The same trends are seen in my husband’s family. That’s anecdotal, of course; and wildly speculative. But the point is, autism has been around a lot longer than we’ve been looking for it. A lot longer than vaccines. FFS vaccinate your kids. Also there are worse things than being autistic. 9/9

I am #actuallyautistic and descended from a long line of people who would probably be considered autistic using the DSM-5 definition. I got the MMR vaccine as a small child. My mom is just like me. She didn’t. Neither did her mom or dad, who were also very much like me. 8/

And yet, there are those who will insist that there is a statistical correlation between autism and use of the MMR vaccine. We could say the same thing about ANY disorder where detection methods have increased in modern years. HIV. Depression. Colon cancer. Fibromyalgia. 7/

To say that the incidence of autism has increased since 1975 when the very definition of autism has broadened over that time is shockingly bad statistical analysis. We don’t have enough information to make that claim. 6/

I’m not saying the DSM-5 has it perfect. It describes autism in terms of external behaviors without accounting for the subjective experience of autistic people. But it’s written to capture the manifestations in a lot more of us. 5/

And in the DSM-III, mostly the diagnostic criteria covered the “childhood schizophrenia” cases. Low-support-needs autism as we understand it today wasn’t really covered. Even under the DSM-IV, the poorly-defined diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s allowed for lots of kids to be missed. 4/

Before the early 1900s, mental disorders weren’t even really studied. Obviously more people were diagnosed with various disorders when the DSM 1 came out in the 50s. But autism wasn’t a diagnosis until the DSM-III came out in 1980. The MMR vaccine was in use starting in 1975. 3/

Studying the history of autism as a diagnosis shows that there are necessarily more cases now than there once were. High-support needs autism used to be called “childhood schizophrenia” and low-support-needs, what was once called Asperger’s, wasn’t even a thing. 2/

It seems like a useless gesture to me. I don’t like the messaging of sanctioning insurrection - clears the way for Trump to do whatever. We should at least pretend that rule of law means something and leave building blocks for normalcy for when we come to our collective senses.

Different location, different rules. Tolley is pretty good at understanding that rules exist and apply to him, and doggie inability to generalize works in our favor when traveling.

Fortunately, at home, he’s welcome on the squishy couch.