If that is true Mr. Maher, then why are you using information created by GenerationRescue** for a 2008 full page mis-information campaign, "But in 1983 they gave a third of what they give now." Which is explained David Gorski as such,
This brings us to the other major slogan of the rally, namely “Too Many, Too Soon.” This, too, is a conveniently vague but oh-so-reasonable-sounding slogan. It, like “Green Our Vaccines,” is also another strategy to move the goalposts. The concept is based on the expansion of the number of recommended vaccines since 1983. Confusing correlation with causation yet again, anti-vaccine activists make the observation that the prevalence of autism has increased markedly since 1983, when the number of vaccines recommended for infants and small children was ten, to now, when the recommended number is 36. [at the time this article was written]For the sake of brevity, I am not going to explore the changes in the vaccine schedule and its ramification as some of that issue is addressed by Dr. Paul Offit in his paper Addressing Parents’ Concerns: Do Multiple Vaccines Overwhelm or Weaken the Infant’s Immune System?
The concept is simple. It is postulated that the increasing number of vaccines somehow overwhelms” the immune system or causes some sort of “aggregate” toxicity that is responsible not just for autism, but a variety of chronic diseases, such as obesity and type II diabetes, asthma, and autoimmune diseases.
Current studies do not support the hypothesis that multiple vaccines overwhelm, weaken, or “use up” the immune system. On the contrary, young infants have an enormous capacity to respond to multiple vaccines, as well as to the many other challenges present in the environment. By providing protection against a number of bacterial and viral pathogens, vaccines prevent the “weakening” of the immune system and consequent secondary bacterial infections occasionally caused by natural infection.As there has been several modifications made to the childhood immunization schedule to accommodate the introduction of new vaccines and new information about the safety and efficacy of existing vaccines. Exploring each change would be redundant and I think beyond what I want to address, the prevalence of autism has increased markedly since 1983 and the idea of “aggregate” toxicity.
So, has autism increased since 1983? That is the first question to examine with the short answer being, no. The long answer it depends on what you define as "being autistic" or "autism."
From a diagnostic standpoint, the term “autism” has been around for more than a century, beginning with Eugen Bleuler. He started using it around 1911 to refer to one group of symptoms of schizophrenia. Then in the 1940s, Leo Kanner used it to describe the withdrawn behavior of several children he studied. At about the same time, Hans Asperger identified a similar condition that’s now called Asperger’s syndrome. Up until the 1960s autism was still connected to schizophrenia and as the definition continued to become more detailed, the prevalence was adjusted accordingly.
It wasn't until 1980 that "Infantile Autism" appeared in the DSM-III and as time has progressed so has our understanding of what we now call Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Many individuals now diagnosed with ASD would never have qualified under the 1980 classification. So it’s not surprising that numbers have increased in the U.S.
So this myth bandied about by Maher "the prevalence of autism has increased markedly since 1983" is not new and it is not an epidemic as some, like GenerationRescue, claim. What the anti-vaxx crowd does not grasp - or worse, ignores - the increase in autism rates is a reflection of those changes mentioned above. It is the changes in diagnostic definitions rather than a real change in the developmental condition’s prevalence.
This is an issue Steve Novella addressed in 2008 citing the Bishop study:
Professor Dorothy Bishop from the University of Oxford studied adults who were diagnosed in 1980 with a developmental language disorder. She asked the question – if these people were subjected to current diagnostic criteria for autism, how many of them would be diagnosed today as having autism? She found that 25% of them would. (Bishop 2008)And again in 2014 (noting these particular studies), stating:
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That the number of new autism diagnoses is dramatically increasing is generally accepted and not a point of debate. The historical rate of autism is about 4 per 10,000 and the more recent estimates are in the range of 15-20 per 10,000 (30-60 per 10,000 for all pervasive developmental disorders of which autism is one type). (Rutter 2005) The controversy is about what is causing this rise in diagnoses. There are two basic hypotheses: 1) That the true incidence of autism is rising due to an environmental cause, 2) That the rise in incidence is mostly or completely an artifact of increased surveillance and broadening of the definition of autism. These two hypotheses make specific predictions, and there is much evidence to bring to bear on their predictions – this recent study only being the latest.
