The “Autism Epidemic” Is A Myth
The very basic science disproving a popular falsehood
There are many stories about autism in the alternative medicine space. One of the most common one is the myth that vaccines cause autism, something that has been disproven many times. Vaccines don’t cause autism, and anyone who tells you that they do is either remarkably ignorant or lying.
But what not everyone knows is that even the most basic aspects of this myth fails to hold water. A common claim that you’ll find from pundits such as RFK Jr. and the American right-wing these days generally is that autism rates are skyrocketing, and that this must have been caused by something. They usually then go on to blame vaccines, because they can’t think of any other reasonable explanations for the increase.
In fact, we know that autism rates have basically not increased in the last fifty or so years. Instead, we have simply redefined what the term “autism” means to capture a bigger group of people.
Let’s look at the data.
The Beginning
It’s important when we’re discussing autism rates to start at the beginning. Autism was first coined as a descriptive term used to talk about schizophrenic patients in the early 1900s. It wasn’t a diagnosis per se, but instead was a clinical…
