That's one of the things baffling me about MAHA. Though I guess children will indeed eat less food dyes when their parents can't afford food. Maybe cutting health care will help their cause, though, like back in 2020 when Trump complained that we wouldn't have any COVID cases except for the testing for COVID. Can't diagnose children that don't get to go to the doctor. It's fine if they get seriously ill from raw milk as long as they don't have allergies.
I still struggle to understand RFK Jr's motivation. Is it just money? Can he actually believe what he says? Does he really believe Froot Loops are more dangerous than measles? How does he benefit that much from scaring people off vaccines? With Wakefield at least the connection seemed pretty clear but in everything I've read about RFK I can't quite connect the dots.
He has not had a normal life, so I find it hard to speculate on what he thinks about the world. It’s possible that he really does believe this stuff, but it’s also possible that he doesn’t really care if it’s true or not, as long as it brings him money and power.
"COVID turned many of these trends around, and is also *making many of the chronic disease issues in kids*"
This part is false. There is a huge amount of bad epi that has gone into making and maintaining the myth that SARS-CoV-2 infection causes chronic diseases: diabetes, mental health disorders, etc. It's slowly being unravelled but there is a lot of power (journals, senior academics etc) behind the bad science.
There is absolutely no logic to the suggestion that people did not have autism several decades ago because they died instead. Autism is not a fatal disease and not even associated with fatal childhood diseases.
Many other aspects of this post from Ellie are quite good.
Actually, people with ASD have a higher risk of mortality than the general population. There is lots of evidence of this, as much as I wish it were not at all true. Here's one study cited below so you don't just think this is my opinion. The reasons are multifaceted and no single study will be able to get at all the root causes. I'm sure you can also imagine reasons that would increase mortality that are related to fewer, less effective treatments and/or fewer diagnoses.
Thank you, Tami. Yes, unfortunately, people with autism are at increased risk of epilepsy. Epilepsy is associated with increased mortality. And the Woolfenden paper you cited, which seems quite good, found a diverse range of standardized mortality ratios (SMR) with autism, particularly females and those with ID. They noted that the SMR with autism & ID is similar to the SMR with ID and no autism. They found that SMR is stable over time. Of course, those with autism in these studies were diagnosed with autism.
Those findings do not support the idea that the vast majority of people born decades ago who had or would have had autism died before they could be diagnosed with autism. Nor do they support a conjecture that that phenomenon gradually stopped over several decades.
Is there any data that suggest that increase in autism prevalence since the 70s has any relation to the efforts to reduce SIDS by moving to back sleeping for infants? Given that infants with autism often lack muscle tone and have motor planning deficits, might infants with autism have been over-represented among stomach sleeping SIDS deaths? Those infants now live to be diagnosed with autism. A win in my book.
oh, I absolutely understand that. Just one more thing I can think of that dates to the 70s that has been an actual resounding public health success which causes kids to survive long enough to be diagnosed with some other condition, giving the false impression of an increase in prevalence.
Ah, yes. And no, I don’t know of any data linking SIDS and autism, but a big challenge is that if we don’t know why a baby died then we can’t easily tell which babies survived after changing recommendations and education.
While you're there check out the editorial board, You'll find some familiar names like Peter McCullough. Also
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, said the CYP450 detoxification pathway is incomplete at birth because, until recently, babies’ bodies did not need to contend with multiple toxins.
CDC:
SIDS is the sudden, unexpected death of a baby younger than 1 year of age that doesn’t have a known cause even after a complete investigation.
Multiple research studies and safety reviews have found that vaccines do not cause and are not linked to SIDS.
"Back to Sleep" program, now known as the "Safe to Sleep" has greatly reduce incidents of SIDS since 1994 with a better than 50% reduction. However, suffocation still remains a problem and why it is called "Safe to Sleep" For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep
Hep B was blamed at one point but ironically may be responsible some of the reduction. SIDS, much like ASD, the rate is equivalent between vaccinated and unvaccinated.
You really nailed it with this report; spot-on consistency.
Thanks!
That's one of the things baffling me about MAHA. Though I guess children will indeed eat less food dyes when their parents can't afford food. Maybe cutting health care will help their cause, though, like back in 2020 when Trump complained that we wouldn't have any COVID cases except for the testing for COVID. Can't diagnose children that don't get to go to the doctor. It's fine if they get seriously ill from raw milk as long as they don't have allergies.
