The diagnosis of autism has become more frequent since the 1980s, which has led to numerous controversies about the causes of autism and the nature of the diagnosis itself. Whether autism primarily has genetic or developmental causes, and a coincidence rate between autism and intellectual disability, are all a matter of current scientific controversy as well as investigation.
The scientific consensus states that vaccines do not cause autism, but popular rumors and articles in respected scientific journals, The Lancet, provoke concerns among parents. The Lancet article was withdrawn for making false claims and because the author was found to be on the payroll of the traitors to the vaccine producers.
Video Controversies in autism
Epidemiology
The latest epidemiologic review estimates the prevalence of one to two cases per 1,000 people for autism, and about six per 1,000 for ASD; because of inadequate data, these numbers may underestimate the true prevalence of ASD. ASD average ratio of 4.3: 1 male-female. The number of children on the autism spectrum has increased dramatically since the 1980s, at least partly because of changes in diagnostic practice; it is unclear whether the actual prevalence has increased; and unidentified environmental risk factors can not be ruled out. The risk of autism is associated with several prenatal factors, including old age and maternal diabetes during pregnancy. ASD is associated with several genetic and epilepsy disorders. Autism is also associated with intellectual disability.
Maps Controversies in autism
Genetics
There is evidence that autism has a genetic component, and ongoing research focuses on the discovery of biomarkers that determine autistic phenotype.
Genetics is seen as an underlying factor because there is a statistical pattern for a very high risk of having another autistic child in a family with an affected child. However, while some parents of autistic children are progressively also diagnosed in the autism spectrum, at least some autistic children seem to have neurotypical parents. This suggests to some people that genetics is not a necessary cause or that they have no role in all cases of ASD, although it could also mean that the gene (s) responsible may be recessive or spontaneous mutations. The spectrum of autistic disorders is known for significant gender differences, with the incidence of autism in men greatly exceeding the incidence in women. While this could be evidence for genetic theory, it has also been suggested that the male brain may be more vulnerable during early development.
Vaccines
Several controversial claims have been made regarding autism and vaccination, leading mainly to the controversy of the MMR vaccine, the thiomersal controversy, and the excessive vaccine theory. A 2011 journal article describes the vaccine-autism relationship as "the most damaging medical trick in the last 100 years".
Thimerosal
In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal organomersur compounds (spelled "thimerosal" in the US) from the vaccine as soon as possible, and thiomersal was gradual. of the US and European vaccines, except for some influenza vaccine preparations. Under the FDA's Modernization Act (FDAMA) in 1997, the FDA conducted a comprehensive review of the use of thimerosal in childhood vaccines. Conducted in 1999, the review found no evidence of harm from the use of thimerosal as a vaccine preservative, in addition to local hypersensitivity reactions. The CDC and AAP follow the precautionary principle, which assumes that there is no danger in doing caution even if it turns out to be unwarranted, but their actions in 1999 sparked confusion and controversy that distracted and resources from attempts to determine the cause of autism. Since 2000, thiomersal vaccines in children have been thought to contribute to autism, and thousands of parents in the United States have been pursuing legal compensation from federal funds. The 2004 Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee supports the rejection of a causal relationship between vaccines and thiomersal-containing autism. The incidence rate of autism increases steadily even after thiomersal is excluded from childhood vaccines. There is currently no scientific evidence that thiomersal exposure is a contributing factor to autism.
Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine (MMR) )
In the UK, the MMR vaccine was the subject of controversy following the publication on The Lancet of a 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield, et al. This article reports research on 12 children. most with autism spectrum disorder onset immediately after administration of the vaccine. During the 1998 press conference, Wakefield suggested that giving vaccine children in three separate doses would be safer than a single vaccination. This advice is not supported by the paper, or by some other peer-reviewed studies that fail to show the link between vaccines and autism. It later emerged that Wakefield had received funding from the litigant against the manufacturer of the vaccine and that Wakefield did not notify colleagues or medical authorities of any conflict of interest. Should this be known, the paper will not be published in The Lancet as it is. Wakefield has been heavily criticized on scientific grounds and for triggering a decrease in vaccination rates, as well as on an ethical basis for the way research is conducted. In 2004 the MMR-and-autism paper interpretation was formally drawn by 10 of 12 Wakefield's co-authors, and in 2010 the editor's editor completely retracted the paper.
