Olmsted on Autism: Sneezing at bipolar kids

By DAN OLMSTED

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 -- Did you notice the coverage last week of the 40-fold increase in bipolar disorders among children? The "experts" and their Big Media outlets could barely get the facts out – that a new study found a stupendous increase in the disorder between 1993 and 2004 – before they started swatting them down.

Case in point: The second paragraph of the Washington Post story -- "But even one of the authors of the report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry isn't certain whether this represents a dramatic increase in the number of people who actually have the disorder."

That is classic pseudo-objective journalese -- "but even," "isn't certain," "actually have the disorder."

The effect, without having to say so, is to immediately deflect the reader from the raw evidence, which deserves to be taken seriously before it is analyzed into meaningless mush by the second paragraph. Is there no one on the planet who actually thinks this increase, or a disturbing chunk of it, is real? If they do exist, they're not quoted anywhere in the story, only the epidemic deniers.

This rush to downplay and deny any real increase in childhood disorders will be familiar to many of you involved in the autism debate. It's amazing how quickly the most troubling implications of such studies are brushed aside.

At some point, common sense has to prevail. For instance, let's stipulate that better diagnosis accounts for a gargantuan 36 times more cases of bipolar disorder among kids over the past 10 years. That still would mean that the condition quadrupled in a decade -- suspiciously, the same decade that autism, asthma, ADD, ADHD etc. soared out of sight. The deniers have to explain away every digit of that 40-fold number, because even a "mere" fourfold increase in the real incidence would be deeply disturbing. How can anyone be certain that one-tenth of that 40-fold increase isn't actually real? And if they can't be certain, why aren't they scared to death?

Reminds me of the joke, "Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?" Something is clearly happening to our kids, and whether you call it bipolar or sensory integration problems or attention deficits or, in more severe cases, Asperger's and autism, it's been noticed time and again by the front-line educators and health workers who see our children in large numbers every day. And ignored by the medical/media establishment.

I tell the story about the two mid-30s developmental specialists I met in Washington state last year. Both had been in the business about a decade. Both had a caseload of about 30 kids all that time. Ten years ago, one or two of the kids in each caseload had autism. Today, 15 or so do. That's the tenfold increase that's supposed to be an artifact of underdiagnosis, or better diagnosis, or diagnostic substitution -- take your pick.

But this relentless data denial just does not compute, and it does not comport with reality.

I have an older friend who has fought a long and successful battle with a host of disorders including bipolar. She attends a support group and she recently told me she is deeply concerned about the youngest adults in the group. Their bipolarity is a different beast, she says -- it's worse. They cycle faster, as often as several times a day as opposed to months. The medicines don't help them the way they help her. They're never going to get it together and be happy, productive people, she fears. They're going to be on Social Security disability income and Medicaid the rest of their lives (sound familiar?).

Of course, what does she know? She's just lived with it and observed other people with the same diagnosis for half a century. We'd best leave it to the experts.

One problem the experts have is explaining the similarly stark rise in asthma -- because it is hard to miss, misdiagnose, overdiagnose or otherwise spin into meaninglessness.  In his recent book, "Healing the New Childhood Epidemics -- Autism, ADD, Asthma and Allergies," Dr. Kenneth Bock lays  out the facts:

-- From 1980 to 2000, the number of doctor visits for asthma increased almost 300 percent, from 6 million annually to 17.3 milliion.
-- Twenty million people in America have asthma.
-- Nine million Americans eighteen or younger have asthma.

This increase -- and its much greater prevalence in children than adults -- is unlikely to be diagnostic substitution, to say the least; it's not as if we suddenly decided to count a random sneeze as an asthma attack.

So there's no serious attempt to explain away this one. But there is a serious effort to downplay and ignore signs and studies that suggest medical interventions from antibiotics to vaccines could be part of the explanation.

As I wrote last year: "A plausible link is emerging between widely used childhood medicines and the risk of developing allergies and especially asthma. But you'd never know it from listening to federal health authorities or reading the mainstream press." I reported on a study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the peer-reviewed, scientific journal of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Last sentence of the study: "Early use of antibiotics and fever reducers, along with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination were also associated with increased risks of several allergic symptoms and doctor's diagnoses."