In addition to the broadening of the diagnosis, the social and medical network supporting ASD dramatically increased. There has been increased efforts at surveillance – scouring the community for hidden cases of autism. Further, parents have become much more accepting of the diagnosis, which may partly be due to the fact that is some states the label with facilitate access to special services. And clinicians have become more knowledgeable of ASD so are better able to make the diagnosis, even in subtle cases.
,,,several studies have found that there is increased surveillance for autism, a broadening of the diagnostic criteria, and an increased willingness to seek out and accept the diagnosis by parents and educators. Further, when you control for these variables, the adjusted autism prevalence is stable over time.There has been no change in this overall view, as you can see, since Novella's initial posting other than noting the progress science is making. Though Novella does add a caveat,
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This and other studies have also found that the increase in diagnoses occurs mainly among children who are higher functioning, meaning they have more subtle signs of autism, and not very much among lower functioning children with autism. This makes sense in the context of increased surveillance and broadened diagnostic criteria.
A relatively stable prevalence of autism also is consistent with independent lines of evidence, including recent evidence suggesting that the brain changes seen in autism occur within the womb. A prenatal onset of autism would eliminate any postnatal environmental factors. This is also consistent with the many studies that demonstrate that autism is dominantly a genetic disorder.
Given all of this it is still possible that there is a real increase hiding in the data, although it must be small. It is further possible that there are environmental risk factors that affect the development of autism. Increasing parental age has been suggested as a factor, and this deserves further study. At present, however, there is no data clearly pointing to any specific environmental factor.In other words, none of the above means there isn’t a real increase – it’s just is not clear yet.
Those who feel there likely is an environmental factor also tend to believe that there is an autism epidemic – that the incidence of autism is increasing in a way that is not easily explained by genetics, and therefore suggests and environmental factor. While it is uncontroversial that the number of ASD diagnoses has been increasing over the last two decades, this does not necessarily mean that the true incidence of ASD has been increasing.What we know for sure, it isn’t vaccines; or the long list of other things poorly linked to autism. What is possible, a small amount of the increase may relate to the increase in the average age of parents. There is a growing body of evidence that genetics may be the culprit. Or how the brain is structured beginning with pre-natal and post-natal development.
The evidence actually shows that diagnostic substitution, broadening of the definition of ASD, and increased surveillance account for much of the increased recorded incidence. It’s possible that changes in diagnostic behavior entirely accounts for the apparent increase. It’s also possible that a subset is due to a true increase, but that has not been clearly established.
So you see Bill, it is not as simple as you like to make it out to be,
It appears that Maher has fallen into this mindset of lumping environmental factors we can control (diet, smoking) with ones we can’t, and then attributing to them all some sort of vague “aggregate toxicity” (conveniently undefined or only very vaguely defined) as the root cause of disease,,,. Unfortunately, alties almost never identify which specific toxins they are talking about, provide scientific evidence that these undefined “toxins” cause disease, or demonstrate that their favored remedies actually remove these “toxins” and cure the disease in question. Certainly, Maher’s comments are consistent with this sort of mindset that “toxins” are to blame for all disease.Bill Maher isn’t a skeptic, he’s a contrarian; he is anti-establishment. He built his fame not on a scientific breakdown of the facts - which is blatantly obvious by his parroting of anti-vaxx information and propaganda - but on humorous commentary. Sometimes his commentary is close to the truth, but other times it isn’t.
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**Note in regards to the 2008 GenerationRescue ad: As I suspected anything associated with Jim Carrey has been washed from GR's website during the re-vamping. Carrey is no longer on the board and the once available PDF version of the full paid (by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey) ad has been removed. Whether it was GR severing ties a la McCarthy or, Carrey smartening up after his relationship with McCarthy ended in 2010 is open to speculation. As far as I can tell Carrey has not been active in the anti-vaxx movement since.
UPDATE:: Guess I spoke too soon when I wrote the above,,,
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