Health-phobia

If you don't have a learning disability, you'll never fit in.\nI was hooked last week by an NBC News teaser about a story on autism. Since my brother's diagnosis with the disorder 20 years ago, I've held out hope for the kind of public education about autism that would lead to the end of questions such as, "So, can he do, like, really big calculations in his head and stuff?"\nBoy, was I ever in for a rude awakening.\nThe piece, which was actually the five-minute opener of a week-long series, was loaded with misleading "statistics" and plenty of sensationalism. Autism was proclaimed an "epidemic" that has been steadily on the rise since the 1980s. What NBC failed to mention was that the tremendous increase in cases may be because of more widespread awareness of the disorder, not to mention misdiagnoses by trigger-happy physicians.\nBut that wouldn't have made for a very interesting "news" feature, now would it?\nAutism is the latest in a long line of disorders to send Americans frantically searching for their own symptoms. Gone are the days when disabilities were undesirable to have. These days, it seems everybody wants in on the action.\nWhy, you might ask? \nAttention, for starters.\nEvery Munchausen-syndrome mother in the country feigns dread at the prospect of such a fate befalling her children while secretly hoping for a diagnosis so she might bask in the attention it would bring. And partygoers compare the number of anti-depressants they're taking the way they used to compare the number of European countries they'd visited.\nJon Winokur, author of the "Encyclopedia Neurotica," gave Reuters his take on the epidemic of false epidemics: \n"In this country, we just have so much of everything and so much time to analyze ourselves. We seem to medicalize oddity and quirkiness ... As actress Carrie Fisher said, 'All the good people are nuts.' This is what makes life so interesting."\nHe's right. No story is entertaining without some sort of conflict for the protagonist to struggle against. And the country is full of healthy, affluent people in need of ailments with which to be afflicted.\nThere are certainly plenty of disorders out there. Those unable to obtain medical proof of disabilities like autism can always resort to vague syndromes like those described in Winokur's book, such as "conduct disorder."\nThe problem with these nonexistent "syndromes" is that they allow their "victims" to claim a lack of responsibility for their actions. Everyone has had the urge at some point to steal or cheat, but if things go the way Winokur predicts, they can simply plead a case of "conduct disorder" to escape negative consequences.\nMore serious is the over-diagnosis of real ailments. What few people stop to think about is the effect that impostors' actions have on the treatment of individuals who truly suffer from the disorders that fakers pretend to have.\nAutism is a prime example. Excessive misdiagnoses mean that treatment methods will be developed on patients who aren't really autistic. These methods will be ineffective with true autistics, causing an inevitable backslide of the past 20 years' worth of advancements in the treatment of autism.\nIn a country where many people's biggest problem entails waiting in a grocery checkout line for longer than three minutes, it's no wonder we're inventing ways in which to suffer. But when people line up to receive treatment for disorders they don't have, time and funding are taken away from those who need it.\nEverybody's got an iPod nowadays. Wouldn't you be more popular if you had problems functioning socially?