1. Arguing over imperfect interpretations of hastily chosen words can be counterproductive.

2. Indeed, as the body of knowledge regarding autism and its bedfellows has grown, so too has grown the diagnosis rate. In the past, kids with autism were diagnosed with things like “unspecified dementia”.

3. When one member of a family has a disability (regardless of its form), then the whole family must make lifestyle choices that take the disability into account.

4. Someone will always misunderstand you and your disabled child. Accept it and move forward.

5. We as parents of kids with disabilities sometimes make poor choices as we adjust to our kids’ behaviors. Accept it and move forward.

6. What works for one kid with autism often doesn’t work for the next one.

7. If you take offense at another writer’s opinions about your posts, then perhaps blogging isn’t for you.

i read your post. There are wrong diagnosis all over the medical field, of course.

Practical measures and treatments used by specialists in autism are directed at specific manifestations of problems that the child has.

There are thousands of scientific researches articles published, of course.

But from the practical point,
if you need to help your child-

you go to the specialist who CAN DO IT

u don’t really think if it is autism, asperger, speech delay or anything else

Behavioral therapy and other methods will benefit your child, if you have one of course, even if there is no autism or even if autism was never discovered.

As a parent you need your child to develop and to develop brilliantly, get it?

by the way schizophrenia is also a subjective disease: would you trust a mad person when he tells you that he is a Caesar and is hearing voices:)

You should go to the nearest special ed facility where they have autistic kids and USE YOUR EYES in YOUR HEAD.

You will make lots of subjective observations and will share with us

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/116/1/e120

Here’s a taste: The USDE data suggest that the prevalence of autism is rising, but is this attributable to an actual increase in prevalence or to a broader definition of autism and greater public awareness? A number of studies have suggested that the diagnosis of autism, even by medical practitioners, has experienced significant drift over time.1,4,5 A review by Wing and Potter13 provides an excellent overview of this problem. A recent study of autism incidence between 1976 and 1997 concluded that the timing of the increase in autism diagnoses suggests that it was attributable to increased awareness and changes in diagnostic criteria.14

Despite the specific diagnostic criteria provided by the DSM-IV, the diagnosis of autism is completely subjective. There are no objective findings, radiologic studies, or laboratory tests that are diagnostic for autism. Even the presence of disorders such as fragile X15,16 or tuberous sclerosis,17,18 which are often associated with autism, are not diagnostic of autism, because only a fraction of patients with these conditions have autism.

Finally, at least 2 studies have suggested that autistic traits are not a discrete feature seen only in the presence of autism but rather are a continuum. As such, a certain degree of “autistic” behaviors can be expected in many “typical” individuals.19,20 This further complicates the diagnosis of autism, because there is no distinct “cutoff” point between typical and autistic. There are indications that the increasing awareness of autism in the medical and educational communities may have led to a gradual shift in diagnosis to include less disabled individuals who would not previously have been described as autistic13 or would have received a different diagnosis.5

autism awareness is a good thing:

it is serving well for any problem in child development:

if a parent is concerned and starts paying MORE attention to his child upbringing-
IT ALWAYS YIELDS EXCELLENT RESULTS for a kid

in a way Savage idiotic remark served good purpose after all by attracting attention to the lack of responsibility lots of parents have:

no school or society will do a parent’s job. Thats a fact.

As for Savage, he said that autism is 99% of autism cases are fake, which is practically all autism cases, which seems to indicate autism itself is pretty much a fake. (Those )()(*&&&^ kids are doing it all for big welfare bucks!)

He also goes on to propose a ludicrous “cure”; scream at the kid, and order him to be a man! (What if said kid is a girl?), something that won’t work with an autistic kid (and probably wouldn’t work with most non-autistic ones either.)

Quit trying to cover up for Savage. He said what he said, and he meant it. If he’s really worried about misdiagnosis in autism cases, he could have said that, in plain and simple language, without insulting anybody, or recommending screaming at a kid as a good way of dealing with autism (or anything else.) If he’s backtracking now, it’s because he’s scared of losing the big advertising bucks. His field of expertise—aside from being a radio shock-jock—is in some strange Berkeley nutritional health field, not neurological disabilties, or autism.

No one is “out to get” anyone. It’s that too many of us have seen and smelled this “crisis” rat before and people legitimate questions and concerns. ALL science claims should be ALWAYS questioned.