Flawed study of adult autism in UK

The NHS has recently published a study of the extent of adult autism in the UK ("Autism Spectrum Disorders in adults living in households throughout England - Report from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007").

It supposedly shows that there has not been any real increase of autism over recent decades. This is the same NHS that's just made a huge scare-campaign in support of the swine-flu scam, and that gives its endorsement to the fraudulent SCENIHR report as supposedly proving the safety of dental amalgams, even despite numerous people pointing out the falsities of that report.

This autism report is also unacceptably flawed. Some of the flaws are detailed at this campaigning website (at which some of the other content is itself flawed wishful-thinking):
http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/uksurveyautismlink/.

I myself had dismissed the NHS report for the simpler reason that there is no way indicated of establishing comparability of a test applied to children and a test (even if the same one) applied to adults. Update: You can see in the later published Arch Gen Psychiat version that the diagnostic procedure was a very subjective one (dependent on extended group "training"), rather than a mechanically objective box-ticking or bean-counting exercise. This is reflected in how they went to considerable lengths to assure the reliability of the diagnostic procedure. And yet they did nothing to ensure the (infinitely more important) validity of comparability with others' finding at different ages and different decades. And that's because with a non-longitudinal study it is impossible to establish that. It follows that the survey is evidence of nothing, but only leaves the question open of that comparability.

Oh, and they found that none of the adult "autistics" had previously been identified. Which would not be surprising to those who can have a pretty firm guess that they weren't really pathological cases anyway, in shocking contrast to the deluge of cases now constituting a very un-overlookable national emergency in capitalist-corporate-dominated countries.

I welcome the additional critiques raised by childsafetyhealth. Another critical review can be found in issue 34 of The Autism File. It's a shame that taxpayer money only gets wasted on producing and promoting such worthless rubbish as this NHS/ Leicester univ study, when there are plenty more competent people and ideas around.