Slide 20:
In the past, autism was a very rare disorder: 1 or 2 child per 10,000. I
think an important concept to realize is those 1 or 2 children per 10,000 are still out
there. They are very rare. If it were the old days, I wouldnt be talking to you
because there would not be enough parents together here to have a meeting. As a
pediatrician, I was always told that if in my entire lifetime in practice I saw one
autistic child, it was going to be one too many. At that time, it was a devastating
handicap. As I said, something was wrong by 3 to 6 months of age. The consequences were
grim. Certainly, some of those children might have fit into some of the things were
going to talk about now. But you have to say that out there, in a very rare group of
children, there may be some children where legitimately something goes wrong in utero,
something goes wrong in development, and they were autism then. |
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