Autisms Alt-Right myths
Having looked at the politicisation of Autism in my last post, Kennedys far right myths regarding autism need putting in the bin.
Summary
· There is no ‘Autism Epidemic’
· There has been plenty of ongoing research into what causes Autism
· Genes are the main reasons for Autism
· Vaccination does not cause Autism
· Kennedy will not listen to the science.
· He is using people with Autism for his own benefit
· Thus will harm people with Autism.
MYTH 1 – THERE IS AN ‘AUTISM EPIDEMIC’
Kennedy taps into something we all can see. That there are now more children with autism than when old codgers like him and I were kids. However, it’s not what it seems. He tells us that when he was 18, he briefly volunteered in an asylum called Wassaic State School for the Mentally Retarded, and states he ‘never saw Autism’.
Kennedy was himself wayward teenager with poor judgement and awful behaviour, volunteering because he was expected to. Would a seemingly obnoxious teenager know how to recognise a person with autism among those forgotten children hideously warehoused in homes for the “Mentally Retarded”. Did he even look?
The rate of diagnosed autism at that time was 3 per 10,000, the asylum population about 3,000, so even if there was ten times the rate of autistic children there, he would easily have missed them. It also escapes him that so many children with Autism would have been simply labelled as “Mentally Retarded” and incarcerated. That was the real scandal. His diagnostic acumen was and remains Zero.
Rather than using this anecdote to fuel the Epidemic Myth, he could reflect on people with learning difficulties now getting a better deal, indeed he could have followed his father’s lead in identifying such institutional horrors. That people with learning difficulties are no longer imprisoned and abused is undeniably a good thing. The asylum closed in 2013.
The reality is that successive widening of the diagnostic criteria has led to more children being diagnosed early and adults recognising the features in themselves and coming forward. What is now the Autistic Spectrum, in just one generation has expanded from a small number of children with similar, severe symptoms, to a wide range of people of all ages who have often not been formally diagnosed but are included in surveys.
This naturally raises some issues of current over-diagnosis, including Reform UK following the hateful rhetoric targeting those with special educational needs. One thing is certain, there is no doubt that we have in the past been under-diagnosing the condition.
Children used to be labelled as having childhood schizophrenia, schizoid personality, mental retardation, educational sub-normality and all the other poorly defined and often pejorative labels which used to be applied to people with Autistic tendencies.
Increasing diagnosis of Autism in children is a good thing as difficulties can be addressed and help put in place. The children so identified live with their parents and the majority go to mainstream schools. Even later in life it is frequently a positive outcome for those affected to know what might be behind real life problems. This represents progress and is not in any sense of the word an epidemic.
Despite this, Kennedy is now adopting the ploy of calling those who question his view on increasing rates of ASD “Epidemic deniers”.
I am one. There is no Autism Epidemic.
MYTH 2. NO ONE HAS BOTHERED TO LOOK AT HIS BEFORE
This plays very much along with the political techniques used by Trump; create and manipulate fear and anger, then add in the hero fallacy - as if it was all chaos until he came to the rescue.
The reality is very different. In the US alone $170m was spent in 2011 studying the disorder, in 2025, $330 million. The Autism Care Act authorised $2b over the next 5 years. (Till Musk came along) and the poorly named Combating Autism Act was passed in 2006 before the subject became a political football. That’s just in the US.
Here, the Cambridge bases Autism Research Centre details the huge effort to look at autism from just about every angle you can think of. Its beyond the scope of his post to even scratch at its surface.
MYTH 3 –AN ENVIRONMENTAL TOXIN CAUSES AUTISM
In yet another fawning interview on Fox News, Kennedy said: “We’re gonna look at vaccines. We’re gonna look at everything. Everything is on the table: our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kind of changes that may have triggered this epidemic. It is an epidemic. Epidemics are not caused by genes. Genes can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin. So we know that it is an environmental toxin that is causing this cataclysm.”
So, we know that it is an environmental toxin! No, we don’t. Cataclysm it is not! Performing epidemiolocal studies of reasonable quality on ‘everything’ in six months is frankly impossible.
The huge research effort has yielded results and highlights promising areas for research, let’s have a look at what we know so far.
1. Genes
Looking at identical and non-identical twins suggests that genes are responsible for about 80% of the risk of ASD. That much can be said to be certain.
2. Parental age
The average age of first pregnancy was historically in the low 20’s but has steadily climbed and in the UK is now 31. This makes a difference, particularly for parents aged over 34 and more so for older fathers.
3. Parental Behaviour
Kennedy resurrects the ugly notion that Autism might be due to parenting styles. This has been long since debunked since mothers of Autistic children were insultingly described as emotional ‘refrigerators’ by Leo Kanner, the American Psychiatrist who in 1943 defined the diagnosis of infantile autism. He seemed to have little understanding that children with Autism may be the cause rather than the consequence of struggling parents and need help rather than blame.
4. Environmental factors
Genes are important, and they interact with the environment and the environment we are exposing our children to is far from healthy.
