We'll pay a terrible price for failure to address autism

I read Dan Newman's Feb. 21 report "Assembly bills aim to better autism awareness," and I'm honestly stunned by information provided. Mr. Newman tells us that the CDC has found "New Jersey to have the nation's highest reported rate of autism, in one out of every 94 children, whereas the national rate is one out of every 150 people." First of all, let me correct something in this story. The national rate is one out of every 150 children. There isn't a single study that has been able to find the one in 150 adults with autism. Any adult reading this is aware of children with autism, but they'd be hard-put to name even one autistic adult they know.

Nowhere in Mr. Newman's story do I get the sense that this is a health care emergency. He tells us that "Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. recently announced his work on a seven-bill package designed to improve detection, treatment and awareness of autism in New Jersey." Detection? Treatment? Awareness? With a rate in New Jersey of one in every 94 children - including one in every 60 boys - it sounds like they're pretty good at detection. People must also be very aware of the numbers after the publicity New Jersey has gotten lately. As far as treatment, with the skyrocketing numbers, it's hard to imagine where anyone will find money for treatment.

This seems a strange way to address an epidemic. Where is Roberts' concern for the cause? Anything that affects so many children should be seen as an emergency. We need to stop it from happening to more children.

Remember polio? At the height of the polio epidemic in the 1950s, the disease affected one in 3,000 Americans. Polio was a health-care crisis. A massive effort was made to address it. Not so with autism. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) - which gave us the new rate - still can't decide if this represents an actual increase in children with autism.

The CDC gets billions of taxpayer dollars each year to run health care, and they've been counting children with autism for over 10 years. They still don't know if all the autistic kids everywhere mean that there are more children who actually have autism. Officials merely repeat the old claim that autism isn't more common; doctors are better at diagnosing it and the CDC is now better at counting kids with autism.

Others are making the illogical claim that the new 1-in-150 rate proves that the rate hasn't changed since the 1980s. In The New York Times, "Study Puts Rate of Autism at 1 in 150 U.S. Children," Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, from Yale University School of Medicine, is quoted as saying, "It appears that the rates are unchanged over the past 20 years or so." In the Atlanta Journal Constitution article "Are Autism Cases on the Rise in US?," child psychiatrist Dr. Bradley Peterson tells us that "the numbers are comparable to what they were 20 years ago." The press never seems to demand that officials prove that autism hasn't increased. All we seem to hear about are autistic kids. Where are all the autistic adults who were missed in the past?

Show us the autistic kids from the 1980s who are now the autistic adults in their 20s and 30s at the same rate as children today. Where are the 40-, 50- and 60-year-olds with autism at a rate of one in 150? What are they doing? Lots and lots of parents desperate about the future for their autistic children would like to know. News sources never give us the proof and neither does the CDC.

Regardless of how many times we see the false claim that autism isn't increasing, no one can explain the numbers, and within the next five to 10 years these kids will begin to age out into the adult population. Imagine what it will be like when one in every 150 18-year-olds won't be going on to school or getting a job, but will be going on disability for life with autism. That isn't happening now because autism doesn't affect the adult population at anything like this rate. When it begins, it will directly coincide with the retirement of the baby boom generation.

We will all be paying a terrible price for the failure to address the autism epidemic. The words of Laura Bono of the National Autism Association are also a grim forecast for the future: "As those children reach adulthood, the U.S. is ill-equipped to care for them. Not only do we not have enough services for adults now, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. Frankly, we don't know what we're going to do."

Anne McElroy Dachel

Chippewa Falls, Wis.