Photo: hepingting, Flickr Creative Commons.

In 1975, only one in 5,000 children were diagnosed with autism. Today, one in 68 kids are placed on the autism spectrum.

This steep rise caused a form of panic for many, especially parents of autistic kids. In the last few decades many have been looking for a “smoking gun” such as vaccines to solve the puzzle of the rise in autism.

Science journalist Steve Silberman says the problem is, there was probably no rise in the number of autistic kids.

Silberman tells Steve Fast that before the late 1980s the diagnosis was artificially narrow.

“A lot of autistic people, both kids and adults, were completely left out of the ability to get a diagnosis,” Silberman says. “The diagnostic criteria were changed in the so-called bible of psychiatry, the DSM, in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.”

In his book “Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity,” Silberman tracks the history of the autism diagnosis. Silberman found that researcher Hans Asperger effectively mapped the spectrum in the 1930s before the Nazis entered his home country of Austria. Subsequent researchers either ignored or dismissed Asperger’s work before it was rediscovered by psychiatrist and physician Lorna Wing. She pushed for the autism diagnosis to be redefined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. With the new diagnostic criteria, the seeming “boom” autism panicked many parents.

“I don’t blame parents at all for either suspecting vaccines or feeling they were being lied to by the medical community,” Silberman says. “The medical community never really explained to them what was happening with the diagnosis.”

Listen to the interview: Steve Silberman on the Steve Fast Show

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