By Nicole Crosby
Posted: 04/30/2009 04:27:59 PM EDT
It's day 30 of Autism Awareness Month, which means 2,160 new cases of autism were added this month -- one every 20 minutes. At a cost of $3 million per child, the bill for this epidemic -- $90 billion per year -- will hit every pocketbook and every school budget. Hard.
And yet, the Centers for Disease Control deny an autism epidemic exists. Polio was considered epidemic when the numbers reached 1 in 3,000, but not so for autism, which now affects 1 in 150 -- a 100-fold increase in 30 years. The Department of Education puts the autism rate even higher: 1 in 67. Somali Immigrants in Minnesota who didn't even have a word for "autism" in their country are seeing an astonishing 1 in 28 autism rate in their children. Yet the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics claim "better diagnosis" explains the increase in autism cases. If so, then in 1992, 93 percent of kids with autism were missed. That's how many more children are receiving services for autism in schools today.
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