NYT: Dr. Allen Frances Takes Credit for All the Autism Everywhere

He sounds a lot like Paul Offit

For years I have said that the REALLY BIG LIE ABOUT AUTISM is the false claim that there aren’t really more kids with autism in the world today, it’s just a lot of better diagnosing and more greater awareness

I have written about it many, many times, especially whenever officials get around to updating the autism rate.

(See my article from April when the autism rate climbed to one in every 31 US children, one in 19 boys. One in 31 children with autism; 20 years of lies and cover-up )

This is the hill they will die on: Whatever the autism rate, it will never be a real increase.

IF there were really more children with autism, they’d be forced to admit something in the environment is causing this increase, and of course, that leads right back to the claim that it’s the vaccine schedule.

Instead, no rate of autism will ever be too much autism. Every new statistic will be dismissed as nothing to worry, just better identification.

While the official US rate is one in 31, if you live in California, the chance of having an autistic child is one in 19 children, one in 12 boys which was also attributed to better screening and greater awareness.

And if you go to Northern Ireland, it’s one in 17 children, one in 10 boys.

After decades of denying any real increase, it’s expected that this will continue indefinitely. No rate increase will ever mean there’s more autism.

As further proof let me cite the June 23^rd opinion piece in the New York Times: Autism Rates Have Increased 60-Fold. I Played a Role in That, by Dr. Allen Frances.

As expected, in his piece in the New York Times, Frances is still saying what he said in 2011 and 2023: THERE IS NO REAL INCREASE IN AUTISM and there’s no link to vaccines.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, is correct that reported autism rates have exploded in the last 30 years — they’ve increased roughly 60-fold — but he is dead wrong about the causes. I should know, because I am partly responsible for the explosion in rates.

The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins, but rather is the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.

But my task force approved the inclusion of the new diagnosis, Asperger’s disorder, which is much milder in severity than classic autism and much more common. In doing so, we were responding to child psychiatrists’ and pediatricians’ concerns for children who did not meet the extremely stringent criteria for classic autism, but had similar symptoms in milder form and might benefit from services. . . .

The resulting explosion in cases included many instances of overdiagnosis — children were labeled with a serious condition for challenges that would better be viewed as a variation of normal. It also sowed the seeds of conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine beliefs as people wondered how to explain the rising cases.

Many large studies have come to the same conclusion: Vaccines don’t cause autism. The role, if any, of environmental toxins is still to be determined, but there is no known environmental factor that can explain the sudden jump in diagnoses. The changes we made to the diagnosis in the D.S.M.-IV can.

Why did autism-related diagnoses explode so far beyond what our task force had predicted? Two reasons. First, many school systems provide much more intensive services to children with the diagnosis of autism. While these services are extremely important for many children, whenever having a diagnosis carries a benefit, it will be overused. Second, overdiagnosis can happen whenever there’s a blurry line between normal behavior and disorder, or when symptoms overlap with other conditions. Classic severe autism had so tight a definition it was hard to confuse it with anything else; Asperger’s was easily confused with other mental disorders or with normal social avoidance and eccentricity.. . .

In 2013, the next edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual, the D.S.M.-V, eliminated Asperger’s disorder as a stand-alone diagnosis and folded it into the newly introduced concept of autism spectrum disorder. This change further increased the rate of autism by obscuring the already fuzzy boundary between autism and social awkwardness.

Frances went on to blame “social networking” and said “we should be concerned about the increasing tendency to mislabel socially awkward behavior as autistic.”

Frances attacked Kennedy

The explosion in autism rates has become fodder for Mr. Kennedy’s conspiracy theories. He has redirected federal research efforts away from the real science that could elucidate the causes of autism. He has instead hired David Geier, a longtime vaccine skeptic, who is reportedly seeking access to public health databases to hunt for a link between vaccines and autism. Mr. Kennedy also recently fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee that advises on vaccine safety and efficacy. Among their replacements is a doctor who has called the term anti-vaxxer “high praise” and a nurse who serves on the board of an organization that has linked childhood vaccines to autism.

OVER-DIAGNOSING

I’ve written about Frances several times in the past. Frances is a psychiatrist and as the past chair of the DSM-IV Task Force that added Aspergers Syndrome to the autism definition in 1994, he’s sure to get media coverage.

