^
This

It destroys families, yes.

I strongly encourage everyone to read this article, which includes the recent deposition testimony of two highly respected authorities on autism. Their opinion is that vaccines (among other triggers) can and do cause autism. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/clea...

I estimate that here in the Silicon Valley, it's closer to 36 in 40!

A few would be: general obliviousness, if they speak it's in a monotone, not responding to what other people say or responding with non sequiturs, an inability to understand cues and facial expressions from other people, physical manifestations like walking on their toes and flapping their arms, severe food allergies, prefers isolation, uncoordinated, inability to make eye contact. These were some of my son's symptoms, and many other autistic children I've met had some or all of them. Any competent professional can render a diagnosis. Like I said, when you've been around autistic children, you learn to recognize them.

I forgot in my above post to include the book my wife wrote about our experience: Rescued: a story of hope & help for parents of children with autism. The Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Rescued-story-...

People who are allosauristic may number 1 in 999 but I don't think so.
That's because me dino don't know who does.

Sounds like you could be describing liberals, especially the zombie description. Maybe thats why there is such interest in the walking dead TV series.

You seem confident that you can tell if a person is autistic. Can you point me in the direction of how to tell. The only exposure I have had is watching "the good doctor" on TV

After watching the good doctor, I might have had, or even have now autism. Who knows. And who cares really. I have managed to do OK despite it I suppose.

My playground observation isn't my sample for anything really. Even if it were tainted...to see something like 10 to 20% of kids at our local playground clearly disabled in this way is impactful. It is an observation. But, I'm several years past formulating any hypothesis. I've exercised the scientific method to a conclusion. I'm out of that game now.

Get ready for the wave.

It should be noted that when schools receive extra money when a child has any such diagnosis, the incidence seem to go up. Also, the psychological society definitions of Autism, ADHD and such seem to expand with time, taking in more children. Does it make it so, not completely. ADHD was once listed as 2% of population. However, our local school system had 33% on Ritalin in one grade school. Were they all correctly diagnosed, not likely, and definitely not according to one local pediatrician. One thing that is grossly overlooked, is how allergies, esp. food allergies, can cause children to exhibit the same symptoms. They tried pushing our daughter toward an ADHD or Asperger Syn diagnosis., but her allergist said no! With proper allergy treatment in grade school, she was able to sit and read 90 pages at a time easily. She finished two Masters Degrees, also easily. Parents have to realized they really know their kids best, and know when a condition is as diagnosed, and when it is not.

I won't go into the weeds of autism diagnosis. My son is autistic and I've met hundreds of autistic children. You know them when you see and talk with them, and no, it's not just a random eccentricity or quirk or two, it's an entire personality pattern. I grew up in Los Alamos and graduated high school in 1976. With one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the world, Los Alamos should have been a hot bed of autism (there seems to be some correlation between autism and the intelligence of the parents). I did not meet one person in Los Alamos I would label autistic (quirky and eccentric, yes, autistic, no). Nobody had the personality pattern that I would identify as what I now know to be autism.

As for causation, many of the austistic children I've known had a dramatic and negative change in personality after vaccinations, including my son. These changes are what lead to the autism diagnosis. The number of required infant and childhood vaccinations has increased exponentially in the past few decades. I do not believe it is the vaccines' active ingredient that causes the autism. Rather, it is what they put with the active ingredient: mercury (thimerosal as a preservative) and aluminum adjuvants, which lodge in the brain. The symptoms of so-called autism exactly mimic those of heavy metal poisoning. There seems to be a great deal of variability among infants and children as to their susceptibility to this poisoning, and males as a group appear to be more susceptible than females. That is the genetic component of autism--susceptibility to heavy metal poisoning. Government and industry ascribe autism itself to genetics, as if the human genome somehow changed within a few decades so that autism rates skyrocketed as they have. It would be laughable were it not so tragic.

Correlation is not causation, but there is almost a perfect correlation betwen the number of required vaccines and autism diagnoses. Please do not tell me about all the government and industry-funded studies that purport to show no connection. Many of those studies use vaccines with no thimerosal or aluminum adjuvants, which should tell you something right there. If it was conclusively established that vaccines caused autism, which properly labeled would then be heavy metal poisoning, it would bankrupt the manufacturers of those vaccines. Except that vaccine makers have a special exemption from such liability under a law passed in 1986, which should also tell you something.

For anyone interested in moving past the propaganda, here are two fairly recent links that will get you going:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/11/n...

https://healingoracle.ch/2018/08/10/m...

If you know anyone who is expecting or recently had a baby, I have several strong recommendations. Ask for vaccines without thimerosal and aluminum adjuvants. They are more expensive, but they are available in most areas. If your health provider doesn't know if their vaccines have those ingredients, assume they do and go elsewhere. Also, space out the vaccines and do not get multiple vaccines at the same time. If possible, decline vaccines for as long as possible after the baby is born. The entire vaccination schedule is set up for hospital convenience and drug industry profits, not your children's or grandchildren's health. If I stop one kid and his family from going through what my family went through, this post will be well worth it.

