Startling number of children with autism revealed as cases rise AGAIN: ‘Rampant epidemic’
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has has warned that the ‘autism epidemic is running rampant,’ as new data shows that the disorder among US children has reached a record level.
The CDC found the prevalence of the disorder among eight-year-olds in 2022 was 32.2 per 1,000, or one in every 31.
That was up from 1 in 36 in 2020 and 1 in 44 in 2018, researchers reported in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Rates ranged from about one in 100 children being diagnosed in one south Texas county, to about one of every 21 in a suburban county near Philadelphia and roughly one in 19 near San Diego, California.
Differences in prevalence over time and across sites can reflect differing practices in autism screening and diagnosis and availability of services, the researchers said.
In light of the findings, Kennedy says the US government is ‘assembling teams of world-class scientists to focus research on the origins of the epidemic, and we expect to begin to have answers by September’.
He added: ‘The autism epidemic is running rampant.
‘One in 31 American children born in 2014 are disabled by autism. That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has has warned that the ‘autism epidemic is running rampant,’ as new data shows that the disorder among US children has reached a record leve (stock image)
‘Prevalence for boys is an astounding one in 20 and in California it’s one in 12.5.’
‘President Trump has tasked me with identifying the root causes of the childhood chronic disease epidemic – including autism.
‘The risks and costs of this crisis are a thousand times more threatening to our country then COVID-19.
‘Autism is preventable and it is unforgivable that we have not yet identified the underlying causes. We should have had these answers 20 years ago.’
Walter Zahorodny of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who co-authored the new study said the true or actual rate of autism in the United States is ‘more likely to be closer to what this report has identified in California or Pennsylvania’.
He explained: ‘California in particular has a longstanding and excellent program for screening and early intervention.
‘The problem is there’s not a lot of research that gives us a strong indication for what is driving the rise.’
Rising rates of autism in the United States since 2000 have intensified public concern over what might be contributing to its prevalence.
A large recent study added to evidence that diabetes during pregnancy is linked with an increased risk of brain and nervous system problems in children, including autism.
Kennedy, who now runs the US Department of Health and Human Services and has long promoted a debunked link between vaccines and autism, last week set a September deadline for the US National Institutes of Health to determine the cause behind the rise in autism rates.
The populations at the 16 monitoring sites do not precisely reflect the characteristics of the entire country, and the CDC study was not designed to identify possible causes of any increase in prevalence.
Considering the wide variations in autism symptoms among individuals, a combination of genetic and environmental factors that together affect early brain development are likely to be the cause, said Dr Lang Chen of Santa Clara University in California, who studies the brain networks involved in learning disabilities and autism but was not involved in the CDC study.
‘However, it is critical to know that there is no scientific evidence supporting the link between vaccines and autism,’ he said.
Zahorodny noted that vaccination rates have been falling while autism diagnoses have risen.
As in 2020, ASD prevalence among eight-year-olds was higher among Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic children than among white children, the CDC data showed.
Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic children with ASD were more likely than white or multiracial children with ASD to also have an intellectual disability.
The data also showed that ASD is more common among boys than girls.
The disorder is increasingly being identified at younger ages, with higher rates of diagnosis by age four among children born in 2018 compared with those born four years earlier.
Heightened awareness and the inclusion of a wider range of behaviors to describe the condition have contributed to the increase but do not explain all of it, experts say.
