Ped Med: Counting on autism counts

In it, she writes:

“Those who disagree [with the Geiers] point to a new set of figures released last month by California’s DDS, which show a recent upturn in the state’s caseload of autistic children 3 to 5 years old — from a total of 6,083 reported at the end of the second quarter, in June, to 6,188 as of the end of the third quarter, in September.”

Take another look at the graph. Do you see a recent upturn, or steady growth? The r-sqaured value for the linear trend line is .9951 and unless she’s referring to a recent upturn that occurred more than 5 years ago, I don’t understand what upturn she might be referring to.

She also writes:

“If thimerosal is to blame, why are the numbers going up, they ask?”

Who’s asking that? The question is, “If Thimerosal was to blame, why didn’t they go down?”

We know the most likely reason that the numbers continue to go up at the steady rate that they appear to be - they continue to go up because the number of autistic children in California receiving services (administrative caseload) is lower than the number of autistic children in California (true prevalence) - probably way lower.

More like a death knell, if you ask me. What else do these people need to understand?
I tried so many times to explain to “mercury moms” what you have presented here. Thanks. From now on, I will just point them your direction.

It surprises me a little too. I think it’s probably the case that many diagnoses just simply aren’t solid and receiving services by age 5 for whatever reason. I think it’s possible that there are some differences among culture and language as well. I think it’s likely that California will see continuing steady growth in this age cohort (maybe slowing a little pretty soon).

Nice post. What surprises me re: the California numbers is why they are so low (even after recognizing that they represent caseload which is not the same thing as prevalence).

BTW, I was born at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday. I guess that’s why I may be a potential Aspie, just missing the cut.

Joseph - noted and corrected, thank you.

Note: some previous references to “incidence” were changed to “caseload”, which is what the actually CDDS reports.

Hi NM - it will be interesting to see what Kirby has to say.

Just one correction:

The administrative incidence of autism in the 3-5 year-old caseload cohort in the end of 2002 was right around 4,000.

That would be the caseload. The prevalence might be around 30 in 10,000 back then. There’s data that could be used to determine the incidence, but I’d have to do the numbers. Incidence is rarely discussed anyway.