By The Free Press | Created at 2024-11-15 16:02:14 | Updated at 2024-11-15 18:18:19
2 hours ago
Whatever you may think of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., let’s give them credit for being essentially the only politicians to invoke an alarming and shadowy topic few want to acknowledge: the crisis of America’s rising rates of autism.
And with the news that Kennedy is going to be Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, there will be an opportunity for them to act upon their concern. But the peril is that, given Trump and Kennedy’s history of blaming vaccines, they might continue down this discredited path.
The once-rare diagnosis of autism now consumes the lives of ever-growing numbers of U.S. families—including mine. But autism has become so mired in controversy that wary politicians tend to look away. When comedian Dave Smith recently asked this unfunny question about Trump and Kennedy—“Why are they the only ones who are talking about this?”—his remarks on Instagram were viewed 3.7 million times.
This crisis urgently needs to be addressed, not just because children with autism and their families need research, hope, and help but because all of society is affected by a growing cohort of young adults who will require lifetime care. The numbers are astonishing and irrefutable.
An autism diagnosis was extremely rare in the 1960s to early 1980s, in the range of 0.01 to 0.05 percent of all children. Then, in the early 1990s, clinics and schools began to notice an inexplicable surge of cases. A 1996 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance conducted in response to national concerns found a prevalence of 0.42 percent of 8-year-old children in the Atlanta area. Starting in 2000, the CDC undertook rigorous multisite studies using consistent methodology. It first found that 0.67 percent of 8-year-olds had autism, followed by steady increases thereafter: 1.13 percent in 2008, 1.85 percent in 2016, and 2.76 percent in 2020.
The latest U.S. federal agency surveys now identify more than 3 percent of children ages 3 to 17 as having autism—at least a 60-fold increase from 50 years ago. And some studies report even higher rates: For example 4.6 percent of 4-year-olds in San Diego County in 2020.
No matter the magnitude of each successive increase, the media often issues the reassurance that the rise is not real, but a function of more recognition and of broader definitions of the condition. But Kennedy, who is 70 years old, made a salient observation last year in an interview: “I have never in my life seen a man my age with full-blown autism, not once. Where are these men?”
