Rising Autism Rates

I read a disturbing stat today that the number of Autistic people is rising rapidly with the definition of autism, being: 'persistent difficulties in social life and in social communication' and NHS data does seem to bear this out with the rates of autism diagnosis in the UK over the last 20 years increasing sharpy from a sample of 9 million  patients who were registered at GP surgeries.
The chart shows the rise in new autism diagnoses from 1998 to 2018 with diagnosis levels eight times higher in 2018 than in 1998 and it isn't just happening in the UK as the same is being seen in other European countries also.
There is some debate over why this is happening with some pointing towards changes to who we count as autistic as the definition has broadened to inlcude other things such as Asperger's syndrome
and other developmental disorders and others persisting with the disproven MMR vaccination and some argue that there must be something in what we eat, drink, or breathe that's causing more autism.
Also now included are women and girls as previously it was virtually all males that were coming forward for diagnosis as Autism was originally seen as something that affected mainly boys.
As women are now having children later in life and there is a link between autism and the age of the parent, 20 years ago the average age for a woman to give birth was late twenties but now it is early thirties and if the parent is older they are more likely to have an autistic child but most scientists believe that the increase is due to more diagnoses which isn't a bad thing if you are diagnosed as an adult it would explain why you may have struggled with social interaction al your life.