Anatomy Shared Article Research

This blog exists for the Anatomy students at Tree of Life Christian School. We will be reading various scientific articles, summarizing our research, and then commenting on others' summaries. We hope to broaden our view of the current research surrounding the human body, and to help others see how truly amazing the design of the human body is.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Is There Really an Autism Epidemic?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=is-there-really-an-autism-epidemic
Summary:
This article explains the shocking proportion of children who suffer from autism. As of now there are one in every 166 children will be diagnosed with autism which leads to a 657 percent increase between the years of 1993-2003. These statistics are vastly different from the one in every 2,500 that researchers quoted for decades. Because of these new statistics, many educators and researchers have referred to autism as an epidemic.
Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that it can be very mild or extremely severe. Children that have autism tend to be very limited in their communication or even mute. They do not like create close relationships with others and prefer to be alone. Autistic children have a high aversion to change and two thirds of them are mentally challenged. For reasons unknown autism affects more males than females. There are many things that are said to play a role in children developing autism, one of which is genetic, but genetics alone do cannot possibly explain the extraordinary rise in cases of children with autism. Some other factors that have been proposed are allergies, viruses, antibiotics and even increased rates of television viewing. Although these possible causes remain speculative one possibility that seems to attract more attention than the others are vaccines.
Because autism is usually diagnosed around the age of two, which is shortly after young children have received many vaccinations, vaccines could be seen as a possible culprit. Many parents recall their children developing autism shortly after being given a vaccine for mumps, measles or rubella (German measles) but recent published research seems to convey different. Many researchers claim that Japanese, American and European studies say that even with the decline of MMR vaccines, the number of new cases of autism has continued to rise. Because of this, researchers claim that there is very little evidence, if any, that vaccines cause autism. Even with the evidence that exists there is still a question of whether or not an autism epidemic even probable. Research suggests that the diagnostic process of autism has loosened in recent years leading to a substantially higher number of children being diagnosed with autism.
It has been said that legal changes also have played a big role in the rise of autism. Laws now require schools to provide the number of students within the school who have disabilities. Because of this there has been a huge surge in the number of children with the disease. It is said though, that these numbers are not based on carful diagnoses. Although the article does not rule out autism’s growing prevalence to our society, it does suggest that there not near enough evidence to claim it as an epidemic.
My Opinion:
I believe that autism is very prevalent in today’s society. But I also think that our society puts way to much emphasis on labeling children with autism instead of helping them to succeed. Because autism is a spectrum disorder I think it can sometimes be hard to diagnose. I don’t think that just because a child has trouble expressing their feelings or likes to be by themselves, they should be automatically characterized as autistic. In the same sense, I do not believe that just because a child has outbursts or does not like change he or she should be automatically punished with no thought about the fact that something could possibly be wrong with their mental state. I think that instead or attributing so much time to diagnosing children, researchers should spend more time finding the cause and trying to fix the problem.

3 Comments:

Blogger Stephanie K said...

It is interesting how more and more we hear about autism today, or atleast I do. A couple of years ago, many people had never even heard of autism let alone labeled it an epidemic. I personally do not think that autism is an epidemic, however, I do believe that is quickly becoming one of the things we need to watch out for. I agree with Adrienne in that we need to focus more on fixing the problem before it becomes so large that it is no longer under control.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 6:16:00 PM  
Blogger hannah71190 said...

I think that autism has always been around and people have learned to live with them. Not all people with autism can not function improperly. Instead of ignoring their needs we need to find a way to fix it. I don't believe it is an epidemic, because it is not only passing through families. Every person is different just as every person with autism is different. They all still have needs. Not all of them want to be alone, they just want help.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 7:10:00 PM  
Blogger Elizabeth said...

I had always heard that many people thought autism was caused from the vaccines, but it was interesting to read that as the amount of vaccines have decreased, autism has not. I know that there are many different kinds of autism. While I'm not sure it is an epidemic, I do think that it is a common enough problem that really needs to be taken seriously, and the causes and possible treatments need to be focused on.

Thursday, October 23, 2008 4:48:00 PM  

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