Behind the Autism Statistics, an essay in the Atlantic Monthly, asks a provocative question: given that children with autism can qualify for free, state-funded therapy, is it possible that children with autism-like symptoms (but not autism itself) are being deliberately misdiagnosed? And that such misdiagnoses are partially to blame for the precipitous rise in autism rates (up to 1 in 100 kids, says the CDC)?
“Ableism!” charges Sarah, an autistic woman who advocates for autism rights on her blog Cat in a Dog’s World. “The article is correct in pointing out the potential for misdiagnosis, and the fact that a lot of diagnostic gerry-mandering goes on because families want services,” writes Sarah, “Becker draws an artificial line between those she, parents, and/or the medical establishment consider to be ‘really autistic’ and those ‘normal’ children who just have a few quirky developmental issues. She’s fine with stigmatizing the ‘really autistic’ ones as broken and in need of repair, but foisting the label on a ‘normal’ child is apparently a great travesty.”
As Sarah points out, Becker’s conclusions seem to be drawn from the experiences of just one family: By a strange coincidence that family is the family profiled in Becker’s new film, Autistic-Like: Graham’s Story.