"The Spectrum" How Autism was Hijacked by Narcissists by Hannah Spier, MD at Psychobabble.
The comments are long but include some good talking points. There are plenty of people with nothing but angry and ignorant opinions (on several sides of the debate), but there are also some genuine disagreements from people who have some evidence and persuasive reasoning on their side. And there are some who are both angry and knowledgeable.
From the essay:
When Leo Kanner first defined autism in 1943, it was estimated that 4 to 5 children per 10,000 were affected. Today, the CDC puts that number at 1 in 36, almost one child in every classroom. If any other medical condition, blindness, epilepsy or paralysis showed a spike like this, it would trigger a pandemic-level outcry. But with autism, we see at best a curious murmuring as to what this is, and at worst, a growing chorus of people insisting, they too, belong in the group.
From experts, instead of raised alarms or calls for serious public health investigation (as would be expected for any other childhood disorder) we get calls for inclusivity and a self-congratulatory attitude toward their advancement in diagnostic understanding and tools. Another example of ideological capture of psychiatry by cultural sentiment.
A few commenters with some solid points disagreed with nearly every part of that statement above. Of particular interest to me was a reference to the pioneering work of Grunya Sukhareva in the 20's and 30's, who identified autism and described what was clearly the same pathology quite differently. I will have to look into this. Stay tuned.
I will warn you that you will be entering a world of accusation, counter-accusation, and ill-will. So of course my comments will spread oil on troubled waters.
2 comments:
If you had the patience to scan through all those comments, I salute you. The signal to noise ratio looked very very low.
Not all. The top six and a few of the comments under those, plus the last ten and their followup comments.
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