also, my brother is mildly autistic (but also an honors college grad) and you can draw a fairly straight line from him being premature birth and to his issues. he is not crippled, that's crap. he's socially awkward at times, but has a family and a job. and the obsession with MMR is akin to vax deniers in trying to claim anything and everything for their cause. you know the type. every time a young athlete or celeb dies, even now, they say it was the vaccine. and so, anyone autistic is MMR.
in my brother's case, ignore he was premature, hypoxic, and in an ICU for weeks.
and to underline what one poster hinted at in terms of increasing diagnosis, my brother made the rounds on diagnoses and treatments over his decade plus in the school system. at one point ADHD with ritalin. only at the end did they seem to figure it out, and he came off meds. and he did well. he would not have fit a traditional, old school autism diagnosis. he is obviously bright, verbal. we expanded autism to become more of a spectrum.
and no surprise when it's a spectrum and not just the roughest cases at the farthest end, the numbers went up. duh.
i am sure heart disease numbers go up if you include not just heart attack and stroke sufferers but also anyone diagnosed with a manageable congenital issue, or put on BP meds, etc. does that mean the problem is worse or that we are getting more skilled at seeing it before it happens.
