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1,200% increase in California autism over 20 yrs

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pezar
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07 May 2009, 7:10 am

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12312452

Wow. The numbers don't lie. At this rate neurotypicals will soon be a minority. Maybe that's why they're trying so desperately to cure us. I know that WP frequently crashes, I log on and there's 700 people connected and then it just goes down.



Kangoogle
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07 May 2009, 7:47 am

pezar wrote:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12312452

Wow. The numbers don't lie. At this rate neurotypicals will soon be a minority. Maybe that's why they're trying so desperately to cure us. I know that WP frequently crashes, I log on and there's 700 people connected and then it just goes down.

Or loads of Aspies have moved to Silicon Valley and god forbid, had children? Non?



Aspinator
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07 May 2009, 8:12 am

The story is a half truth. Since AS has only been part of the DSM since 1994, more people are becoming aware of it. Plus, many people born prior to that are just now getting diagnosed.



JadedMantis
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07 May 2009, 10:01 am

Quote:
The numbers also include only those with classic autism.


This concerns me. If that is true, then the impact of the lesser known disorders on the spectrum being diagnosed more often is not factored in here. A 1200% increase in classical autism is a major concern. Of course it may also just mean that more people are getting treatment while before these individuals were just locked up somewhere.



CanyonWind
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07 May 2009, 11:26 am

That struck me too. It's easy to see how aspies could be overlooked, but "classic autism" is a whole lot more obvious.

And Silicon Valley and the other high tech industries don't represent that big a fraction of the population of California. Most people in California work regular jobs the same as anywhere else.

It's also obvious that a change on anywhere near this scale could not represent a one generation change in gene frequencies.


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07 May 2009, 11:43 am

Strange i live on the east coast now, but i was born in CA :) :?:


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07 May 2009, 12:54 pm

Kangoogle wrote:
pezar wrote:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12312452

Wow. The numbers don't lie. At this rate neurotypicals will soon be a minority. Maybe that's why they're trying so desperately to cure us. I know that WP frequently crashes, I log on and there's 700 people connected and then it just goes down.

Or loads of Aspies have moved to Silicon Valley and god forbid, had children? Non?



Trust me, aspies in Silicon Valley don't have very good chances of that. Money and social status are huge there, and the gender ratio is badly lopsided. Unless you're a hot-shot programmer at a major company, in which case your chances would be pretty good anyway, you're not likely to meet anyone there.



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07 May 2009, 1:41 pm

20 years ago, in 1989, the DSM-III was still the last word in diagnostic criteria in the United States. Even for "classic" autism, its diagnostic criteria were more stringent than those in the DSM-IV, published in 1994.

This analysis would be much akin to analyzing birth rates in the US since 1929, without taking WWII, economic booms or busts, migration to cities, or the introduction of safe, routine, legal birth control methods into account. Analyzing data in a vacuum can lead to interesting results...


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07 May 2009, 8:33 pm

gsilver wrote:
Kangoogle wrote:
pezar wrote:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12312452

Wow. The numbers don't lie. At this rate neurotypicals will soon be a minority. Maybe that's why they're trying so desperately to cure us. I know that WP frequently crashes, I log on and there's 700 people connected and then it just goes down.

Or loads of Aspies have moved to Silicon Valley and god forbid, had children? Non?



Trust me, aspies in Silicon Valley don't have very good chances of that. Money and social status are huge there, and the gender ratio is badly lopsided. Unless you're a hot-shot programmer at a major company, in which case your chances would be pretty good anyway, you're not likely to meet anyone there.


Unless one is a Castro regular adopting.


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JohnnyCarcinogen
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13 May 2009, 9:41 am

pezar wrote:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12312452

Wow. The numbers don't lie. At this rate neurotypicals will soon be a minority. Maybe that's why they're trying so desperately to cure us. I know that WP frequently crashes, I log on and there's 700 people connected and then it just goes down.


Maybe the diagnostic tools used to diagnose Autism & Asperger's just got better; after all, we experienced a technological revolution in the 80's & 90's - science was being let out of the dark ages, so to speak.
Just a theory :wink:


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13 May 2009, 12:52 pm

gsilver wrote:
Kangoogle wrote:
Or loads of Aspies have moved to Silicon Valley and god forbid, had children? Non?



Trust me, aspies in Silicon Valley don't have very good chances of that. Money and social status are huge there, and the gender ratio is badly lopsided. Unless you're a hot-shot programmer at a major company, in which case your chances would be pretty good anyway, you're not likely to meet anyone there.



Trust you? I trust Wired more than you, even if the article is old and, by now, MS could have replaced their skilled coders with Social NT drones with no coding skills:

Quote:
Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame?


Quote:
At clinics and schools in the Valley, the observation that most parents of autistic kids are engineers and programmers who themselves display autistic behavior is not news. And it may not be news to other communities either. Last January, Microsoft became the first major US corporation to offer its employees insurance benefits to cover the cost of behavioral training for their autistic children. One Bay Area mother told me that when she was planning a move to Minnesota with her son, who has Asperger's syndrome, she asked the school district there if they could meet her son's needs. "They told me that the northwest quadrant of Rochester, where the IBMers congregate, has a large number of Asperger kids," she recalls. "It was recommended I move to that part of town."


http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html