sigh…

and let us not forget that in 1975 autism was only the diagnosis in the most profound and defined cases, while these days many things that would have been labeled with other names are now all called "autism spectrum disorder" so it is specious to even begin your argument that diagnosis are up at a rate that is out of control and growing with really, really thoroughly examining what we call autism and how it's diagnosed today as compared to earlier years. In fact… even to this day autism is a diagnosis that can *only* be made through observation of behavior - there is no blood test for it, no radiological exam that can prove or disprove it. If a biomarker of some type is ever discovered, we may find that what we call autism today is a group of disorders with similar behaviors or we may find that even more people have it on a broad spectrum of mild to severe - but at this point no one knows.