Click on the posters, above and below, for full-size images. The poster above says: "Odds of a child becoming a professional athlete: 1 in 16,000. Odds of a child being diagnosed with autism: 1 in 166." The poster below says: "Odds of a child becoming a pop singer: 1 in 58,000. Odds of a child being diagnosed with autism: 1 in 166."

Inevitably, this has meant that only the relatively well-off have been receiving professional attention since the therapies being developed for dealing with the disorder are rarely covered by health insurance. With costs regularly going to $80,000 a year, this has effectively screened blue-collar classes out of treatment possibilities (and also built apprehensions that the number of cases in the country is much higher than even the numbers reported by the Centers for Disease Control).

Thus the importance of having groups like the PBA, with its blue-collar membership, become more aware of the disorder and help move it toward the center of social debate rather than keep it isolated as some kind of Rain Man idiosyncrasy. Among other things, the union has endorsed the poster campaign of Autism Speaks, so that every precinct house should soon carry reminders that cops with autistic children are hardly alone.

by Donald Dewey

The PBA has joined the campaign for increasing awareness about the childhood afflictions generally grouped under the term autism.

The union committed itself to the initiative following a recent meeting between delegates and representatives of Autism Speaks, the foundation started in February 2005 by NBC chairman Bob Wright and his wife Suzanne. The Wrights launched their fund-raising efforts after discovering that their grandchild suffered from the disease.

Autism is a complex neurobiological disorder with no known cure that usually lasts throughout a victim’s life. It is characterized by varying degrees of impairment in communication skills and social abilities, as well as by rigidly repetitive behaviors. Symptoms range from the mild to the severe, falling under such typologies as Asperger Syndrome, Rett Syndrome, Pervasive Development Disorder, and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. Depending on the dysfunction level, the afflicted child may rarely speak and have problems reading and writing, or may be able to study in a mainstream school. Often, sensitivities can be over-sensitivities, requiring, for example, that all tags be cut off a piece of clothing because of the wearer’s tactile vulnerabilities.

One of Autism Speaks’s primary goals has been to inform the public that autism is not the mystery malady it has frequently been depicted as. Certainly, some of the raw numbers furnished by the New York-based foundation are eye-opening. Citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, for example, it notes that as many as 1 in 166 children are autistic, with an estimated 1.5 million sufferers now in the United States.

Alarmingly, studies have indicated that this number has been rising somewhere between 10 and 17 percent (depending on the rigor of the diagnosis) annually, making it the nation’s most prevalent developmental disorder. Another way of putting it is that, of the four million babies born every year, an estimated 24,000 (or three an hour) will eventually be diagnosed as having one of the autism syndromes. The ratio for boys is markedly worse than for girls — 1 in 104.

To drive its point across with greater urgency, Autism Speaks has observed that, in contrast to the overall 1-150 ratio for the incidence of the disorder, the odds of a child becoming a pop singer are 1 in 58,000, of becoming a professional athlete 1 in 16,000, and of being involved in a fatal accident 1 in 23,000. Such disparities were sufficient in December 2006 to get Congress to pass the Combating Autism Act, regarded in some quarters as the most comprehensive piece of single-malady legislation ever passed by American lawmakers. At the same time, however, the Wrights have been the first to point out that even groups that should normally be expected to support such undertakings, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, were extremely late backers of the campaign. They cite that as a typical case requiring more public pressures.

Because autism covers such a wide range of disorders, detection at an early age is not easy. But experts have been gradually pinpointing symptoms that at the very least call for the heightened attention of family physicians. One is that the affected child has problems relating to others, communicating in sometimes bizarre ways; for instance, screeching instead of crying when upset. A second is a difficulty in sustaining eye contact, a third a tendency to flipping hands constantly, uttering the same phrase over and over, or some other repetitive behavior.

As for actual causes, there is little beyond what one researcher has called an “educated suspicion” that an environmental trigger sets off a genetic predisposition. As Bob Wright has put it: “It certainly has a genetic background. But, as with many diseases today, they’re finding that the issue of just isolating the genes is not sufficient. There’s probably a genetic mutation brought on by certain environmental issues. And those mutations are really what cause autism.”

One of the practical problems organizations like Autism Speaks has faced in trying to create greater consciousness about the disorder is the usually prohibitive cost of developmental therapies. While there is no cure for the affliction, these interventions are deemed necessary for answering the special needs not only of the autistic child but also of parents who too frequently view the biological condition of their child as cause for self-criticism. In many cases, this has meant consultations with neurologists, psychiatrists, developmental pediatricians, psychologists, gastroenterologists, audiologists, speech therapists, and/or occupational therapists.