To end on a hopeful note. My son, diagnosed with autism at the age of three, has benefitted from numerous therapies that my wife and I discovered in the Southern California area. This year he will graduate from the University of New Mexico. He is a member of a fraternity, has his own apartment, has worked on two political campaigns, and has a job helping senior citizens learn how to use their smart phones and computers. If you met him you might detect something was a little off, especially if you have experience with autistics, but his improvement has been remarkable. Next year my son will find a job, and we are quite confident he will rise to that challenge as he has risen to every other challenge. Autism, or more correctly heavy-metal poisoning, does not have to be a life sentence.

one potential solution is a plant-based diet and the end of mandatory vaccination programs for newborns...

Like life, science evolves as we learn more, or devolves as we deny what we have learned and follow some settled narrative.
Fun fact: That scientific conclusions are never perfect is why postmodernism got started.

I am afraid that these days young people are made special and rewarded for having some obvious disability. In the past we encouraged people to meld in to the greater society and strive to be what society would deem normal. As a result we used to give kids who seemed to be having problems a talking to or a swift kick in the ass when they didn't behave of when they acted out. Now we crumble at the sight of any child in "distress" or that cant seem to control themselves. Followed by medication. There are clearly people with legitimate mental problems, autism being one, my neighbor has a CP adult child....but I fear that while we were unenlightened and harsh to these legitimate cases in the past.....we have a hell of a lot more of this to deal with these days because to a certain degree....we are manufacturing the "lame and crippled." Which is better..,.....mis or mal-treatment of a few legitimate cases.....or encouraging young people to evidence signs of these types of behavioral disability.

It used to be that children were determined to be "disruptive" or "misbehaving." Next came the medical community, labeling non-passive behaviors as ADHD, ADD and the like. Finally, there was a flock of various "syndromes" like Asberger's.

We began to gain a better understanding of why such irregular behaviors were connected to common neurological dysfunction, the worst of which is autism. The medical community again stepped into the "name game," and decided that the relativity of the neurological irregularities deserved to be placed on common ground, now referred to as the "Autism Spectrum."

The problem with such broad descriptions is that almost everyone with an uncommon twitch (I tap my head when I'm pondering) is declared to be on the Autism Spectrum. While this raises the alarm sought by a medical community eager for more bucks, it muddies the water for people trying to get aid for the truly autistic, who are cut off from the world by damaged sensor processing.

My grandson is both severely autistic and ataxic (he doesn't process language well, and is mostly non-verbal). While he found some aid when very young, once past puberty there is no effective positive care until he reaches adulthood, when there are group homes that can provide aid in most cases.

The flaw in research on autism is that it is almost entirely focused on gaining more detail on the neurological irregularities related to the disorder. Studies on possible causes or how to create an environment for positive interaction with autistics are given the short end of the stick.

Genetic trails should be established, to either identify a possible genetic source, or eliminate it from the discussion. Communication studies that identify a means of translating the surroundings to a form understandable by autistics should be pursued. We need to tie the neurological damage to possible environmental causes. Sadly, it seems the anti-vaccination folk are the only ones concerned with a cause and effect relationship to the disorder. If we don't realize this is a pending disaster, it will consume us as a society.

I do believe this is true. By the time people are receptive to the concept that mistakes have been made it will be too late. It will probably be in about 20 years. That's my guess. The average person gets their science from the local news talking heads. Add to this that people are almost never willing to say, "I was wrong. I have learned something from it." We are in serious trouble. This is the point of my post...

I'll state it here. I was wrong. I have learned a great deal from it...

I don't disagree with your point at all. There is a lot of confusion on this stuff out there because, in order to properly evaluate it you need to be well-founded in science. People aren't. People are quick to label and medicate. Raising kids is really tough a lot of the time. People are confused...in general.

That's a pity.

You may email me separately.

I totally get that. Glib can be good too! I'm a pretty technical guy...when I speak publicly I tell them I'm the Cliff Clavin of med tech and everybody laughs. I'm a complete geek on some things. Certainly somewhat near the spectrum.

Aback. Your knowledge and expertise have prevented me from making a glib statement as my first response. My childhood was full of children (mostly boys) who would certainly be diagnosed as somewhere on the autism scale; probably including myself. With a few exceptions, we all grew up to be fairly productive humans. My glib conjecture is that many parents just don’t want to put in the effort to tame and train the male human child. The status quo seems to want boys to act like girls....

It seems to me that "Autism" is the new "ADD" or "ADHD." We have reached a "diagnosis crisis" more than any actual number of severe cases - at least that's what it seems. Just like every young boy suddenly and catastrophically needed Ritalin (or some such) because of "diagnosed ADD behavior," I've seen all kinds of people being diagnosed as being "on the spectrum" when in reality they were just looking for a medical confirmation of being poorly parented (or just assholes).

You cast that net wide enough and you'll easily get to 1 in 4, or even 1 in 1. Hell, just to make sure we're all "included," let's just start there. Don't want to leave anyone out and make them feel bad!

Tickle, tickle.

So it's possible that your sample is 'tainted'? Are you making the playground observation at a time when all the normal kids are in school, at camp, obsessed with their tablets? It's possible that only the severely autistic kids 'appear' in your sample, because the normals self exclude from the sample population.

Autism may not be 1 in 40 or even 1 in 100, but what you are looking at are the long term physiological effects of seeing so much information so quickly that the human brain is having a hard time keeping up.