism epidemic.

Psychiatrists and psychologists and those within the traditional autism support and services organizations must bear the responsibility for this tragic state of affairs, as it is they who have continually denied what we have been witnessing with our own eyes. Foreign epidemiological studies that never survive close scrutiny are paraded as proof that an estimated 100-fold increase in autism is a mirage, or that the controversial MMR vaccine cannot possibly be implicated. The Scotsman article clearly helps illustrate what is a farcical and irrational stance in the face of the latest Cambridge University revelations.

By sustaining their standpoint, these interest groups have hampered clinical examination, and therefore medical treatments.

Autism Treatment Trust opened a consultation and treatment centre in Edinburgh in April 2006 and to date has comprehensively tested almost 200 autistic children. The results are very revealing. For example, heavy-metal toxicity is a common feature, with significantly high levels of lead, aluminium, tin and antimony present.

Inflammation, particularly of the bowel, is often identified. Immune dysfunction is a recurring theme. Food allergies and intolerances regularly emerge.

These abnormalities are all treatable. The simple fact is, autistic children are ill and have been failed at every turn.

This is a shameful episode.

BILL WELSH
President, Autism Treatment Trust
Great King Street
Edinburgh

Autism United: NY Special Ed Chief Denies Autism Increase

Autism United Challenges NY State Special Ed Chief's Denial of Autism Increase

Autism United, a new organization of parents and service organizations, today (7/8/07) submitted a letter to the NY State official in charge of special education policy challenging her statement that "diagnostic shift" explains the increase in the number of children with autism. The NY official's statement, quoted in a July 8, 2007 NY Times article reporting about supposed declining rates of children in special education, is the latest troubling statement by a public official denying the reality of the autism epidemic. Denial of an autism epidemic would justify a public policy denying the expenditure of public funds on the education of children with autism....

Read the whole thing.