Aspies For Freedom

Today in The Times there is a two page spread about Autism.

The key item is Prof. Baron-Cohen trying to repair the damage done by the leak of unpublished information which seems to have been used by the Wakefield / MMR lot at a critical time.

"Baron-Cohen says the news story is alarmist and wrong. He does not believe that MMR has anything to do with autism. “We are gobsmacked, really, at how this draft report has got out,” Baron-Cohen says. “It was only in the hands of the authors – about half a dozen people."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_an...060575.ece

It seems that the 1 in 58 figure comes from screening questionaire results, not a diagnosis and that is a fair enough result. Screening will include false positives.

The second Autism item had me spitting feathers over PC. It starts by going on about a stereotypical Autistic in the eyes of the public, low functioning but plays a trick, it says "her"

I have nothing whatsoever for or against females but stereotypically Autistic is male, that is what the data says, in the region 4:1 to 8:1

It's okay to flame me ladies. (dons asbestos underwear) :-)

(I apologise for creating a new thread when the issue is the same as the 1 in 58 but the new news is important so needs headlining)

  Obviously people just skip over links and don't read them, because I have already posted (quite some time ago, in fact) links to information explaining both A) the fact that a screening test was used so there were a great many false positives and B) the fact the Baron-Cohen was baffled and upset by the way his words were twisted in the hands of the Mercury militia.

I'm not mad at you, tchannon, sorry.  I'm just annoyed in general because only one person on that thread gave any indication they had read my posts.

I guessed I might have missed something already posted, repeating does no harm.

Posting stuff can be soul destroying when it seems to go into a void, yet that is not always what is happening. Sometimes things are read by people who matter, where some have to remain silent, others simply nod, nothing to add. Given the 80/20 rule most people will be silent. Some places I am anything but so, this place though is a little too public.

Tim

I would say that the proportion of male to female Aspies is truly 1-1, but because the condition manifests somewhat differently in males and females, more males are diagnosed than females.

I suppose tchannon now knows how it feels to be mistaken for a "he", simply because it is so often the default assumption when a person's gender is unknown.

hehe