Does the CDC Memory Hole the Real Autism Rates (or Is There Something Worse Going on?)

This blog was written by Beth Lambert and originally published on epidemicanswers.org; you can continue reading after the excerpt below by clicking on the button at the bottom.

My friend Maria Rickert Hong and I just discovered something interesting about the CDC’s data on autism rates and prevalence.

You may have seen the email we sent out recently about the new autism rates reported by the CDC . . . The new numbers are alarming.

1 in 36 children has an autism spectrum disorder.

On their website, the CDC tells us that this is up from 1 in 88 in 2009.

Maria and I were chatting and both of us could have sworn that the autism rate reported by the CDC in 2009 was 1 in 150.

So, we checked it out. And we were right. In 2009, the CDC did report the rate as 1 in 150 (see internet archives below).

And this is where we found a really interesting phenomenon with the CDC data on autism prevalence.

We both jumped to the conclusion that the CDC went back, cherry picked data and adjusted the rate to make the growth of autism look higher in the past, to perhaps blunt the effect of the jaw-dropping new rates they just released. (Sadly, neither Maria nor I have a whole lot of trust in the CDC in this post-COVID world, so, we assumed the worst. I think we’re not alone.)