I still struggle to understand RFK Jr's motivation. Is it just money? Can he actually believe what he says? Does he really believe Froot Loops are more dangerous than measles? How does he benefit that much from scaring people off vaccines? With Wakefield at least the connection seemed pretty clear but in everything I've read about RFK I can't quite connect the dots.
He has not had a normal life, so I find it hard to speculate on what he thinks about the world. It’s possible that he really does believe this stuff, but it’s also possible that he doesn’t really care if it’s true or not, as long as it brings him money and power.
"COVID turned many of these trends around, and is also *making many of the chronic disease issues in kids*"
This part is false. There is a huge amount of bad epi that has gone into making and maintaining the myth that SARS-CoV-2 infection causes chronic diseases: diabetes, mental health disorders, etc. It's slowly being unravelled but there is a lot of power (journals, senior academics etc) behind the bad science.
There is absolutely no logic to the suggestion that people did not have autism several decades ago because they died instead. Autism is not a fatal disease and not even associated with fatal childhood diseases.
Many other aspects of this post from Ellie are quite good.
Actually, people with ASD have a higher risk of mortality than the general population. There is lots of evidence of this, as much as I wish it were not at all true. Here's one study cited below so you don't just think this is my opinion. The reasons are multifaceted and no single study will be able to get at all the root causes. I'm sure you can also imagine reasons that would increase mortality that are related to fewer, less effective treatments and/or fewer diagnoses.
A systematic review of two outcomes in autism spectrum disorder – epilepsy and mortality - WOOLFENDEN - 2012 - Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology - Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2012.04223.x
Thank you, Tami. Yes, unfortunately, people with autism are at increased risk of epilepsy. Epilepsy is associated with increased mortality. And the Woolfenden paper you cited, which seems quite good, found a diverse range of standardized mortality ratios (SMR) with autism, particularly females and those with ID. They noted that the SMR with autism & ID is similar to the SMR with ID and no autism. They found that SMR is stable over time. Of course, those with autism in these studies were diagnosed with autism.
Those findings do not support the idea that the vast majority of people born decades ago who had or would have had autism died before they could be diagnosed with autism. Nor do they support a conjecture that that phenomenon gradually stopped over several decades.
Is there any data that suggest that increase in autism prevalence since the 70s has any relation to the efforts to reduce SIDS by moving to back sleeping for infants? Given that infants with autism often lack muscle tone and have motor planning deficits, might infants with autism have been over-represented among stomach sleeping SIDS deaths? Those infants now live to be diagnosed with autism. A win in my book.
SIDS is by no means the only thing that caused kids to die in the past.
oh, I absolutely understand that. Just one more thing I can think of that dates to the 70s that has been an actual resounding public health success which causes kids to survive long enough to be diagnosed with some other condition, giving the false impression of an increase in prevalence.
Ah, yes. And no, I don’t know of any data linking SIDS and autism, but a big challenge is that if we don’t know why a baby died then we can’t easily tell which babies survived after changing recommendations and education.
This is recalling something on SIDS in my brain. It mainly had to do with vaccination.
It is a classical case of correlation, not causation.
Babies receive a number of vaccines at 2-4 months, also the peak period for SIDS. However, guess who taken up the "cause"? So this research appeared in https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/new-research-reveals-how-vaccines-may-cause-sids-in-some-infants/
While you're there check out the editorial board, You'll find some familiar names like Peter McCullough. Also
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, said the CYP450 detoxification pathway is incomplete at birth because, until recently, babies’ bodies did not need to contend with multiple toxins.
CDC:
SIDS is the sudden, unexpected death of a baby younger than 1 year of age that doesn’t have a known cause even after a complete investigation.
Multiple research studies and safety reviews have found that vaccines do not cause and are not linked to SIDS.
"Back to Sleep" program, now known as the "Safe to Sleep" has greatly reduce incidents of SIDS since 1994 with a better than 50% reduction. However, suffocation still remains a problem and why it is called "Safe to Sleep" For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep
Hep B was blamed at one point but ironically may be responsible some of the reduction. SIDS, much like ASD, the rate is equivalent between vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Oh dear, did
I run on again. :)
Anyway, back to Autism and SIDS, based on a hypothesis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27610351/
My latest post has a bit on gut microbiota and ASD.
This sure sounds familiar wow