Exponential Autism Rise Since Late 1980s

The article argues that autism prevalence has not just grown but accelerated: births from the late 1980s onward show an exponential jump in diagnosed autism across multiple industrialized countries, and standard administrative and epidemiological comparisons (including IQ distributions in CDC ADDM data) suggest much of that increase cannot be explained away by diagnostic relabeling alone. — If true, the claim reframes autism from mainly a diagnostic/labeling story to an urgent public‑health epidemic with policy implications for research into causes, environmental regulation, and scaling services.