I wrote about Frances for Age of Autism in 2011: Allen Frances, Thomas Insel and the Black & White Rise of Autism (It's Fashionable?). He said that changes to the definition is the reason it looks like more kids have autism.

“In preparing DSM IV, we decided to add a new category describing a milder (and therefore much more difficult to define and distinguish) form of autism, called Asperger's Disorder. This seemed necessary because some (still quite rare) children presented with more or less normal language development, but with grave social and behavioral difficulties. We knew that Asperger's would likely triple the rate of autistic disorders to about 1 per 500-1,000, but this doesn't explain the new rate of 1 per 38.” (The one in 38 is a reference to the rate recently found in S. Korea.)

So how did Frances dismiss so many children having autism? Easy, it’s getting to be more and more popular to have autism.

“The most likely cause of the autism epidemic is that autism has become fashionable - a popular fad diagnosis. Once rare and unmistakable, the term is now used loosely to describe people who do not really satisfy the narrow criteria intended for it by DSM IV.

“Autism now casts a wide net, catching much milder problems that previously went undiagnosed altogether or were given other labels. Autism is no longer seen as an extremely disabling condition, and many creative and normally eccentric people have discovered their inner autistic self.

“This dramatic swing from under- to overdiagnosis has been fuelled by widespread publicity, Internet support and advocacy groups, and the fact that expensive school services are provided only for those who have received the diagnosis. The Korean study, for example, was financed by an autism advocacy group, which could barely contain its enthusiasm at the high rates that were reported.”

There is no link

“The British physician Andrew Wakefield's vaccine theory became wildly popular among parents, many of whom began to withhold vaccination (thus subjecting their own and other children to the risk of entirely preventable, and sometimes serious, illnesses).

“Vaccination seemed a plausible cause because of the fortuitous correlation between getting shots and the onset of symptoms. Wakefield's work has now been thoroughly discredited as incorrect and dishonest science. But fear of autism is so great, and the reactions to it so irrational, that in some circles Wakefield continues to be revered as a false prophet.”

That was back in 2011 when the official autism rate was on in every 110 children, one in 68 boys.

I wrote about Frances again in 2023, the year the autism rate went from one in 44 children (one in 27 boys) to one in 36 children (one in 22 boys).

Over-diagnosing

Dr. Allen Frances is Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

In that piece I covered a New York Post story where Frances said he was sorry for loosening the definition of autism in 1994 by adding Aspergers Syndrome. He was adamant that by adding the milder form of autism it’s led to over-diagnosing.

“More clinicians began labeling both normal diversity and a variety of other psychological problems as autistic.”

Frances echoed the criticism: “The DSM-5 loosened the diagnosis of autism even more by introducing the concept of autistic spectrum, thus further obscuring the boundary between mental disorder and normal diversity.”

The problem with Frances’ claim of no real increase, just over-diagnosing is the undeniable fact that there is MORE PROFOUND AUTISM WITH EVERY INCREASE. That’s the version of autism that is really hard to miss. It’s not the kids with high functioning autism who can be easily dismissed.

And my biggest question for Dr. Frances is, WHEN ARE THE INCREASES GOING TO STOP?

Aspergers was added as a separate category in 1994 and then incorporated into the broad autism label in 2013, yet the increases have continued. Now it’s “over-diagnosing” according to Frances.

Allen Frances’ argument really doesn’t hold up. The CDC’s top expert disagrees.

On April 16th I wrote about the press conference where Robert Kennedy Jr as the new HHS Secretary announced the new one in 31 autism rate in the piece, The Media Slams RFK, Ignores Zahorodny - by Anne Dachel

It’s one thing to attack Kennedy and declare that there really isn’t more autism, but Kennedy wasn’t the only one saying the increase in autism means more kids have autism. Dr. Walter Zahorondy, the CDC’s top researcher on the US autism rate for the past 25 years was at his side saying the exactly that.

And Zahorodny has been saying it for a long time, BUT the mainstream media and even the CDC itself completely ignore what he says.

In October, 2023 I wrote about Dr. Zahorodny in The Epidemic Roils On .

The article covered an interview Zahorodny did with autism parent, Wayne Rohde.

Zahorodny contradicted everything Dr. Frances said about over-diagnosing.

Zahorodny is a very smart scientist who’s been at this a long time. To him the autism epidemic is real.

Here were the numbers he was seeing.

San Diego, California, four percent.

Newark, New Jersey, five percent.

