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CMay a day ago

Is this about the upcoming reveal of the autism findings, or is the article just feeding that as the cause?

I thought the understanding for base rates of autism was that people are living longer and starting their lives later. Becoming financially stable later, having children later. Having children later rather than earlier significantly increased the risk of autism.

After that then the question becomes about intensity of autistic symptoms, where the base rate of autistic children makes sense given the data, but the intensity and thus increased likelihood of seeking diagnosis may be increasing as a second factor which sits on top of expanded diagnosis standards.

For intensity, there are suggestions that maybe obesity, plastics/chemicals could be contributing, but it sounded like there wasn't enough data on it.

I'm not sure what other answer they found. RFK has said he doesn't think people should follow his personal health advice. He knows he's neither a scientist or a doctor and supposedly there was some team of scientists working on it. I'm not prejudging that they can't have arrived at some useful result, but it's obviously very politicized.

kevlened a day ago | parent | next [-]

Science Vs just explored the rise in autism [0].

Maureen Durkin, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, just presented a paper [1] (currently in peer review) studying 8 year olds from 2000 to 2016, categorizing and counting autism severity over time. The most severe cases were unchanged, or decreased, and the largest change was in those with no measurable functional limitations.

This unpublished paper suggests that identification of children with milder symptoms is the strongest driver.

[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/autism-the-real-reason...

[1] "Trends in the Prevalence of Autism By Adaptive Level between 2000-2016: Evidence from a Population-Based Sample of 8-Year-Old Children in the United States" S. M. Furnier and M. S. Durkin

franktankbank 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They should follow them into the job market and see the effects as an adult for those with "no measurable functional limitations".

kevlened 19 hours ago | parent [-]

The category doesn't imply those cases are no-ops. It's used to highlight the sensitivity of our diagnostics.

On the podcast, Durkin frames improved detection as a positive, because it means people will get the care they need.

kelipso 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Lol. Wasn’t there some autism fad in tiktok?

mnode a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Base rates going up isn't fully understood but a large part is likely just changes to diagnosis. There's a recent summary of research evidence here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02636-1

magicalist a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Is this about the upcoming reveal of the autism findings, or is the article just feeding that as the cause?

No, it's almost certainly about vaccine science and recommendations. Hence all the other resignations today.

(though who knows, maybe RFKjr will really go for it and bring back full-throated vaccines==autism next week)

UncleMeat 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is not just about that. The trump admin fired high level and long-standing officials within cdc over disagreements about vaccine policy and that was followed by a bunch of resignations in protest.