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When I wrote that the ‘autism epidemic’ mostly isn’t, it seemed to upset a lot of readers. Not least because I took aim at their golden idol, one of the chief promulgators of the ‘epidemic’ myth, RFK Jr. Most thus entirely missed the essential point: it’s not that autism is imaginary or non-existent, but that the so-called ‘epidemic’ is calling a whole of stuff ‘autism’, which isn’t. This is not only a disservice to taxpayers, especially in Australia, where the NDIS is bloated with fakers bilking billions from the public purse, but even more so to genuine sufferers whose debilitating condition is being trivialised and exploited by a growing army of bandwagon-jumpers and grifters.
What’s particularly fuelled this grim fad is what was in fact a well-intentioned and medically-rigorous concept: that autism exists on a spectrum. While Hollywood portrays autism as Rain Man-style Oscar-bait, the reality is that the condition manifests in a range, from the crippling Level 3 Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), to high-functioning conditions that would once have been dismissed as merely ‘quirky’ or ‘weird’ (no matter that they still have severe consequences for sufferers). It’s the mildest end of the spectrum that has been a God’s gift to fakers, from social media thots desperate to tell the world that ‘I’m not like the other girls, tee-hee’, to unscrupulous mendicants sniffing out a new way to bludge off the taxpayer for life.
It’s got so bad that even the medical expert who first recognised the spectrum argues that the whole concept has been wrecked, perhaps beyond repair.
[Dame Uta Frith…] emeritus professor of cognitive development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, the 84-year-old is having second thoughts about the framework. “I think the spectrum has come to its collapse,” she says over Zoom.
Her cheerful and gentle manner feels incongruous with the gravity of the point she is making: Professor Frith thinks that the autism spectrum is broken. That our approach is at best no longer relevant and at worst damaging. Not only that, she is also challenging a modern doctrine in science that values inclusivity as an end in itself.
It is this inclusivity, Professor Frith says, that means “there is no longer a common denominator for all the individuals who are diagnosed as having ASD [autism spectrum disorder]”.
When everybody who wants to is ‘autistic’, then nobody is. This is a deplorable situation for genuine sufferers and taxpayers alike.
“The spectrum has become so accommodating that I fear that it has now been stretched so far that it has become meaningless and is no longer useful as a medical diagnosis,” she says.
In recent decades, rates of autism diagnoses have shot up dramatically. The recent rise of cases “has not been equally distributed across the spectrum”, Professor Frith says.
“The group of children diagnosed in early childhood under the initial strict diagnostic criteria has remained relatively stable,” she says […]
But there is a second group, at the other end of the spectrum, people with milder problems. Professor Frith argues: “These individuals have no intellectual impairment and are verbally fluent, but they typically feel highly anxious in social situations and are hypersensitive.”
In other words, just the standard neurotic Gen Z nonsense. Only, now, they get to add the fashionable frisson of ‘neurodivergent’. Not to mention, get a golden ticket to a lifetime of taxpayer-funded luxury.
There has been a dramatic rise in young people and adults in this group being diagnosed, especially women, says Professor Frith. Studies in America and Sweden have shown that the rates of women with autism are rising faster than in other groups, and they are being diagnosed later in life.
At the same time, autism has “become glamourised, and a diagnosis has become somewhat desirable”, as popular culture lionises fictional figures with autistic traits. “We don’t see schizophrenia being glamorised in the same way,” Professor Frith says.
This is frankly a damnable and grotesque insult to genuine sufferers.
Professor Frith, who began her academic career at Saarland University in Germany, is concerned about the consequences of this – “that the frightening rate of increase in later-diagnosed groups overshadows the needs of those with intellectual disabilities, who require much more intensive support”.
It’s even worse in places like Australia, where Julia Gillard’s National Disability Insurance Scheme has become a bloated behemoth of uncontrolled government spending, bleeding the taxpayer for tens of billions every year. A diagnosis of ‘autism’ is a golden ticket to a lifetime of publicly-funded ease. Mothers shop their children around unscrupulous doctors who openly tout diagnoses for a lazy five grand.
Just as the autism fakers insult real sufferers and scam taxpayers, they distort the entire NDIS system. While severely disabled children wait years for a new wheelchair, the ‘autism’ grifters are treated to a lifestyle once reserved for the minor aristocracy of Britain. Whistleblowers report NDIS-bilkers being serviced by a veritable army of ‘carers’, cooks, gardeners. Even holiday cruises and prostitutes are being paid for with NDIS funds.
It’s a disgusting, sick joke. Except it’s not at all funny.
