The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday released a study estimating that 1 in 50 U.S. schoolchildren have autism, surpassing another estimate that 1 in 88 kids do.
But the numerous flaws and confounders in this phone survey study make this estimate highly unreliable. It comes from the National Survey of Children s Health, a national phone survey of 95,000 parents and less than a quarter of the parents contacted agreed to answer questions. Those with close contact with autism-spectrum disorder afflicted youngsters would be much more likely to respond to such a survey on children s health.
This is a paradigm for how to run a biased survey, says ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross.
Dr. Bloom suspects the rise in autism diagnoses is really due to other factors none of which have anything to do with the actual frequency of the disorder itself. He says, Autism seems to be becoming a cottage industry. There is a lot of money to be made by healthcare providers and schools. When you throw in scares by the anti-vaccine loonies, it is not in the least bit surprising that the reported incidence of autism is going up. It s the disease du jour.
