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Comment by Flankk | Hacker News Reader

If you had read the article you would know that's exactly what it says. The definition has broadened. The pharmaceutical industry has a perverse incentive to medicate everyone. They are the invisible hand destroying America. They profit off of autism, ADHD, obesity, anxiety, and depression. The opioid epidemic is the tip of the iceberg.

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Please forgive my ignorance but is autism treated with medication?

The seven most frequently prescribed classes of psychoactive drugs were antidepressants, stimulants, tranquilizers/antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, hypotensive agents, anxiolytic/sedative/hypnotics, and benzodiazepines. The data on other relevant diagnoses indicate that children and youth are frequently treated with medication under an autism-spectrum diagnosis, even though the target symptoms may be commonly associated with other mental disorders. Age data indicate that about 70% of children with autism-spectrum disorders age 8 yr and up receive some form of psychoactive medication in a given year.

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cap.2006.17303

Certainly the debilitating effects are treated with medication, for example the various anxieties that often manifest. I don't know if medication is being used to treat the underlying causes of particular autism cases.

Not directly, no. A range of meds are prescribed for specific manifestations of autism, such as aggression or self-injury, though none are broadly effective.

If there’s an industry making money here, it’s ABA therapy, not pharma.

> They are the invisible hand destroying America.

Eh, there are a lot of hands involved in that effort. American is being attacked by an invisible hekatoncheiros. (Actually, it's more an an emperor's new clothes thing. Everyone can see it.)

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