Dear John,
This new paper
Advancing
Paternal Age and Autism is I believe the first time we
have hard scientific proof that autism spectrum
disorder in British kids has increased 1200 percent since mid 1980s.
Previously this huge increase has been fobbed off as "better diagnosis"
and "greater awareness" as the government et al claim.
This paper proves it is a real increase. It also confirms
the problem is international and backs up the reported figures from the US and
other countries. The diagnoses were in the past 6 years when the subjects were
at age 17 and when the most recent classification
and diagnostic standards were used and diagnosis was according to
the current International Classification of Disease 10th edition and not those
used in the 1980s.
And remember the very recently reported paper by British scientist Baird found
ASD was now 1 in 100 in British kids.
The new paper proves the incidence of ASD is 12 times less in early to
mid-1980 than it is in the UK now of 1 in 100. The papers shows the
rate as 8.4 per 10,000 which is 1 in 1200:
"The risk of ASD was 8.4 cases per 10 000 persons (319 cases) among all individuals in the cohort who were assessed by the draft board, 8.3 cases per 10 000 persons (110 cases) in the smaller subset used for the primary analysis, and 6.5 cases per 10 000 persons (208 cases) in the smaller subset used for the sensitivity analysis. The risk is somewhat lower in the latter subset because paternal age data were more likely to be missing for ASD than non-ASD cohort members (see the “Methods” section)."So the questions people should be asking are
See: [Sept 2006] Letter to editor re: FATHERS OVER 40 ARE 6 TIMES AS LIKELY TO HAVE AN AUTISTIC CHILD