Thoughts on the Autism "Epidemic"

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I'm not sure if this link is going to work, but it's a very interesting chapter on autism prevalence in relation to SSI which I found online:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK332896/

Ah. There is one element that has been happening in the western world, and that is that in recent years the middle classes of society have almost dissapeared and the gap between the rich and poor has also increased massively, to the point where there are less and less rich but more and more poorer classes. If the study does not allow for this shift, it will sway the results into thinking that the main increases in autism related diagnoseses will be with the lower classes of society, when in reality, it is society itself which is changing that is the cause and less likely to be those diagnosed with autism in themselves if that makes sense?

That seems likely.
Generally speaking, autists have poor job prospects.
Not all, but many, will be limited in their ability to earn a decent income long-term.

Yes, it seems to be common to hit burnout around the 2-3 year mark.

I've managed to struggle through that period twice and found if you can get to about 5 or 6 years things tend to ease up. By then one is part of the furniture and they rely on you too much to let you go easily, so you're more likely to get whatever adjustments you need than the boot.

But of course it all depends on the job and the people whether it's possible to stick it out. I've been fortunate to have landed in an AS-friendly career and had relatively supportive colleagues.

All the hf aspies I’ve known were forced to retire early, mid fifties at best.

They scrapped by after that limping to retirement age on benefits or crappy jobs before being eligible for a state pension.

Maybe our ability to cope goes down with age. I certainly find things tougher in middle age than in my 20s. Another decade and I might be finished too.

Maybe expectations are higher as well.

I found this comprehensive summary on possible autism causes / triggers:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... .v4i0.7111

It is interesting that they actually refer to autism, asthma, and metabolic disorders as epidemics, even though they are not infectious diseases. I had been thinking the term 'epidemic' for autism was just hyperbole, so wasn;t expecting that in a scientific paper.

But I agree with their conclusion (bold is mine):

Yes indeed.
I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

For example, there's this:

I'm also interested in the link to maternal stress.
As a factor, it seems worthy of more attention than it usually gets, I think.

I’ve been on my job 40 years, and will retire in 2 years.

I didn’t do as well as I might have done had I not been autistic, it must be said.

The “higher” incidence of autism, to me, is caused by the broadening of the criteria.

Yes, that is the general concensus of opinion here.
But you have not done a scientific study on this, Kraftie, so how can you be sure?
Not meaning to pick on you personally, you understand, just trying to explain my view.

What I mean is, while it is clear that there has been a broadening of the diagnostic criteria which would be expected to result in increasing the apparent prevalence of autism, who are we to conclude that must be the sole explanation?
Can you point to any study which actually demonstrates that broadening of diagnostic criteria is the only cause of the increase, and that environmental factors play no role?
Or are you just jumping to the most obvious or convenient conclusion?
And if the general concensus were wrong, would we be doing a disservice to the ever-increasing numbers of severely autistic children, by failing to adequately investigate causes of the dramatic increase?

Sure, there might be environmental influences at play. And research is addressing this.

But the consensus amongst the experts is that the “broadening of the criteria” is the primary (but not the only) cause of this supposed epidemic.

I don’t believe vaccines or their preservatives cause autism. Neither do the vast majority of experts. I believe, if this was the case, then we would have had an “epidemic” during the 50s and 60s.

I’m certainly not precluding other potential causes—including environmental ones. Especially environmental insults around birth, like anoxia (I knew a person with autism from that cause).

I am all for research in this area.

Well, I agree with you about vaccines, there've been a lot of studies on that which have not demonstrated any link.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of studies on other environmental factors, though.

Most autism research seems to be trying to pinpoint genetic causes rather than environmental. I think study of autism genetics is sort of the "in" thing - probably because we know that the condition is mostly genetic but no-one has pin-pointed the combinations of genes and/or mechanisms (except in the case of a few specific mutations) - so the field is still open for someone to make a big breakthrough and get famous as the person who "solved the autism puzzle".

I think genetic studies are the low-hanging fruit, but by concentrating on these we may be missing the whole picture.

I do believe there are “autisms,” rather than just one “autism.”