Is It an Epidemic or Not?

And why should it matter?

A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has a study published in the current isssue of Pediatrics that disputes claims that there is an autism epidemic. Here's an excerpt of a newspaper article about the study:

"Before the early 1990s, the Department of Education didn't have an autism classification for children with special needs. Therefore, children who would now be considered autistic were often diagnosed with other disorders, invalidating direct comparisons of data collected from the early 1990s and now."