I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)

Wrote Hacking Healthcare, healthcare executive for 20+ years...

About 10 years into my career we had already been managing some very large hospital groups but ended up with a mangement contract for a diverse group health system that through accidents of history including some dental clinics. ~50 suites across several sites/brands. I had had some exposure to dental clinics and generally had not been impressed but not overly concerned either.

First meeting we had with the senior staff across the clinics set my hair on fire. It was one of the most callous, fraudulent and shocking things I had ever seen in my career. Dentistry does not have a notion or ethical obligation of "first do no harm...". The entire agenda of the strategy setting meeting was how to trick "patients" into unecessary procedures, generally defraud insurance companies (especially breaking things across many visits that could easily be done in one) and every other deceptive way to inflate profit at "patient" expense that could be conceived. There were quotas for procedures, something unimaginable and defacto illegal in a healthcare setting. Needless to say we divested the dental clinics as soon as possible. I came to find in later years that those modes of operation are more or less commonplace in the industry.

If anything it seems the only ones to trust are the students.

I have jank government insurance and this is not true. When I got out of prison and had no insurance I went to the city's clinics. Wait times have never been an issue (at most was two weeks for specialist). The doctors in the clinic were also friggin amazing doctors/people. I had a ton of shame around getting out of prison, some much shame about needing to get tests ran for HIV/Hep from being in prison but they were so good about it all (all came out negative so woohoo).

Now dentists...when we had money we went to a family friend. He still totally f'd us and did unnecessary work. It's only now that I have a cash only country dentist that I trust my dentist again. Crazy part is the cash only dentist ends up being cheaper than my previous copay/premiums insurance dentists.

I could be wrong. There has been an uptick in all of them, but I thought autism had less of an uptick, and there have been new biological environmental factors that may make autism something from birth, whether heritable or not.

Whereas something like, say, gender dysphoria has positively exploded in diagnoses. It’s a worrying disorder, which (eg unlike autism) studies show leads 30-50% to attempt suicide. So any increase in its prevalence to 5% of the emerging US population is worrying. If this was, say, a coronavirus with that kind of risk to life, we’d all be worried.

I want to be clear - I am not saying that the symptoms aren’t real and that “this is all in their head”, or that we need “conversion therapy” or something. I an saying the major systemic problems are upstream and by changing THE SYSTEM we will reduce the incidence instead of only focusing on medical interventions downstream as bandaids.

As an analogy — if we addressed antibiotic overuse on factory farms and sugar and high fructose corn syrup and pink slime, fast foods etc. we could address the epidemics of obesity and diabetes, including in children. But instead we focus on inventing new ways to medicate them!

And when the coronavirus comes around, instead of recognizing that these very same factors (obesity and diabtetes) are highly correlated with morbidity and mortality with that virus, we once again look for vaccines against the virus and once it subsides we continue to IGNORE all the systemic upstream factors in the underlying chronic epidemics in USA.

Autism could very well be yet another one, maybe it is like autoimmune diseases that are related to microplastics, maybe they affect hormones like aestrogen and testosterone. We need to LOOK UPSTREAM.

Normally they try multiple antidepressants or combos until one works. Nobody tells you about the side effects - especially long term side effects