"Epidemic Denial" for Autism Epidemic?.

A book was published in 2017 that I believe will do for "epidemic denial" what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring did for DDT. Denial: How refusing to face the facts about our autism epidemic hurts children, families, and our future, was written by former UPI investigative journalist Dan Olmsted and Harvard MBA and autism parent Mark Blaxill. Apparently, the authors had misgivings about writing an entire book dedicated to a topic that one would hope most people consider to be poppycock, noting that "part of our personal challenge as an autism parent and a health journalist becomes taking the 'idea' [that there is no real autism epidemic] seriously enough to debunk it thoroughly, not just wait for history to stomp all over nonsense as it is eventually wont to do."



Olmsted and Blaxill's book is so incisive and so clear that I will struggle to do the book justice. What I can do is offer you a few select passages from the book that I think stand alone in painting epidemic denial in the absurd light it deserves:



"Epidemic denial doesn't add up. Take the U.S. population of 124 million in 1931-the year the eldest child in that first report on autism was born. Divide that number by the current autism prevalence of one in sixty-eight children [note: it's now 1 in 36]. There should have been 1.8 million Americans with autism in 1931. There weren't. We have scoured the medical literature for cases before then, and there are essentially none to be found."



They also provide "since the beginning of time" math, which makes Epidemic Denier's claims even harder to accept:



"Back up a bit more: how many people have ever lived on earth? About 100 billion by 1931. Again, simple math yields about one-and-a-half-billion autistic individuals who have lived before 1930. Now we begin to glimpse the emptiness behind the Epidemic Denier's claims. There may have been scattered individuals with enough traits to qualify for an autism diagnosis, but 1.5 billion would have been far more visible. Someone would have said something. Given the distinctive profile of autistic children, it's impossible that no doctor or social observer commented on their markedly different behavior."