Buried in this article about fad treatments for autism is the fact that the number of people diagnosed with autism has increased 20 times since the 70s.
Either we are better at diagnosing autism; there is an autism epidemic or we are falsely diagnosing children with autism.
Although extreme cases of autism prove that this is a serious a debilitating condition, I can’t help feeling its the latter and that both autism diagnosis and treatment are fads. The central role that autism has played in wrongful public hysteria over vaccination risks is perhaps due, in part, to the fact that autism diagnosis is a less than perfect science.