U.S. autism numbers rose in 2022, according to new CDC report

Kevin Maimann · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 16, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

A caller report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests autism diagnosis rates proceed to emergence successful the U.S., sparking inflammatory rhetoric from authorities officials, portion experts mostly property the inclination to improved screening and amended knowing of the condition. 

The CDC reported Tuesday that an estimated one in 31 eight-year-olds successful the U.S. person autism, using data from 14 states and Puerto Rico successful 2022. The erstwhile estimation — from 2020 — was 1 successful 36.

The CDC checked wellness and schoolhouse records for eight-year-olds for its estimate, due to the fact that astir cases are diagnosed by that age. 

Boys proceed to beryllium diagnosed much than girls, and the highest rates are among children who are Asian/Pacific Islander, Indigenous and Black.

The CDC acknowledges that its study does not screen the full state oregon make "nationally typical [autism spectrum disorder] prevalence estimates."

The numbers besides alteration wide by determination — from 1 successful 103 successful Laredo, Texas, to 1 successful 19 successful California. 

CDC researchers accidental this mightiness beryllium owed to differences successful availability of services for aboriginal detection and evaluation. For example, an inaugural successful California has seen hundreds of section pediatricians trained to surface and notation children for aboriginal assessments, and the authorities besides has galore determination centres that supply evaluations. 

In effect to the report, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claimed successful a connection that the "autism epidemic is moving rampant," and that its "risks and costs… are a 1000 times much threatening to our state than COVID-19."

Why are numbers rising?

The Autism Society of America says the emergence from 2020 whitethorn bespeak respective factors, including greater consciousness and improved screening and diagnostics. 

"This emergence successful prevalence does not awesome an 'epidemic' as narratives are claiming — it reflects diagnostic progress, and an urgent request for argumentation decisions rooted successful subject and the contiguous needs of the Autism community," the enactment said successful a statement.

Canada's astir caller numbers are from 2019, erstwhile the Public Health Agency of Canada said 1 successful 50 kids aged 1-17 person been diagnosed with autism spectrum upset (ASD), with males being diagnosed astir 4 times much often than females. 

Remi Yergeau, Canada Research Chair successful captious disablement studies and connection astatine Carleton University, says the CDC study is conscionable a "snapshot" and doesn't springiness the afloat communicative down the numbers.

Yergeau says clinicians person go much attuned to recognizing autism and the assorted ways successful which autistic traits manifest successful people.

"People similar to marque comparisons, saying things like, 'When I was a kid, determination were nary autistic people,'" Yergeau said. "They hide astir things similar institutionalization and however diagnoses person shifted, truthful radical who mightiness person been antecedently diagnosed with different information are present being diagnosed with autism."

For decades, the diagnosis was rare, fixed lone to kids with terrible problems communicating oregon socializing and those with unusual, repetitive behaviours.

As precocious arsenic the aboriginal 1990s, lone one in 10,000 children were diagnosed with autism. Around that time, the word became a shorthand for a radical of related conditions known arsenic ASD and the fig of kids labelled arsenic having immoderate signifier of autism began to balloon.

In the archetypal decennary of this century, the U.S. estimation roseate to 1 successful 150. In 2018, it was 1 successful 44. In 2020, it was up to one in 36.

'Dehumanizing' rhetoric

Yergeau says a "language of panic" tends to travel these reports, and worries astir the harms of Kennedy's "dehumanizing" rhetoric. 

"There's a precise existent mode successful which that that benignant of panic translates to not large outcomes for autistic radical — like, to spot disablement and disabled radical arsenic thing to beryllium feared," they said. 

"When radical make that rhetoric of panic, past they make an accompanying rhetoric that we indispensable bash thing we tin to lick it. And truly atrocious things tin hap erstwhile you instrumentality that peculiar attack retired of this perceived desperation." 

Kennedy vowed past week that the country's top wellness bureau volition pinpoint the origin of autism by September, and promised to "eliminate those exposures," successful an announcement that raised concerns among aesculapian experts and advocates.

Kennedy and anti-vaccine advocates person agelong pushed a discredited mentation astir puerility vaccines, pointing astatine a preservative called thimerosal that is nary longer successful astir puerility vaccines, oregon theorizing that autism whitethorn beryllium the cumulative effect of aggregate vaccinations.

Decades of probe person recovered nary links to vaccines and have shown that genetics plays a ample relation successful autism, but that there's nary circumstantial "autism gene." There are nary humor oregon biologic tests for autism, which is diagnosed by making judgments astir a person's behaviour.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health, which spends much than $300 cardinal US yearly researching autism, lists immoderate imaginable hazard factors specified arsenic prenatal vulnerability to pesticides oregon aerial pollution, utmost prematurity oregon debased commencement weight, definite maternal wellness problems oregon parents conceiving astatine an older age.

Kennedy hired David Geier, a antheral who has repeatedly claimed a nexus betwixt vaccines and autism, and who was fined by the authorities of Maryland for practising medicine connected a kid without a doctor's licence, to pb the autism probe effort.