[PEN-L:31481] Re: Re: Re: Autism on the rise

[Charles Jannuzi <b_rieux@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- joanna bujes <joanna.bujes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> I would think it would be relatively easy to
> determine whether you are
> right. Surely they must keep statistics that
> would help you correlate
> age/medical intervention with incidence of
> learning disorders, autism, etc.
>
> Joanna
>

Not as easy as you might think, since concepts of
what is normal and abnormal vary widely (ditto
dyslexia, ditto attention deficit disorder, etc).
Also, I doubt if anyone tracks a very large
number of infants for very long, but a lot of the
disorders appear past infancy. And by that time,
all sorts of 'psychological' and 'developmental'
theories are used to overinterpret what has been
manifested (e.g., the theory of unloving parents
and the like). I'll keep my eyes open for such a
study, though. My brother, who works with a lot
of kids diagnosed as 'autistic' and 'learning
disabled', thinks it's striking how many of these
kids are born to older, middle class parents. One
problem in dealing with such parents is that,
unlike working class parents, they really do
think they've done something wrong and fret a lot
about why their family should be stricken (things
like this aren't supposed to happen to them). One
paradox is that it turns the most right-wing of
them into limited, self-serving socialists once
they have to deal with the social services maze
of the US.

C. Jannuzi



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