MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Taking notice of the new autism statistic”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 30 2014
Nothing glazes the eyes like a fresh load of statistics.
But this one is just too startling to glance away from: One in 68 American children now show up on the autism spectrum. That’s a 30 percent jump from two years ago. The number was 1 in 88 in those relative carefree days.
And these dire numbers don’t arrive from some hysterical activist group or a medical-industrial complex eager to profit from each fresh diagnosis. The stats were gathered by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who studied 8-year-olds in 11 states and found a huge disparity in the case reports: One in 175 on the spectrum in Alabama, 1 in 45 in New Jersey. The researchers didn’t study Long Island this time. But if they had, we’d have surely been at Jersey levels or beyond, as we always are.
So why this rise?
Oh, there are lots of theories — but hardly any general agreement, not even on the central question of whether the incidence of autism, Asperger’s syndrome or other spectrum disorders is really on the rise. Maybe just the reporting is. And then there’s the even thornier question of what lies behind the neural development disorder.
Something environmental? Something prenatal? Concerns about childhood inoculations may finally be fading as scare data from one British researcher seems lately to have been debunked.
But whatever the cause, too many parents are facing life-altering crises when their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds don’t start speaking. And the power of early detection, though crucially important, often isn’t enough.
Have the numbers cut through your glaze?
BROAD SPECTRUM
1. Einstein
2. Mozart
3. Daryl Hannah
4. The best techies in Silicon Valley
5. A kid in every other class
ASKED AND UNANSWERED
How hard did Pennsylvania’s Bimbo Bakeries, a division of Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo, work to save Bay Shore’s Entenmann’s plant? Not hard enough for 178 “highly engaged associates” facing layoff in July . . . How many sharpshooters were hired? How many deer were killed? When will North Haven Village Mayor Jeffrey Sander respond to the deer-cull FOIL request ? . . . How did Suffolk Community College score the U.S. Open Badminton Championships this July? After 18 years in Orange County, Calif., what’s making all the little birdies fly east to Brentwood? . . . By email? Is that really how Andrew Gracie responded to a 2011 letter in a bottle from Shelter Island teen Connor Corbett-Rice? What? You think the nice sailor should have answered from the Bahamas by return bottle? . . . Will the $20 artwork you buy at the Springs Mystery Art Sale April 23-27 be by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, John Alexander, Dan Aykroyd — or some lesser known local high-school kid? . . . Are LI’s revenue-starved local officials warming up to condo and apartment developments? Planners in Smithtown sound downright eager to swap Neal Spevack’s concrete plant on Middle Country Road for 260 garden apartments . . . No summer landscaping after 6 p.m.? What would East Hampton Village like to regulate next? Next on the Village Board agenda — shaggy hedges?
THE NEWS IN SONG
Do it with a heart wide open
“Say What You Need to Say”
by
John Mayer
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK
RANDY L. KAPLAN
Lots of collectors have baseballs autographed by baseball players. Randy Kaplan’s are signed by the people who run the world. And look where the Kaplan Collection is heading now: to the Nixon Library in April, to the LBJ Library in June, to the Hoover Library, the Clinton Library, the Ford Library…. Kaplan, who is lives in Merrick and works for the Realtor trade group LIBOR, has snagged a dozen American Ps and VPs (including all the recents), seven First Ladies and enough heads-of-state to fill three or four luxury boxes at CitiField-Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Corazon Aquino, Hamid Karzai-for the dream-team Opening Day of all time.
E-mail ellis@henican.com
Related posts
