While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., brings in the best and brightest to conclude, once and for all, what caused the epic increase in Autism cases in the US, the answer may have just become very easy to discern due to the “guilt” admitted by one of the nation’s leading psychiatrists.
Those who long have been aware of the fraud associated with psychiatric diagnosing are not surprised to learn that the psychiatric community is behind the horrific number of Autism cases in the United States. The only thing that is surprising is how long it has taken for the fraud to be exposed.
Dr. Allen Francis, former chair of the Task Force responsible for overhauling and updating the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III), reflecting a greatly expanded diagnosis for Autism in the DSM-IV. Francis referred to the increase in Autism cases as an “epidemic” of overdiagnosis. One might argue that, based on his own words, it is an “epidemic of misdiagnosis.”
In the 1980’s the rate of Autism in the US was one in 2,000. With the help of Dr. Francis and his DSM-IV team, the rate had skyrocketed to 1 in 150 by 2000 and, unbelievably, today has settled at one in 31. Considering the extraordinary expansion of symptoms made by Francis and his team, one now refers to an Autism diagnosis as being on the “Spectrum.”
Yes. During an interview with the BBC, Francis explained that “it’s a kind of mea culpa – we had good intentions that led to terrible unintended consequences.” In fact, what is more interesting about Francis’s “mea culpa” is that the grand psychiatrist seems more concerned that his expansion of the Autism diagnosis has contributed to the anti-vax movement, not that millions of kids have been wrongly diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder where there is none.
Francis explained during his BBC interview that he and his team worked to loosen the definition of Autism because psychiatrists and pediatricians thought the criteria was too stringent, leaving some with lesser symptoms unable to get health services. According to Francis, he and his team “introduced something called Asperger’s disorder, and that evolved into autism spectrum disorder…”
Here’s the kicker, according to Francis “this meant that the symptoms of autism as currently used or defined by many clinicians, and certainly self-defined by patients and families, would include many people who have normal social awkwardness, eccentricities, difficulties relating to people that previously would never have been considered a mental disorder.”
Hellbound and Down 