That study fit with my report about a medical practice in Chicago that has a nearly nonexistent rate of asthma and allergies in thousands of kids who'd never been vaccinated and also got far fewer antibiotics and fever suppressors than the typical Amecan kid. Ditto, autism.

And then there was a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that did not find any such link. The CDC study, as I've noted before, eliminated never-vaccinated kids from consideration, allegedly because their medical records were inherently unreliable.

So I guess we need to get used to it -- study after study, and the evidence of our own eyes, point to huge increases in childhood disorders. When possible the "experts" and their Big Media enablers say it's just not so -- as in the 40-fold increase in bipolar disorders. When they can't make that argument -- when the increase is indisputable, as in the case of asthma -- they ignore or fudge data that could explain the reasons.

But even that is not going to work forever.

Dan Olmsted wrote The Age of Autism column for United Press International and is now an independent journalist based in Washington, focusing on autism and related issues. He can be reached at Olmsted.dan@gmail.com.

Comments

[johnfryer]

Hi Dan

Nothing to do with this article but what happened to your job with UPI?
In this business where government and science has failed us we normally see explained and unexplained tragedies.
From its a 'boring' topic all the way up to lost jobs and dead bodies.
I collected about 25 (dead bodies that is) with the fight against bad pesticides but that only affected humans who were unlucky enough to get exposed.
Diazinon withdrawn in 2000 by agreement wih industry and government after 40 years of 'safe' use.
With vaccine harm we are talking about the whole population and that looks to me like World War not a local skirmish as with insecticides.

Here's looking to: Thimerosal withdrawn from use in 2012 after 80 years of even 'safer' use or must we wait until 2020 when our vision will be perfect?

John Fryer MSc BSc Chemist

[Kelli Ann Davis]

Hey Dan,

Don't ya just love the way the whole first paragraph was wiped out by that "pesky, little three-letter word" (BUT)?

Seems to be the "word of choice" when it comes to deflecting any sort of focus on the truth...

Kelli

[Steven Schleimer]

Did anyone else notice the non-coverage last week of the publication of a British study linking food additives to hyperactivity?

According to one doctor quoted, we should take care to consider whether the effect is "powerful enough that you want to ostracize your kid? It is very socially impacting if children can’t eat the things that their friends do.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/health/research/06hyper.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[P.F Jennings]

About diabetes in children. But first -- the rise is not just in children. The International Diabetes Federation is concerned about the global scale, and size, of this problem.

Governments must act on biggest epidemic in human history
Medical Condition News
Published: Sunday, 29-Apr-2007

The diabetes pandemic is threatening to overwhelm global healthcare services. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) launched a new consensus statement on diabetes prevention, to be published in the May issue of Diabetic Medicine, hot on the heels of a December 2006 United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for concerted international action.

" . . . Diabetes is responsible for close to 4 million deaths every year. With 246 million people with diabetes now, and 380
million people with diabetes by 2025, diabetes is set to bankrupt national economies" said Professor Paul Zimmet, Director, International Diabetes Institute and co-author of the consensus.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BUT even in children, Type 2 diabetes has become a big concern.

For example:

ADA: Type 2 Diabetes' Reach Into Childhood Defined
By Crystal Phend, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

June 26, 2007

DENVER, June 26 - Type 2 diabetes is no longer the "adult-onset" disease it once was.

In 2002 and 2003, about 22% of children with diabetes were Type 2, which was once considered quite rare in the age group,
researchers found in the first American registry.

Particular minority groups have even higher proportions of Type 2 among children with diabetes, reported Dana Dabelea . . . .

Among American-Indian children, though, 86.2% of diabetes was
Type 2, while the rate was 69.7% among Asian and Pacific Islander youth, they wrote.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So . . . if diabetes Type 2 will be accompanied by one or more "co-morbid" conditions. And if diabetes Type 2 is hugely increasing in children.

Then what's causing all of that?

[P.F. Jennings]

Saw something, mid-2005, about how many "co-morbid" illnesses there are in children. Not only are they beginning to develop Type 2 diabetes -- previously almost unheard of.

But also, if they have one problem and it's diagnosed -- there is usually another (or more than one other) problem accompanying it.

Brief beginning of inf from Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania is below.