How To End The Autism Epidemic

How To End The Epidemic Of Bad Books About Autism

How To End The Autism Epidemic | Author & Autism Parent JB Handley

Why are there so many bad books about autism?

Thats easy.

Just about every anti-vaccine expert out there also thinks that they are an expert on autism. In fact, they think that they have all of the answers and can even help you cure and prevent autism.

Thats why there are books like:

The Autism Book: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Early Detection, Treatment, Recovery, and Prevention by Dr. Bob Sears
Preventing Autism: What You Can Do to Protect Your Children Before and After Birth by Dr. Jay Gordon
Louder Than Words: A Mothers Journey in Healing Autism by Jenny McCarthy
by Andrew Wakefield
Vaccines, Autism & Chronic Inflammation: The New Epidemicby Barbara Loe Fisher
The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic by Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

What do all of these books miss?

Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child

Dr. Jerry Kartzinel writing in the introduction to Jenny McCarthys first autism book Louder Than Words

Besides the fact that there is no autism epidemic and that vaccines are not associated with autism, they miss that they are actually hurting autistic families.

From restrictive diets and antifungal drugs for yeast infections to bleach enemas and detox therapies, these books often push expensive, often unproven, sometimes disproven, and dangerous non-evidence based biomedical treatments and cures on hopeful parents of autistic kids.

Is There A Path To End The Autism Epidemic

New published science and the screening of at-risk children before they receive any vaccines may provide a middle ground between the all or nothing positions of the two warring sides of the vaccine-autism debate.

On one side of the debate are parents who believe that todays high number of mandatory vaccinations can cause autism in vulnerable children. On the other side are government health officials who deny any link.

However, critics claim the government is being influenced by pharmaceutical companies whose revenues from vaccines exploded from $170 million in the early 1980s to more than $60 billion today. A study published in 2013 in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation concluded that the pharmaceutical industry masterfully influences evidence base production and also exerts direct influences on professional decisions and health consumers.

There are a wealth of relevant scientific studies that prove that autism prevalence has skyrocketed in the United States. And since 2004, there have been 11 groundbreaking discoveries in separate but related scientific fields that, taken together, reveal one of the causes of autism.

All the while, the autism rate has exploded. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the rates for autism in children went from 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36 children in 2017.

These are some of the steps that should be taken to help end the autism epidemic:

Childrens Health Defense Calls For The Following Concrete Actions:

Immediately create a dedicated and independent agency for autism.

It is time to remove autism from the jurisdiction of an agency that gives it no attention or priority. In 2007, the CDC autism budget was $14 million, and ASDs affected one in 150 children. Ten years later, in 2017, CDCs autism budget was $23 million and ASDs affected one in 59 a 250% increase. If the rate of blindness in children had increased 250% in a decade, it would make front page headlines for weeks. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act classifies approximately 600,000 children in the school system as having autism. By way of comparison, CDC spent $394 million in 2017 on 1085 reported cases of Zika virus.

Fix the inadequacies of the current surveillance system under new leadership.

Compared to the previous 2016 report from the 2004 birth cohort, the new ADDM report eliminates two states and adds two new states. Meanwhile, some of the participating states reduced their surveillance areas, while several states increased their access to educational records. These inconsistencies between reports make it difficultor impossibleto compare changes over time meaningfully. If you consider the three states that have been consistently monitored and that have full access to educational records , the prevalence of autism is actually one in 46 children or 2.16%. The lack of rigor in these reports is unacceptable.

Confirm the long-term autism epidemic through additional studies of older birth cohorts.

Read Also: Autism Recurrence Risk

In How to End the Autism Epidemic, Generation Rescue’s co-founder J.B. Handley offers a compelling, science-based explanation of what’s causing the autism epidemic, the lies that enable its perpetuation, and the steps we must take as parents and as a society in order to end it.

While many parents have heard the rhetoric that vaccines are safe and effective and that the science is settled about the relationship between vaccines and autism, few realize that in the 1960s, American children received three vaccines compared to the thirty-eight they receive today. Or that when parents are told that the odds of an adverse reaction are “one in a million,” the odds are actually one in fifty. Or that in the 1980s, the rate of autism was one in ten thousand children. Today it’s one in thirty-six.

Parents, educators, and social service professionals around the country are sounding an alarm that we are in the midst of a devastating public health crisis–one that corresponds in lockstep with an ever-growing vaccine schedule. Why do our public health officials refuse to investigate this properly–or even acknowledge it?

Is There Really An Autism Epidemic

A closer look at the statistics suggests something more than a simple rise in incidence

If the statistic one in 166 has a familiar ring, perhaps that’s because you recently heard it on a television commercial or read it in a magazine. According to widely publicized estimates, one in 166 is now the proportion of children who suffer from autism. This proportion is astonishingly high compared with the figure of one in 2,500 that autism researchers had accepted for decades. Across a mere 10-year period–1993 to 2003–statistics from the U.S. Department of Education revealed a 657 percent increase in the nationwide rate of autism.

Not surprisingly, these bewildering increases have led many researchers and educators to refer to an autism epidemic. Representative Dan Burton of Indiana also declared in 2001 that we have an epidemic on our hands. But what’s really going on?

Before we explore this question, a bit of background is in order. Autism is a severe disorder that first appears in infancy. Individuals with autism are characterized by problems with language, social bonding and imagination. All suffer from serious communication deficits, and some are mute. They do not establish close relationships with others, preferring to remain in their own mental worlds.

They engage in highly stereotyped and repetitive activities, exhibiting a marked aversion to change. About two thirds of autistic individuals are mentally retarded. For reasons that are unknown, most are male.

Recommended Reading: Is Dr Shaun Murphy Really Autistic