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Source: http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDaily/view.php?StoryID=20051216-015638-3989r
The Age of Autism: The story so far
By DAN OLMSTED
UPI Senior Editor
Part 1 of 3. In February, we began this ongoing series of articles on the roots and rise of autism. Now, at the end of the year, here's a summary of our story so far:
-- Something happened among children born in the early 1930s to bring autism to the attention of Leo Kanner, the eminent and experienced Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist who first described the disorder in a landmark 1943 paper. At the same time, a Viennese pediatrician named Hans Asperger was noticing a remarkably similar, though somewhat less severe, syndrome that came to bear his name.
In our first column, "Donald T. and Fritz V.," we found it amazing that these first two patients -- Donald in the United States and Fritz in Austria -- were born within four months of each other in 1933. Yet these unique, impossible-to-miss children with Autism Spectrum Disorders had been around in similar numbers since the dawn of time?
Experts disagree, but our first and still-tentative conclusion is that's just plain unlikely. Scattered cases, sure. But 1 in 166, the current U.S. autism rate in children? We don't see it.
( Read more... )
The Age of Autism: The story so far
By DAN OLMSTED
UPI Senior Editor
Part 1 of 3. In February, we began this ongoing series of articles on the roots and rise of autism. Now, at the end of the year, here's a summary of our story so far:
-- Something happened among children born in the early 1930s to bring autism to the attention of Leo Kanner, the eminent and experienced Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist who first described the disorder in a landmark 1943 paper. At the same time, a Viennese pediatrician named Hans Asperger was noticing a remarkably similar, though somewhat less severe, syndrome that came to bear his name.
In our first column, "Donald T. and Fritz V.," we found it amazing that these first two patients -- Donald in the United States and Fritz in Austria -- were born within four months of each other in 1933. Yet these unique, impossible-to-miss children with Autism Spectrum Disorders had been around in similar numbers since the dawn of time?
Experts disagree, but our first and still-tentative conclusion is that's just plain unlikely. Scattered cases, sure. But 1 in 166, the current U.S. autism rate in children? We don't see it.
( Read more... )
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