Prevalence

As I have been thinking about Autism and it's affect in the family I began to wonder how prevalent it is in the family. I feel that over the last ten to twenty years I have heard a lot more about it. It makes me think that maybe it is more common than ever. I wasn't sure so I decided investigate.
according to the CDC in 2006 out of 1000 children only 7 children had something on the autism spectrum. In 2008 it was up to about 11 children. It has shown a slight increase but not a huge jump. In this technology driven age people are trying to stay informed and through that they are trying to inform more people. This might be why I felt as though I was hearing about is more often over the last few years. Also many of the disorders on the autism spectrum have been only recently over the last 50 years even diagnosable.
The prevalence widely varies across the United States. The CDC had this to say about the data that they have collected: "The extent to which these increases reflect better case ascertainment as a result of increases in awareness and access to services or true increases in prevalence of ASD symptoms is not known"