The CDC, the IOM National Academy of Sciences, and the UK National Health Service conclude that there is no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. In 2009, The Sunday Times reported that Wakefield had manipulated patient data and incorrect results were reported in his paper in 1998, creating a look of relationship with autism. A 2011 article in the British Medical Journal illustrates how the data in research have been faked by Wakefield so that it will arrive at a predetermined conclusion. An editorial in the same journal describes Wakefield's work as "elaborate fraud" that leads to lower vaccination rates, putting hundreds of thousands of children at risk and diverting energy and money from research into the true cause of autism.
Overloaded vaccine
Following the belief that the individual vaccine that causes autism is the idea of ​​an excess vaccine, which claims that too many vaccines can at once overwhelm or weaken the child's immune system and cause harmful effects. Excess vaccines became popular after the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program received a nine-year-old Hannah Poling case. Hannah has encephalopathy that puts her on autism spectrum disorder, which is believed to get worse after getting some vaccine at the age of nineteen months. There have been several cases reported similar to this one, which led him to believe that overloaded vaccines cause autism. However, scientific research shows that the vaccine does not overwhelm the immune system. In fact, conservative estimates predict that the immune system can respond to thousands of viruses simultaneously. It is well known that the vaccine is only a small part of the pathogen that is naturally encountered by a child in a typical year. A common fever and middle ear infection pose a much bigger challenge to the immune system than the vaccine. Other scientific findings support the idea that vaccinations, and even some concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system or endanger overall immunity because autism is not an immune-mediated disease.
Celebrity Engagement
Some celebrities have talked about their view that autism is linked to vaccinations, including: Jenny McCarthy, Kristin Cavallari, Toni Braxton, Jim Carrey, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Kennedy in particular publishes the book Thimerosal: Let Science Speak: Evidence That Supports Mercury Removal - Known Neurotoxins - From Vaccines.
McCarthy, one of the most vocal celebrities on the topic, said that his son's autism diagnosis was the result of the MMR vaccine. He wrote Louder rather than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism and co-authored Healing and Preventing Autism. He also founded an organization called Generation Rescue, which provides resources to affected families. by autism. In the CNN Presidential debate of September 2015, Donald Trump confesses to knowing a 2-year-old boy who recently received a joint vaccine, had an overwhelming fever and is now in the Autism Spectrum.
Intelligence
The percentage of autistic individuals who also meet the criteria for intellectual disability has been reported anywhere from 25% to 70%, wide variations that illustrate the difficulty of assessing autistic intelligence. For PDD-NOS the association with intellectual disability is much weaker. Asperger's diagnosis does not include a clinically significant delay in mental or cognitive skills.
A 2007 study showed that Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), an abstract reasoning test, may be a better indicator of intelligence for autistic children than the more commonly used Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). The researchers suspect that WISC relies too heavily on language to be an accurate measure of intelligence for autistic individuals. Their study revealed that neurotypical children got the same score on both tests, but autistic children fared much better at RPM than at WISC. RPM measures abstract, general reasoning and fluid, the ability of individual autism has been considered less. A 2008 study found similar effects, but at a much lower rate and only for individuals with an IQ of less than 85 on the Wechsler scale.
Facilitated communication
Facilitated communication gets immediate attention and is used by many expecting parents of individuals with autism when first introduced in the early 1990s by Douglas Biklen, a professor at Syracuse University. However, controversy soon emerged after several reports of sexual harassment were made by individuals using the keyboard. There are increasing concerns about who actually typed messages - individuals with autism or facilitators?
A similar study was conducted starting in 1993 that said facilitated communication was an ineffective technique. One reason is that autistic individuals can not communicate better than they do on their own. Another reason is because the facilitator seems to have an effect on the messages typed by the individual with autism. In 1994, the American Psychological Association officially announced that "there is no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy."
A recent study conducted in 2014 examined the role of facilitators in eleven cases in which children have used facilitated communication for more than a year. They agree that facilitated communication is invalid because children with autism perform better on exam questions only when the facilitator is also aware of the questions. If the facilitator does not know about the test or keyboard is invisible, the autistic can not answer the question, indicating that the facilitator does not consciously play a role in the typed message. Most of the empirical studies conducted during the early 1990s to date argue that facilitated communication is an invalid alternative treatment for autism.
Regardless of what the scientific community claims, there are still many people who use facilitated communication. In fact, Syracuse University still offers a program called the Institute on Communication and Inclusion that trains facilitators to use this technique, which they now refer to as supported typing. They claim that new methods such as eye-video tracking, linguistic analysis, proof of speech before and during typing, and message delivery have shown that individuals with autism typing, not facilitators.
