The UCLA/M.I.N.D. study was looking at childhood autism cases specifically and not the broader category of PDD (ASD). They specifically addressed the issue of changing criteria for diagnosis and they found that this does NOT fully explain the rise in autism cases in California over a ten year period. It is a real increase – not caused by changes in diagnosis.

There’s quite a bit of confusion about this so let me clear it up once and for all. Asperger’s Syndrome is NOT a type of autism. There is a grouping of diseases called PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder) or ASD (Autism Spectral Disorder) colluoqially. PDD contains the following separate diseases:

1.) Autism
2.) Asperger’s Syndrome
3.) Rhett’s Syndrome
4.) PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified)

In informal usage you sometimes here that “Asperger’s is a milder form of Autism” or “PDD-NOS is a milder form of Autism”, etc., etc. Technically speaking this is incorrect. Asperger’s and Autism are topologically siblings, not child and parent. The correct statement would be:

Asperger’s Syndrome is a milder disease under PDD than Autism is.

> Times change. If that happened today (a Typhoid Mary situation), I’m sure
> the ACLU would immediately file a lawsuit against the “imprisonment”
> quarantine.

Uh, I call shenanigans. I’m pretty sure that in a Typhoid Mary situation, the ACLU would *not* immediately file a lawsuit, for a few reasons.

Note that if someone is infected with a disease, you’re not quarantining them, you’re isolating them. Quarantining is something you do to healthy people to keep them from getting infected.

From The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 357:433-435 August 2, 2007 Number 5 “Legal Power and Legal Rights — Isolation and Quarantine in the Case of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis”, by Wendy E. Parmet, J.D.

“Both the states and the federal government have the authority, in appropriate cases, to compel isolation and quarantine. The states derive their authority from their police power, the sovereign authority they retain under the Constitution. Although the federal government lacks a general police power, it has long used its authority for regulating international and interstate commerce to quarantine interstate or international travelers or commerce. Today, Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services (which acts through the CDC) to apprehend, detain, and forcibly examine persons to prevent certain communicable diseases (specified by the President) from entering the country or traveling across state lines. Tuberculosis and types of influenza with pandemic potential are among the listed diseases.

Traditionally, courts have interpreted the authority of the states and the federal government broadly, giving great deference to public health officials. Still, even broad authority is not unfettered. Detained persons have a right to a court review of their detention’s legality. Moreover, constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process must be respected.”

Now, the ACLU might file suit to prevent one community from being quarantined while another is not (for example, if someone quarantined all the low income communities and left the high income communities un-quarantined), and they might file suit to get an isolation lifted if the carrier wasn’t carrying the disease everyone thought he was carrying, but being interested in defending civil rights doesn’t mean that the ACLU is suicidal.

Minor nitpick:

> BTW, the ACLU has yet to shoot down the medical-only exemptions in
> these two states so they are constitutional as of now.

That doesn’t make them constitutional. That just makes them part of the current law code. This country approaches law somewhat backwards (on purpose) -> laws that are blatantly unconstitutional (like the Patriot Act) can be passed, they’re part of current code until a successful challenge overturns the law on constitutional grounds.

I got rubella as a child, my sister got pertussis as a teenager. We were absolutely surrounded by the diseases because no-one else in the groups vaccinated. The rubella was why we moved out of the first area, pertussis why she ended up moving to a regional area without her beloved hippies. She didn’t want to see anyone else in the family get these diseases as an adult. I’m lucky – I’m an urbanite so there are fewer anti-vaccination people around.

I would like people to see the absolute grace on a refugee mother’s face when she finds out she can actually prevent her kid from getting these kinds of diseases. She know what they do, how they affect more than just ‘a couple of weeks of scratching’. Hell we got stuck in rural NSW when I was a preteen because I got chicken pox and became really really ill (up until a few years ago I thought I’d only had a mild case – turns out I was delirious for four days…)

As far as autism goes – I’m ‘apparently’ on the spectrum. The tests for Aspergers? Nearly as bad as the ‘tests’ for ADD – they can be applied to almost anyone. And don’t forget that one Asperger’s raising another (which I’m guessing the case is going to be in Silicon Valley) can axacerbate certain symptoms of Aspergers. I just don’t trust that diagnosis – it pathologises some really normal behaviours. I don’t deny it as a diagnosis, I just think it tends to get bandied about in geek circles as yet another reason we’re different.

Two words: Asperger’s Syndrome. Aspergers was never included on the autism lists until about ten years ago – it wasn’t even put in the DSM until 1994! Add those with Aspergers to those with Autism, and you immediately see a sharp rise in diagnoses for Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Funny, that. There’s also High-Funtioning Autism, which CAN pass under the radar – it’s essentially Autism where the autistic person is verbal.

I have Aspergers. I was a textbook case when I was a kid, but because I was already well in to primary school when the diagnosis was published, and I had already had a reputation for being ‘weird’ and ‘eccentric’, I DID pass under the radar. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was eighteen, in fact, and the diagnosis was much more common. So add someone else to the list who has been autistic all along but only recently increased the number of ASD diagnoses…

Skeptical Inquirer had a couple of articles on the debate in a recent issue (January, I think?). The article by Dr. Steven Novella cites some studies (and they’re included in his references at the end of the article) that looked at autism rates in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations. Some of the studies, IIRC, looked at just MMR vs. no MMR, while others looked at vaccines in total vs. no vaccines in total. That might be a good starting point.

Most studies refute this. Only about ten percent of autism cases have an identifiable genetic cause (typically Fragile X).

hypertexttransportprotocol colon forwardslash forwardslash www dot emedicine dot com forwardslash ped forwardslash TOPIC180.HTM

“Sex: The male-to-female ratio is 3-4:1. Autistic disorder is most common in boys who have the 46,XY karyotype (ie, the karyotype of healthy normal boys). In some studies, fragile X is reported in approximately one tenth of males with autistic disorder.”

The 4 to 1 male to female ratio is certainly suggestive of some genetic component but that is far from an identifiable genetic cause. In my son’s case (age 5 with autism) he had a specific test for Fragile X which came back negative and a battery of genetic tests called a CMA (Chromosome Microarray Analysis) which looks for a variety of genetic problems. All of the tests have come back negative. More than 90 percent of autism cases are unexplained medically and scientifically. It is this one fact, more than any other, that allows room for the folks at ASA and DAN! to spread their conspiracy theories.