About this blog.

My son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at 24 months. I created this blog to bring meaning to the often-confusing label. Sometimes I have answers. Other times, just more questions.

Friday, August 1, 2008

"One in 150 is one too many"

So reads the slogan for Talk About Curing Autism ("TACA").

Autistic persons take offense at this slogan, justifiably so. I submit, for TACA's consideration, a new slogan:

"TACA: We Make Stuff Up"

See, TACA states on its website:

One in every 150 children born in the U.S. have been diagnosed with autism.(NOTE: This number does NOT include: PDD, Aspergers and other spectrum disorders. These statistics are endorsed by the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, and other federal organizations.)

The CDC, by contrast, indicates:

CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network released data in 2007 that found about 1 in 150 8-year-old children in multiple areas of the United States had an ASD.... ASDs include autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS, including atypical autism), and Asperger syndrome.

Hat tip to Darwin. Accepting nominations - if you have one, submit your own alternative slogan in comments below.

5 comments:

Margaret Romao Toigo said...

TACA is an anti-vaccination activist group that pretends at autism advocacy by promoting quackery, so that whole "one too many" thing is about vaccines, not autistics.

Like every other anti-vaccination activist group, TACA makes stuff up -- they have to because there are no actual facts they can use to support their ridiculous notions about vaccines.

Laura said...

Thanks for the note. Well I'll give credit where credit is due: they do a good job at toning down the crazy. The website looks like autism meets iVillage.

Anonymous said...

Talk About Creating Autism' Statistics Slogan- 1 in 150 children have Autism even 1 makes us cringe.

Anonymous said...

How about:

The CDC says One in 150 but that is a guess because they really don't know since ASD isn't a disease they can control.

Lorraine said...

I think it is due to broadening of diagnostic criteria. That, in turn, could be partially a side-effect of the pathologizing of everyday life, as well as the likelihood that what might be called 'subclinical' 'cases' of autism are more counteradaptive in the 'new economy,' which is more market(ing) oriented than in the good old days when there were economic niches for nerds in accounting, engineering, 'back office' roles, etc.

I hope some good may come of a large population of supposed autistics. Perhaps autistics, and introverts in general, will be seen as a voting bloc. Sooner or later autistic parents will discover that autistic children develop into autistic adults. If they want the best for their adult children, they will advocate for a more introvert-friendly labor market.

Also, the tactic of dismissing so-called high functioning autistics and the tactic of rate-of-incidence alarmism necessarily work at cross-purposes to each other. The combination is unsustainable and something will give. The question is, what?