A study conducted in 2014 states that changes made to facilitate communication since its introduction, such as the use of multiple facilitators for one individual, have made this technique more valid so that some individuals with autism have been able to type with zero support. In 2012, the National Committee of Autism announces a position statement that approves the use of facilitated communication because "it has proven to be very useful in the lives of many people by opening the doors of reliable, trusted, and respected symbolic communication for the first time.
Autistic rights movement
Autism rights movement (ARM) is a social movement that encourages autistic people, their caregivers and the community to adopt a neurodiversity position, accepting autism as a variation in function rather than a mental disorder to be cured. ARM supports a variety of purposes including the acceptance of larger autistic behaviors; therapy that teaches the ability to treat individuals with autism rather than therapy that focuses on mimicking neurotypical peer behavior; the creation of social networks and events that allow autistic people to socialize on their own terms; and recognition of the Autistic community as a minority group.
Proponents of autism or neurodiversity rights believe that the spectrum of autism is genetic and should be accepted as a natural expression of the human genome. This perspective differs from two other views that are also different: (1) the main perspective that autism is caused by genetic defects and should be addressed by targeting the autism gene (s) and (2) the perspective that autism is caused by environmental factors such as vaccines and pollution and can be cured by addressing environmental causes.
Anti-healing perspective
"Curing" or "treating" autism is a controversial and politicized matter. Doctors and scientists are unsure of the cause of autism but many organizations such as the Autism Research Institute and Autism Speaks advocate researching the drug. Members of various autistic rights organizations see autism as a way of life rather than as a disease and thus support acceptance of drug search. Some advocates believe that common therapies for behavioral differences and autism-related languages, such as an analysis of applied behavior, are not only perverse but also unethical.
The "anti-drug perspective" supported by movement is the view that autism is not a disorder, but a normal occurrence - alternative variations in the cable brain or less common expressions of the human genome. Proponents of this perspective believe that autism is a unique way of being that should be validated, supported and appreciated rather than shunned, discriminated against or eliminated. They believe that the peculiarities and uniqueness of autistic individuals should be tolerated because any minority group differences should be tolerated and that efforts to eliminate autism should not be compared, for example, to cure cancer, but vice versa to the ancient idea of ​​healing left-handedness. ARM is part of a larger rights movement of disabilities, and thus recognizes the model of social disability. In the model, the struggle faced by an autistic person is seen as discrimination rather than a deficiency.
John Elder Robison is a deliberator for the Special Interest Groups of Social, Legal, and Ethical Research at the 2014 International Assembly for Autism Research (IMFAR). He eventually took the group for the task, stating that the science community of autism is headed for disaster if that does not change direction on several factors - and notes for a larger size context of the US autistic community in proportion to other minority groups like Jews or Native American communities.
Robison asserts that autistic people need to be the one who provides supervision and governance for autism research. He condemns the use of words like "heal". He pointed out that the explicit or implicit attempts of researchers to root out autistic people are a formula for disaster and should be stopped. He also asserted that memoirs and narratives written by autistic people are more reliable than writing about autism by nonautistics.
Diagnostic complications
Although the fifth 2013 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM-5) has more specificity, it also has a more limited sensitivity report. Due to changes in DSM and reduced sensitivity, it is possible that individuals diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) using the fourth revision (DSM-IV-TR) will not receive the same diagnosis as DSM-5.
Of the 933 individuals evaluated, 39 percent of the samples diagnosed with ASD using the DSM-IV-TR criteria did not meet the DSM-5 criteria for the disorder. Basically, the DSM-5 criterion no longer classifies it by having ASD, regard it without diagnosis. It is likely that individuals who exhibit higher cognitive function and other disorders, such as unproven Asperger or pervasive developmental disorder (PDD-NOS), are completely excluded from the criteria. Also, it is more likely that younger children who do not exhibit overall ASD symptoms and characteristics are at higher risk of being excluded by new criteria because they can have Asperger as an Asperger disorder usually show no symptoms until later in childhood.. Because of the different onset age in Asperger's autism, grouping together disorders usually does not allow or distinguish the age of differentiating onset, which is problematic in diagnosing. It is evident, through numerous studies, that the number of people diagnosed will be significantly reduced as well, which is evident because of the new DSM-5 criteria.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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