After attending Wednesday’s congressional briefing on the latest autism statistics, I found myself with three questions, despite having asked several at the briefing. They are variations on the same theme, and not exactly new, but seem more pressing after more than an hour of listening: Why is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still in charge of monitoring and explaining the rise in autism? Why are the CDC and Autism Speaks cozying up to each other in such a public way at this particular moment? And why was the Congressional host heaping praise on the agency when it covered up the first signs of the epidemic -- and in his home district in New Jersey, of all places?
The event was co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) and billed as “a Congressional Briefing on the Centers for Disease Control's recent announcement that autism now affects 1 in 88 American children.”
Rep. Smith began the proceedings, which drew probably 30 people to a room in the Rayburn House Office Building. Congressmen often try to make news at these kind of events, and before he started speaking an aide passed out a statement by Smith headlined, “Global Autism: ‘A Developmental Disability Pandemic’ – 67 Million People Affected According to Autism Speaks.” Then I realized the statement was from May 31, 2011. Nothing new to say, I guess.
Smith began by describing the CDC’s Brick Township study, which started after a parent reached out to the congressman in 1997 (he’s been around for 16 terms, as he pointed out). The parent was concerned about “an apparent prevalence spike” in autism. The CDC investigated, Smith said, and “did an expert study that was extraordinary … and all of a sudden it became clear that it wasn’t just Brick. It seemed as if there was some game changer somewhere in the population causing this huge new increase in autism.”
Well, not exactly. In fact, not at all. The CDC did find a rate of 1 in 150 children in Brick Township
In our book, The Age of Autism – Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-made Epidemic, Mark Blaxill and I took a look at the actual data the CDC used in its Brick Township study, which the group SafeMinds had obtained from the CDC. In fact, the autism rate in Brick Township was actually zero in 1989, the start of the study period. Not one kid had autism.
As we wrote, “Once you have the real trend data, you can figure out how hard the CDC had to work in order to report a result that said there was no trend. … If this wasn’t a cover-up, it’s hard to think of a polite synonym.”
