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.