Toms River, New Jersey, seven percent.

One in five towns in New Jersey, in our region, have a rate of five percent or higher….

We have already in Newark and in Toms River eight to 12 percent of boys in the public education system [that] have a lifelong disability or most likely a lifelong disability.

In Ocean County in 2016, while the overall New Jersey estimate was 3.2 percent, we found that the prevalence of autism was already over five percent in Ocean County.

Five or 10 percent of the population will need “significant, maybe lifetime support.”

I’m not an economist, but do you choose to project five percent or 10 percent as a realistic metric for how many people will need significant, maybe lifetime support?

We could really identify no specific reason why autism prevalence increased, not only in New Jersey, but in every other state in the Network.

DSM IV, DSM 5, no difference

Throughout that DSM-IV period, only increases. When we shifted to the DSM-5 definition, we also only see increases. …somewhere in the range of one in five children have some learning issue, problem or deficit. The most quickly expanding group is those children with autism. Next most frequently occurring are children with ADHD.

Zahorodny acknowledged that people in power don’t care.

Politicians are not responding because I think they have accepted for the most part the red herring interpretation that autism has always been around.

Find the autism trigger

I guess if I were to do one thing, it would be to identify the environment trigger that can be changed. If we don’t stop this epidemic of autism, Zahorodny warned us:

“When we say that five percent of the children in our region have autism, I think that’s a fair metric for anticipating the future scope or perimeters of care for adults, adolescents and adults. …

One in 20 with autism

“You’re planning for at least five percent of the population to be disabled [with autism].”

In February 2024 I covered his claims about the increase in autism in Walter Zahorodny, PhD on the unrecognized autism epidemic

Zahorodny said that the autism rate will continue to increase until we figure out what the environmental trigger is. And he said officials will continue to attribute higher rates to better diagnosing because they can’t explain why it’s happening.

Finally I would predict that the next report from the ADDM Network will not reflect significant public health concern or propose understanding autism risk factors or promotion of early detection.

Most likely the next report will mention better awareness and recognition as possible factors bearing on higher estimates.

This is a standard, almost magical Cohen that comes up every time the prevalence estimates are provided.

We really don’t understand what’s driving autism prevalence. We don’t know the risk factors, so the best one can say apparently is that the increase might be due to better awareness or recognition.

It is the environment

Without a doubt, the most important factors or improvements that we could recommend involve enhancing and promoting studies which attempt to identify autism risk factors and triggers.

These are not genetic factors. These are environmental factors and it’s necessary to understand which ones are driving and have driven autism prevalence twofold and threefold over the last fifteen years. . . .

It’s uncomfortable to identify a phenomenon and not to be able to explain it.

The truth is the establishment wants to hear from Dr. Frances. He tells us there’s nothing to worry about. All the autism is merely a feature of advanced 21st century medicine. We’re finally understanding all the neurodiversity out there, in fact we may just be overdoing it and over-diagnosing kids with ASD when there’s nothing really wrong.

Dr. Zahorodny on the other hand won’t ever be in the New York Times. I can guarantee it. His message is frightening. Something in the environment is causing massive damage to the developmental health of children. No one wants to hear that and realize that it’s been going on for the past 30 years while health officials have done nothing to address it.

Frances is merely a continuation of the claims of mainstream medicine whenever autism is talked about.

Back in 2007 I wrote: The Really Big Lie About Autism The 2007 CDC Autism Study

In 2007 Dr. Paul Offit sounded a lot like Dr. Frances.

On ABC’s 20/20 on February 23rd, Dr Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, explained that the increase in autism is due to the fact that “people that we once called quirky or geeky or nerdy are now called autistic.”

He further stated that with a label of autism, it would “allow that child then to qualify for services which otherwise they wouldn't be qualified to get."

2007 was the year the autism rate went from one in 166 children to one in 150 children.

Today the message is the same. And when our national rate reaches one in 20 and then one in 15 the New York Times will AGAIN feature another expert attributing it all to better diagnosing/over-diagnosing.

THERE WILL NEVER EVER BE MORE CHILDREN RECOGNIZED WITH AUTISM which means, THERE WILL NEVER BE TOO MUCH AUTISM.

Please comment, share, restack, subscribe (it’s free)

Newspapers aren’t there to inform you. They’re there to manufacture consent.

Jimmy Dore on Tucker Carlson podcast 2025