More people calling autism an epidemic...

Trigger Warning: Tragedy model for autism, mostly.

The autism generation: Why are so many children born autistic?
AKA let's make it all about kids, let's act like autism is a new thing (and yes, I can explain why diagnosis is going up all around the spectrum just fine with improved diagnostics by pointing to autistic adults who are non-speaking and were not diagnosed as children. People thought they just had mental retardation, mostly,) let's compare finding out your kid is autistic to getting shot because everyone knows autism is such a tragedy, let's insist that most of the "high functioning" people just have personality quirks and aren't really autistic (not sorry, but I'm autistic and hate functioning labels and do not just have personality quirks,) let's panic about the 10th kid you know having a formal assessment when you are hanging out in the autism-heavy area of society- that is where autistic go, because that's where the services are. Let's just do close to everything wrong that we can.
They actually did get a couple things right, but not much. Like:

• Oh hey, we're asking why so many are born autistic. Which means they get that we're already autistic when we're born.
• They link to an article with the joys and challenges of raising an autistic child. I don't really want to read it because it's probably going to be just as bad as this article, but they did include joys, which is less end-of-the-world sounding.
• That's really it.

Which isn't much when you look at how much they did wrong. I mean, they are talking about it purely as a kid thing. They seem to be going with the tragedy model and then saying that the people for whom it is not tragic aren't really like the people for whom they expect it to be tragic. (Amy? I figure you probably have better things to do than bash an Australian article, but I've seen you write about how you don't think you're a tragedy.) They talk about how diagnostics could not possibly be responsible for the increase when it is actually pretty easy for them to be the increase. Oh, and apparently being autistic means not being "fine." Which is a problem. We're fine. We're just running a completely different brain system, which won't always get along with your brain system. Also, from whence comes this doubling every five years? I need stats for that one. With SOURCES cited. All in all, seems like a fairly typical awareness piece that I would like nothing more than to never see written again. Oh, and I doubt the kid gave consent for his picture and full name to be up on the internet with the fact that he's autistic, considering that he's THREE. If his mother thinks it's a good idea while she is still in tragedy fear mode, then I don't think she should be the one giving that consent, because she's clearly not thinking about the possibility that it could ever matter. It could. We grow up. We often do look for jobs and relationships. Employers use Google. There is a REASON my last name isn't on here.