Health & Fitness
Why is Autism on the Rise? CDC Releases New Rates
Research says 1 in 88 children have autism. But why?
The CDC just released the new autism rates for 2008 and they are quite troublesome. According to their data, 1 in 88 children now have autism in the United States. Autism rates have soared over the past many years.
In the 1970s, autism was believed to affect 1 in 2,000 children.
In 2002, the rate was 1 in 155
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In 2006 it was 1 in 110.
Today, 1 in 88 parents will be faced with the challenging job of caring for an autistic child. The scary thing is that these values represent 2008. We are now in 2012 and one can’t help but speculate that the actual values are far worse. I recently read that more children are affected with autism than are affected by diabetes, AIDS, cancer, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy or Downs syndrome COMBINED! This is huge! How can it be that we are considered the healthiest county and yet the numbers of children affected by complex disorders keeps rising? The CDC has tried to make sense of this rise in rates, but to be completely honest, their answers just don’t compute for me.
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I would love some feedback from parents raising autistic children and from anyone else. Why do you think the autism rate is on the rise?
