As RFK, Jr. continues his crusade on behalf of trial lawyers in regard to a vaccine/autism link and appears to have persuaded the President to buy into this lunacy, the evidence piles up that not only is there no link to vaccines, but there is no increase in actual autism cases, there is only an increase in diagnoses, due to a massive expansion of diagnostic criteria and of screening, all driven by providers desire to make lots of money by labeling children and treating them forever. A Swedish study further illustrates this. Autism was originally intended to be a diagnosis relating to intellectual or cognitive disabilities or differences. It has become a behavioral diagnosis capturing a huge spectrum of behaviors. (Swedish Study)
The study used every person in Sweden from 2001 to 2020, as Sweden has a national health system. It found that while the diagnosis of autism went up by 800%, the percentage of diagnoses that included intellectual disability declined from 56% to 8%. If you do your math that is about one-seventh of the prior cases. At the same time the diagnostic criteria were being extensively revised. So essentially all the increase in “autism” was due to the change in diagnostic criteria and in more screenings using those criteria, especially among females.
But looking at the numbers in Table 2, there is a large increase in the number diagnosed with autism and intellectual disability. It might be as high as a factor of two, but it is hard to tell since there appears to be edge effects in the data. Of course, that could also be a change in diagnostic criteria.
Probably would need to track the exact changes in criteria and the changes in the number of screenings and match to changes in diagnosis. the criteria for an intellectual disability have been changed as well. And always need to look at rates, not absolute numbers. Sweden saw big immigration influxes during this time so the population increased, and as we know in Minnesota, there was a ton of autism fraud among the immigrants.
I think your point is well taken, I.e., a loosened definition and expanded screening for autism is probably a primary contributor to the increase. However, while the percentage of ID diagnoses is down overall I think ID diagnoses could be up by as much as 28% over the period in the question. I’m not privy to the hard data in the study, but a simple example will illustrate my point.
Assume 1000 screenings in period one at 56% yields 560 ID diagnoses. An 800% increase is up nine times over the period or 9000. Eight percent is 720 ID diagnoses or plus 28%. This could be due to an expanded definition of ID, as a previous commenter pointed out, but it did contribute in a small way to the increase.
Probably would need to track the exact changes in criteria and the changes in the number of screenings and match to changes in diagnosis. the criteria for an intellectual disability have been changed as well. And always need to look at rates, not absolute numbers. Sweden saw big immigration influxes during this time so the population increased, and as we know in Minnesota, there was a ton of autism fraud among the immigrants.