A study of over 12 million Americans enrolled in healthcare systems between 2011 and 2022 found a 175% increase in autism diagnoses within the full sample during the study period. The study was published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | October 31, 2024
One in 33 children between the ages of 5 and 8 has an autism diagnosis — a higher rate than the official figure of 1 in 36 — according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.
The study examined the health records of over 12 million Americans enrolled in healthcare systems between 2011 and 2022, to identify trends in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses.
The authors found a 175% increase in autism diagnoses within the full sample during the study period, with the biggest increases seen among young adults, females and children in several racial and ethnic groups.
The authors — including four researchers affiliated with Kaiser Permanente and one with the Henry Ford Health System — said their results may be undercounting autism cases.
“Rates reported here may underestimate the true prevalence of ASD in adults, especially older female adults, as many would not have been screened in childhood and remain undiagnosed,” the study’s authors wrote.
The researchers suggested autism diagnoses may be on the rise due to increased advocacy and education efforts that are shattering taboos about autism. They also cited changes to diagnosis definitions and developmental screening practices, and unspecified “environmental factors” as possible contributors.
The study did not list vaccines as a possible factor.
John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said the study “confirms what we have seen from many other data sources: that there is an ongoing catastrophic epidemic of autism.”
However, he said, the study “brushes aside the 800-pound gorilla question of, ‘Why is the number going up?’”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, said the factors highlighted by the study as likely being responsible for an increase in autism diagnoses are unlikely to have led to such a sharp rise.
“The reasons for a 175% increase in prevalence over just 11 years are stunningly ineffectual — improved diagnostics and increased awareness among females? Really?” Hooker asked.
Gilmore accused the authors of deploying “the obligatory boilerplate responses of changing diagnostic criteria and better case finding.” “As usual, this study exhibits no sense of alarm or concern about the growing number of lives crushed by this syndrome.”
According to Toby Rogers, Ph.D., a political economist whose doctoral thesis explored the regulatory history of five classes of toxicants that increase autism risk, the study’s authors “put ideology ahead of proper scientific analysis in explaining the results.”
“They likely have hundreds of variables for each patient — including how many vaccines each has received. The authors have a moral and scientific obligation to regress autism prevalence against the number of vaccines received. I believe such an analysis would show a strong correlation,” Rogers said.
The word “‘vaccine’ never appears in autism studies unless the study intends to demonstrate that vaccines do not cause autism,” Gilmore said. “No one ever suggests that a study that controls for those factors should be done, which you would think would be the immediate and obvious next step.”
Increase in autism rates ‘directly corresponds with the vaccine schedule’
According to the study, autism diagnoses for adult women increased 315% between 2011 and 2022. The corresponding figure for adult men was 215%. Among young adults between 26 and 34 years old, there was a 450% increase in diagnoses.
For Rogers, the marked increase in autism diagnoses in young adults is connected to vaccine-related developments in the 1980s and 1990s. He said:
“The greatest relative increase occurred in birth years 1988 through 1996. So, the population showing the greatest relative increase in diagnosis rate in this new study are the children born following the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 — which gave vaccine manufacturers liability protection — and the introduction of the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.
“That seems highly relevant, yet the authors did not mention that context.”
Mark Blaxill, chief financial officer of the Holland Center, a private autism treatment center, questioned the explosion in autism diagnoses among adults. He said:
“Any first-time diagnosis of anyone over 25 years of age with autism, a disabling condition of early childhood, should be viewed with some skepticism.
“I’ve met grown adults who’ve decided they identify as autistic, despite attending school, graduating from college, getting married and having children. Their condition might reflect some form of mental health problem.”
Addressing the increase in autism diagnoses among 5- to 8-year-olds, Rogers said the authors again ignored a likely connection to vaccines.
“That also directly corresponds with the vaccine schedule. Five- to eight-year-olds are the most highly vaccinated group and those aged 45 years or older are the least vaccinated group — because the number of vaccines on the childhood schedule quadrupled in the years following the passage of the 1986 Act,” Rogers said.
‘Better diagnosing’ of autism ‘a demonstrably false notion’
Experts also questioned the researchers’ hypothesis for the increase in autism diagnoses, with Blaxill questioning the hypothesis of improved diagnosing.
“This study introduces a new measure, ‘diagnosis rate,’ the only purpose of which is to direct attention to the (relatively inconsequential) event of ‘diagnosis,’” Blaxill said. “The only reason to care about this measure is if you believe rising autism rates are a consequence of ‘better diagnosing,’ a demonstrably false notion.”
“Autism is a real disability, not an outcome of more sensitive or higher-performance care providers. The autism epidemic is not an occasion for service providers to compliment themselves on their improved screening … It’s an indictment of the failure of the U.S. healthcare system to recognize, mobilize against and reverse one of the greatest threats to American children we’ve ever seen,” Blaxill added.
Research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., told The Defender, “The authors never tested causality in their paper — they simply described the extremely troubling increase that has been occurring since 1980.”
“How they can conclude causality without testing even one hypothesis is mystifying. It’s mere speculation, and in my estimation, it’s badly done, at that,” Lyons-Weiler said. “The science that does assess causality clearly points to environmental factors.”
According to the study, the gap in diagnoses between males and females of all ages “steadily declined” during the study period — a result of the comparatively bigger surge in autism diagnoses among females.
The researchers suggested that social stigmas surrounding autism, and “gender behavior norms” that may have caused females to “socially hide autistic traits” may be easing, leading more girls and women to seek out a diagnosis.
For Gilmore though, a more likely hypothesis accounting for the gender gap — and its narrowing over time — is that “there is an environmental factor that males are more susceptible to, but the level of exposure is rising over time to the degree that whatever additional resistance females may have is starting to be overcome.”
Kim Rossi, managing editor of Age of Autism, cited another possible reason for increased autism diagnoses. Rossi described an “appalling trend” toward “diagnosis appropriation,” wherein autism diagnoses are used “as a badge of pride and entrance to a cool club,” in an effort to normalize the condition.
Kaiser Permanente previously helped suppress autism research
The study’s authors said its findings indicate the need for expanded care for adults with autism. But some experts questioned the impartiality of Kaiser Permanente — the healthcare system that employs several of the study’s authors — and pointed to its track record of suppressing studies on environmental signals connected to autism.
“The population of autistic adults in the US will continue to grow, underscoring a need for expanded health care services,” they wrote.
Gilmore said the long-term goal of healthcare providers such as Kaiser Permanente “is to provide more medical services and products” — and therefore benefit from a growing population of autistic adults.
Lyons-Weiler said Kaiser Permanente has previously helped censor studies that pointed to environmental factors contributing to autism. He said:
“I’m concerned about the role of Kaiser in this. They were part of the now infamous Simpsonwood cover-up meeting at which CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], medicos and Pharma met to discuss how to bury an environmental signal that showed a clear, linear increase in [the] incidence of autism, with children receiving more thimerosal having higher rates than those receiving less.
“It seems those who stand to profit most from vaccines — and from their adverse events — never pay attention to the studies that show very strong association of risk of neurodevelopmental diseases and autoimmunity with exposure to vaccines.”
According to Hooker, Kaiser Permanente is “highly conflicted.” He noted that one of the study’s co-authors, Lisa A. Croen, Ph.D., “is directly responsible for the fraudulent Zerbo et al. 2017 study where the significant relationship between the first-trimester flu shot and autism was buried using statistical trickery.”
“These ‘researchers’ will never come down on the side of truth when it comes to autism and vaccines,” Hooker said.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”