Air pollution from traffic and wood-burners is associated with increased risk of an ASD diagnosis. Our brains are heavily laden with magnetite nanoparticles from road traffic, the effects of which are not currently known but are hardly going to be positive.
There are associations also with microplastics which can be directly absorbed through the nose and affect the brain by causing clotting. They are quite literally, everywhere. It is concerning that they are now found in placentas and animal studies showing they can cause features of ASD are a cause of concern. TheMicrobead Free water act legislated against microbeads in cosmetics, but is scratching the surface. The EU has done better, but plastic waste still pours into the waste streams.
Then there are PCB’s, other ‘forever’ chemicals, screen time, and the huge changes in the environment our kids live with, not to speak of the anxiety caused by a very uncertain future.
Exposure to pesticides during key developmental stages in pregnancy could also pose a risk, as may infections in pregnancy. The unexplained increased risk associated with inflammatory illnesses is intriguing.
Untangling all that in a few months is frankly impossible.
5. The Microbiome.
This is another area of research with some very interesting suggestions that our trillions of fellow travellers in the bowel are linked to ASD risk. It is early days but the widespread attacks on American research will put progress back.
6. There is not a single cause
Like with many disorders, the root cause of a problem in an individual will be a complex jigsaw of different factors acting together.
All the factors I’ve listed above are worthy of continuing research and exploration. However, regulation and improving the lived environment does not fit into the MAGA agenda. Indeed, it is certain that air and water pollution as well as pesticide exposure will get worse with cuts to science and services and deregulation. There are no plans to control waste management when it comes to plastics. They need a convenient scapegoat and that is likely to be vaccines.
MYTH 4 – VACCINATION CAUSES AUTISM
Years ago, Kennedy said this:
He apologised for the comparison (which he has used since) to the Holocaust, but not for his scare tactics.
Compared to air pollution, environmental toxins, and food, whether vaccines cause Autism is relatively easy and was important to research. There are enough countries with comprehensive health data to look at a link between the diagnosis and whether a child has been vaccinated, as well as changes of diagnosis with time after introduction of various vaccines with various components. The results are clear. There is no link.
Despite this, the myth accelerates. Fortunes have been made from the claims that any or all vaccines cause ASD. Wakefield, Mercola, Kennedy and a host of others have joined, accelerated and profited from this bandwagon to nowhere. Claim after claim has been examined and debunked.
For a summary of the extensive research, read here, or view here or here.
MYTH 5 – KENNEDY WILL LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE
Kennedy, in his senate hearings chummily stated that he wants to follow the science in getting to the cause of Autism. He lied. What he means is his science, manipulated to support his views and done with no respect for genuine science or scientists. Appointing David Grier to research autism is a disaster for people with ASD.
That he recently cast doubt on the idea that HIV causes AIDS, and that infections are caused by the vulnerability of the victim rather than microbes is testament to his inability to appreciate reality and to utterly undermine real science and the facts it is unearthed.
MYTH 6 – KENNEDY CARES ABOUT PEOPLE WITH AUTISM.
Autism is a mixed bag. From severe and enduring disability needing comprehensive care, to nuanced differences and indeed, some enhanced qualities which have led to people ‘on the spectrum’ finding their voice. That voice that calls for understanding, compassion, help and indeed, love and appreciation. Not the growing demonisation Kennedy peddles. People with ASD are human beings and not numbers on a spreadsheet.
Thus, advocates of those on the Spectrum are gradually changing the term to Autistic Spectrum Condition, which I will henceforth use, reflecting the reality that for many, is can be seen to overlap with that wide spectrum of what we loosely call normal.
What they don’t need is the ‘neurotypical’ but deranged Kennedy and his MAHA gang coming along and telling them that they are brain damaged, and that damage was done to them with the conspiracy of parents, scientists, researchers, public health doctors, and on the manufacturing side, the hated Big Pharma. That they need to be cured.
Like Kanner’s callous labelling of mothers as ‘refrigerators’, parents who buy into these delusions have to deal with the pathological guilt of believing they have been complicit in damaging their own children’s brains. There are way too many examples of this damage to peoples lives already.
Then the opportunity cost of not using resources to, dare I say it, actually help people with ASC. People with severe disabilities need comprehensive ongoing care. Towards the less severe end of the spectrum, early diagnosis and educational support for children will help them steer clear of many of the problems previous generations had to try to live with.
The End Game
If this story plays out how he wants it to, he will announce in September that he has cracked the Autism mystery - vaccines! It will boost his ratings among his followers and MAGA extremists.
More Americans with Autism (and without) will waste more money on more bonkers supplements and be conned out of money by wealthy antivaccine grifters, like Joe Rogan, Mercola, McCullough and a lengthening list of those cashing in on having their champion in power.
Most parents will not be taken in, but Kennedy will personally cause harm and stigmatisation for people with ASC, more vaccine cynicism, more misery, complications and deaths from infections disease. Add to this his endless campaign to damage trust in science and medicine, adding to the increasing abuse directed towards those in healthcare.
Sorry this is such a long post – sadly it could go on and on. I’ve attempted to keep it brief, but I would never have imagined the depths to which the USA, is descending, and Trump 2 has only just begun!