As a child, Jodie Singer barely spoke. She could repeat words that people said to her or recite the book “Madeline” from beginning to end, but she could not answer yes or no when her mother asked if she wanted juice.
Sometimes she hurt herself, compulsively tearing at the skin and hair on the nape of her neck. She threw tantrums, thrashing and refusing to be comforted.
When she was almost 3, Jodie was given a diagnosis of autism. Now 28, she still speaks only in short, repetitive phrases and requires round-the-clock care, including help eating, getting dressed and using the toilet.
At the time Jodie’s diagnosis was first made, the definition of autism was expanding, as it would continue to do over the next 25 years. Once primarily limited to severely disabled people, autism began to be viewed as a spectrum that included far less impaired children and adults. Along the way, it also became an identity, embraced by college graduates and even by some of the world’s most successful people, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
That broadening of the diagnosis, autism experts believe, along with the increasing awareness of the disorder, is largely responsible for the steep rise in autism cases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called “an epidemic” and has attributed to theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol.
And the diagnostic expansion has now become a flashpoint in a long-running debate over how autism should defined, one that has divided parents and activists, ignited social media battles and grown fiercer with Mr. Kennedy’s laser focus on autism.
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