On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 15:09 -0700, Jim Devine wrote: > The one I'm most familiar with is Asperger syndrome, but I'll talk > about that.
I wasn't actually thinking of things like Asperger's, which has, as I understand, a pretty clear-cut clinical profile. What I had in mind was the more vaguely defined (and now numerically huge) category of "learning disabilities" whose definition pretty much boils down to "not as good at math (or whatever) as the schools expect." > AS may be > partly a genetically-based disability. I think that's weak, however, > because it doesn't explain why AS and hard-core (Kanner's) autism have > become so prevalent these days compared to previous eras. > > As I've argued in the past on pen-l, I think the "plague" is partly > the result of greater diagnosis (and the falling off of false > diagnoses such as AD/HD for many kids). It's also partly a result of > the large number of different kinds of environmental pollutants, which > "insult" the fetus in the womb. Based on my own very superficial reading, this seems right. The increase is much too great, as I understand it, for better diagnosis to account for.
