Epidemic! Epidemic! Yeah right...

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I have an IT job and my husband is an engineer. I'm an extreme systemizer and that helped me a lot. Italy is a country that gives almost no chances of social and economic improvement so it was unlikely that I had this job. So SBC seems to be right... it would be significant to reduce populations to the ones who have an IT or an engineering job.

The conclusions from the CDC study did not suggest that the results were accurate for the entire country, only among reported cases for children. They used the same type method and demographic in 2002. Without a similiar method and demographic, there would be no way of accurately measuring the increase in the numbers of reported cases of Autism among children in the US.

Regardless of whether the increase is due to diagnosis, genetics, or environment, there is an accurate measure from the study in the US, that the number of reported cases of Autism is rising in children, particularly among those that require services in the school system. Government must measure the prevalence of the condition in children to plan for the future needs in the school system, and for social programs.

My understanding is the incidence of Autism in England for children is similiar to that of children in the US. We should use a screening method here to get some kind of idea of the number of higher functioning adult autistic people in the US, as done in England. We also need it for youth as well, because we don't have a full measure for higher functioning Autism in children as well.

I'm not sure how it works in England, but if they measure children there by reported cases rather than the screening measure used recently in adults there, there is not an accurate measure of results in comparing the two demographics.

The same type survey and diagnostic method would need to be done among children as was done in the adult population to get an accurate comparison of prevalence of Autism among the two demographics.

Screening methods will almost always show a greater prevalence of a condition than a measure using actual reported cases.

It's reported cases as children. To be honest my experiences as of late have shown that the programs people tend to place o us in to are a one-size fits all policy that doesn't even tackle their own concept of spectrum, never mind the actual ability of each person. The only thing, I feel, these policies affirm is a broad feeling of inferiority among those who are involved with them.


We can agree there. They nearly always do.

I agree that is a problem. A big problem is there really is no such a thing as Us, when it comes to what people call Autistic traits. It is as varied among each individual as personality is in the general population.

It would be nearly impossible to tailor programs to meet the individual differences between each autistic person; however there is a great deal of improvement needed in the identification, awareness, education, and understanding of higher functioning autistic people to provide the support they need as a general demographic. Work in that area has only just begun, in the US.


Most of the government's focus here as been on those that are more severely impacted by autism; they admit this in the research, specifically the research methodology that was used in 1998 to measure Autism in the Atlanta Metro area, that the CDC uses in official statistics for the US.

I doubt people have a deep enough understanding to actually know what causes these differences. The amount of mud people are slinging around I wouldn't actually trust anyone to give me a categorical sheet before I met the people I was helping.

There is plenty of scientific evidence that people don't know what causes the specific differences among individuals and little scientific evidence for any specific causes for the differences.

People change on a day to day basis for a myriad of different reasons, so whatever the differences are today for an individual may be a great deal different the next day depending on health, both physical and mental, personal circumstance, environmental factors; all the things measured that change in our life on a daily basis. The differences are a moving target for those that help and for those that are helped.

And little empirical evidence of what actually sets all of these people apart. I want to meet them now.

A couple of years ago ,the wife and I spend a week staying with a couple, both of which were diagnosed with Aspergers. Both are on that part of the spectrum where they can function normally most of the time but certain activities, like driving, are not recommended.

Over the course of the week, both became convinced that I'm on the spectrum myself. My wife agreed; she had thought this for some time based on my idiosyncrasies.

Those behavioral differences go back to childhood. I remember really enjoying flipping my shoe up off my foot and catching it. I would do this compulsively until it landed on bike shed roof and I'd end up outside the office waiting for the cane. I was five at the time.

I would often end up at school without socks, would forget books, would make the sort of social faux pa's that get you beaten to a pulp by the bullies looking for kids were different. It didn't help I was the brightest kid in the school.

I learned coping mechanisms that I use to this day. I have a checklist before I leave the house, starts with my shoes being tied, I have socks on, etc, and ends with my hair being combed. When I've been thrown off kilter by events (9/11 as it happened, death of mother-in-law) I've forgone the list and later noticed I was not dressed appropriately.

I hate certain textures. I get overwhelmed by too much sensory input, if I'm hyperfocusing it hurts to be pulled out of that focus. That served me well in studies but does not work when a staff member gets their head bitten off from pulling me out of diagnosing a programming problem.

After stepping back and reassessing the social adjustment issues that have plagued my life, I am firmly of the opinion that I have always been on the milder end of the spectrum since a child, there simply was no diagnosis when I was a child.

I credit my ability to think 'outside the box' as a positive benefit of being on the spectrum. I've learned to keep silent when others seem to be so slow processing information or cannot grasp a concept very quickly in order to promote better social cohesion. I learned to suffer fools, even if not gladly.

I would not want to be neuro-typical. The benefits far outweigh the downside in my case - at least from my perspective, which is understandably skewed.

There are observable behavioral differences among people on the spectrum. Anyone can see that part. Some can talk, some can't, some exhibit repetitive behaviors to an extreme degree, some to no degree. Some can't wear shirts with tags in them, some can. Some are completely involved in their special interests, some aren't. It goes on and on. That's what spectrum means, a variation of symptoms in a condition among individuals.

A syndrome like Aspergers is a collection of traits that one individual made up by observing behaviors in others, without that observation of behaviors there would be no such thing as Aspergers, just people in the general population that shared some similiar behavioral traits with others.

If you want to know what causes each individual difference much of that has not been conclusively determined by research.

A common problem that has been identified with Autism, is not understanding that people have different ways of thinking and experiencing life. It may be that this is why you refer to your own personal experience at times when you refute a comment that comes up that other people with Aspergers experience life in another way than you do by suggesting it's not that way for "us". I don't think I have heard anyone else suggest that people with Aspergers don't have differences among each other.

There is no us (in the respect that Autistic people are all the same). There are those that share a label for a disorder that have individual traits of autism that vary among those individuals.

There is a spectrum of individuals with many different behavioral traits that have been labeled by psychologists with words to describe disorders which they have come up with, by observing humans.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean by differences; if so please clarify, if you will.

I don't trust what people transmit to me as much as I trust my own eyes in this regard. Being sceptical about what people say about us is healthy. People have sent death threats over this kind of stuff.