The CDC is now estimating that 1 in only 88 children is now being identified with an autism spectrum disorder. If you don’t already know someone with an ASD, you will soon.
As much as we would like to be able to wave a magic wand and have government fully fund any and all autism research, common sense and history tells us this cannot happen. Money is getting tighter as Congress overspends its revenues and spends 3x more money on debt interest than it does on Afghanistan and Iraq. And we don’t want to get into whether the government has been an honest broker with respect to vaccine research…
We need you. Look at your talents and help someone. Maybe you have money. Maybe you have time. Maybe you have compassion. Maybe you have an ear. Maybe you have prayers. Maybe you have a combination. 
This is your neighbor, your kid’s classmate at school, a kid in your congregation, on your kid’s sports team, in your kid’s scout troop, somewhere. If you have the means but not the target, then go to autismspeaks.org and see what you can do there. Please.
I hope this comes across nicely, but autism is important for YOU because it affects your family. What is important for ME is mental health issues, Crohn’s disease, asthma, and autoimmune disorders in general. Did you know that, while bipolar people have a far greater risk of dying from suicide or accident than the general population, we may also have a higher mortality from natural causes compared to people in the general population of similar age and gender but without mental illness?
Depending on the government for our research seems pointless and wasteful to me. It ends up that Peter ends up paying for Paul’s research, and Paul pays for Peter’s research. Let’s cut out the government middle man and support the causes we want.
I believe we should support the neighbors that God gives us, as we find them. We all suffer.
I get what you’re saying. Autism does hit home here, as your issues hit where you are. The nature of economics is that there is scarcity of time and resources, and I’m not saying that our needs outweigh your needs.
I’ll pray for your family, and you pray for ours — especially since some of the autism pathologies currently under research connect very closely to Chron’s and autoimmune disease.
We have gifts, and we can and should use them where we are able.
To be completely honest, I am skeptical of these numbers.
I have two daughters, and one has Asperger Syndrome–which for those who don’t know, is considered an ASD (though there is actually some debate about this).
When you spend a lot of time with someone who has Asperger, you pick up on the kind of thought process that is at work. But to recognize it in other people, you have to know them *really* well, because you have to know how they think. External behavior alone is not a good indicator.
My other daughter clearly does not have AS, and probably doesn’t have any ASD at all; and yet a doctor decided she probably had AS, based on her failure to make eye contact with him. (He didn’t know about her sister’s diagnosis.) Of course this is just silly: There are all kinds of reasons why someone might fail to make eye contact. But because this doctor jumped to conclusions, my NT daughter will probably be counted among the 1 in 88 in statistics like these.
I believe we’re seeing a problem similar to what happened with ADD and ADHD in the 90s: There is so much publicity about ASD that people are hypersensitive to the warning signs. ASD has become the go-to diagnosis for any issues someone might be having. It’s a real disservice both to the kids who are wrongly diagnosed, and to the kids who really have an ASD and are lumped in with every problem student imaginable.
Diagnosis in high-functioning cases should not be taken lightly. My AS daughter’s diagnosis came after a months-long exhaustive study of both her personal history and our entire family history, including many hours interviewing her and observing her behavior and interactions across a variety of settings. Any diagnosis of a high-functioning ASD without this kind of evaluation is highly suspect.
Two comments to the posters above – of course autism is going to be IMPORTANT to us as it is lived everyday. I think the bigger picture that you miss when you mention the string of other maladies that you mention is that there IS in fact insurance coverage, medications, etc. for these issues. And the bigger issue is the growing numbers – 1 in 500, 1 in 250, 1 in 110, and now 1 in 88. Something is causing this and it is NOT better diagnosis. If it was better diagnosis than where are the 1 in 88 adults on the spectrum.
2nd comment – I don’t know anybody that takes diagnosis lightly. In fact, autism diagnosis is taken with quite a heavy heart I would guess in a large majority of cases. If you daughter “clearly does not have AS” – what exactly were you looking for at the doctor’s visit?
It took 15 months before we were able to get our child diagnosed. It was pages and pages of paperwork as well as 3 multiple hour long appointments with MD and PhD level professionals.
However, if you go to your pediatrician at your child’s 12 month appt. and there are red flags including no eye contact or no pointing than your doctor would be remiss in not sending you on to a further appointment. This external behavior should be enough to require follow-up. We NEED early diagnosis, so we can get our kiddos in therapies as early as possible for the best possible outcome.
Hey, I know this is from ages ago, but things on my end got really chaotic for a while–and I just noticed this comment thread still sitting there flagged in my news reader.
I certainly did not intend to suggest that your child was misdiagnosed. If I gave that impression, I am very sorry. I was speaking only from my own experience with doctors and special ed teachers who make snap judgments rather than referring people to professionals who really know what they’re doing. Sadly, there is a whole segment of the medical community that follows fads instead of hard science when it comes to behavioral issues in children, and I fear that a lot of them are jumping on an ASD bandwagon right now–which is not good for anyone.