50% Some WHO Autism Awareness: Autism and Intellectual Disability 50%

Questions and answers about autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

Online Q&A
September 2013

Q: Do persons with autism always suffer from intellectual disability?

A: The level of intellectual functioning is extremely variable in persons with ASD, ranging from profound impairment to superior non-verbal cognitive skills. It is estimated that around 50% of persons with ASD also suffer from an intellectual disability.

The above information is taken from the World Health Organization website page providing Q and A about autism spectrum disorders.  Some will always choose to believe that autism and intellectual disability are totally unrelated concepts.  It is easier to do when autism studies routinely exclude participants with intellectual disability.  The research exclusion of participants with intellectual disability, as admitted by Catherine Lord,  is nothing more than a convenience for researchers and reflects the researchers own subjective biases about the nature and causes of autism disorders.  The DSM5 committee that excludes persons with global developmental delay from an autism diagnosis have also done so based on their own subjective biases and prejudices, nothing more.  They had no data or evidence or coherent rationale to support their decision.  

Parents with children in the 50% spectrum with autism and intellectual disability can't just walk away from our children.  We must do what we can for them and live in fear of what happens to them when we grow too old to care for them or when we ultimately pass on.  These are not realities faced by the DSM5 team who have now given a green light to early autism intervention providers like the CHEO to exclude children with autism and profound intellectual disability by expressly excluding those with global developmental delay from an autism diagnosis.  

"Autism" research will be easier, autism intervention programs will be less strapped thanks to the DSM5 team that, contrary to their claims, have expressly excluded many with severe autism AND intellectual disability.  The basis for the exclusion is nothing more than their own subjective belief in a "pure autism" as that belief was described by Giacomo Vivanti. 

I recommend that every parent of a child in the 50% of those with autism who also have an intellectual disability speak up and provide the world with some reality based autism awareness, make the world aware of the 50% not favored by network television series, movies, major news publications, autism researchers and the DSM5 committee members who arbitrarily decided to expressly excluded many with intellectual disability from the autism spectrum of disorders.