Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
High number of autism cases in Minnesota
A recent article in the New York Times documents that there is a puzzling increase in autism cases in Minnesota.
The article mentions that there has been a high number of Minnesota children with severe autism, 25% of which are from Somalia. The Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, as well as educators and pediatricians, are concerned about this number and are raising the alarm. The Minnesota Department of Health is trying to find out by conducting an epidemiological survey with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr. Daniel S. McLellan, a Minneapolis pediatrician, said that when he began practicing at Children's Hospital six years ago, he was struck by how many autistic Somali children he saw. These children displayed the classic symptoms of autism—really impaired language, not watching faces, not making eye contact, not communicating with gestures, and lost in their own worlds.
Health officials are reluctant to call this an autism cluster. Reports on cancer clusters are more common, with more than 1,000 inquiries about suspected clusters each year. There has been little research done on autism clusters, especially considering that the cause of autism is unknown. Counting autism cases is a problem because the initial diagnoses is made by schools, not doctors. It also is difficult to estimate the population of the Somali people in Minnesota.
The researchers want to investigate because there is such a large number of cases in one ethnic group. They want to also research Somalis in other cities before reaching a conclusion that a cluster exists. The article indicates that there is no similar study of Somali immigrants in cities with large Somali populations–Seattle, San Diego, Boston, or Lewiston, ME. A recent study of refugees in schools in Stockholm found that there were three times the normal rate of autism in Somali children in schools there.
According to the article, Somalis began arriving in Minneapolis in 1993, after being driven out of Somalia by civil war. The population is estimated at 30,000-60,000 now. Although the community is welcoming and there are social benefits, as Muslims many live apart from the general community.
Some activists believe that vaccines are the cause of autism and have been campaigning among Somali people in Minnesota. Public health officials are worried about this because some families go back to Somalia where measles is still a significant cause of childhood death, according to UNICEF.
J. B. Handley, a founder of Generation Rescue, which advocates treating autistic children with wheat- and dairy-free diets, vitamins and chelation to remove mercury, wrote an open letter to "Courageous Somali Parents." He suggested they slow down their children's shots and get exemptions to school vaccination requirements. He also offered to pay for some to attend an anti-vaccine conference.
One of the first mothers of an autistic child who asked authorities to investigate, Idil Abdull said most of the children were born in the US and have had the same medical care and immunizations as any child on Medicaid.
Somali refugees have many illnesses, said Dr. Osman M. Ahmed of the East Africa Health Project in St. Paul, including tuberculosis, hepatitis B, depression from the civil war, and vitamin D deficiencies.
- – - Massachusetts child injury attorney Thomas Kiley concentrates on legal issues surrounding children’s health.
