Kennedy promises to find environmental causes of autism
55 comments
·April 17, 2025sergioisidoro
Fully hypothetical: It would be ironic if they ended up finding a relationship between autism and the overall stress, mysery, and dopamine hamster wheels that are causing the assortment of other mental health isssues.
Because I have a feeling they want to find an "environmental cause" only if it's not the one that is the driving engine of the economy.
ImHereToVote
It could very well be that toddlers that were prone to autistic behaviour were socialised out of it due to more social interaction historically. It could also be that the same chemical that kills bees is responsible for malformed brains. I applaud all research avenues.
frenchwhisker
If I lost the car keys, I don’t promise my partner to find them in the kitchen.
racedude
Same.
actionfromafar
Clearly, RFK is either confidently stupid, or confident he can eventually produce and put something vaguely resembling a key in the kitchen in the alloted timeframe.
unsnap_biceps
I would be surprised if they don't already have the document drafted up and are just... engineering the results they want to justify the conclusion.
monkeycantype
I'm reminded of the comment by a republican adviser, during the second bush presidency, critiquing an interviewer by saying ~ "you're too reality based, we're making reality". The odd thing about this claim that autism is rising, diagnoses sure, but don't any of the adults old enough to remember, remember all the people who we just labelled as strange. I've got a feeling we've got rising numbers of people diagnosed with autism and a corresponding reduction in people labelled and ostracised as non-specific 'strange'
ndsipa_pomu
If the increase is due to better diagnostics, then we should see a plateau after a period of time.
n4r9
Trump claimed he could stop the Ukraine war in a day. He wasn't either of those things. Ok, possibly the first, but he knew he could get away with it. In politics you don't have to do what you promise. It's true now more than ever.
heresie-dabord
// can also be written as
if A == B or A.nonsense == B.nonsensealterom
As an autistic person: please no.
But I guess that's just a part of the war on science this administration is waging. Getting rid of the population overrepresented in sciences will get them there fast.
nicbou
alterom
Shudders
That was one figure I haven't yet remembered when making analogies to describe what's going on.
But it's so apt. And Lysenko was successful.
racedude
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exe34
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wickedsight
I don't know what concerns me more, the fact that this isn't a complete conspiracy, or the fact that people (and this comment) seem somewhat indifferent about it.
I feel like we're in the 1930's, watching what's happening and having no clue what to do about it.
anon84873628
I'd say flippant or facetious, not necessarily indifferent.
alterom
>I don't know what concerns me more, the fact that this isn't a complete conspiracy, or the fact that people (and this comment) seem somewhat indifferent about it.
Judging by the comment history, it appears that their words have been misinterpreted.
Chances are, they're autistic and feel they're in the crosshairs.
At least consider that as a possibility.
_fs
AFAIK, there are several reasons for the increase in autism diagnosis, but a few key ones people forgot about...
1. DSM IV, the old way, had a separate diagnosis for many autism related disorders. Think Asperger's, pdd-nos, etc. When DSM V was released, many separate diagnosis were umbrella'd in to autism spectrum disorder. The old disorders simply disappeared and are not made any more.
2. Getting an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis opens up a huge amount of insurance and educational leeway. You go from qualifying for general therapy to intensive support therapy, classes, and more. At school, with the diagnosis, you get expanded help for kids that are really struggling. So there is a strong will created by parents and educators to try to get that diagnosis. When you are struggling, this extra support can really help everyone, the kids, teachers, and parents.
These two points alone may account for a lot of the increases we are seeing. I don't know why they are never mentioned by media and the skeptics.
christianqchung
"Kennedy also claimed most autism cases are severe before citing a statistic from the report that said 25 percent of children with autism are nonverbal. HHS did not respond to a question as to whether the 25 percent statistic accounts for all severe cases."
The tricky thing about a (probably misleading) statistic like that is 0% of the autistic people I know are nonverbal, but I suppose if I know them in any real capacity, they have to be verbal. Anyway, this freakout about autism seems overblown to me. Can any RFK championers explain this one to me?
ZeroGravitas
There was a CDC report recently that defined "profound autism" as "nonverbal, were minimally verbal, or had an intelligence quotient <50".
They found roughly 25% of kids diagnosed by age 8 fitted this category.
This category seems to be growing, but not as fast as autism disgnosis generally.
The obvious statistical issue here is that to have received a diagnosis by age 8 you need to be showing more severe symptoms.
This shows up in the fact that these kids are "more likely to be female, from racial and ethnic minority groups, of low socioeconomic status" compared with kids with autism generally because the ability to get diagnosed for milder forms is harder for those groups (more mildly autistic girls seem to mask their social symptoms better than boys, which has historically led to them being undercounted and unrepresented in the common stereotype).
recursivecaveat
I have no dog in this, but the sources I can find all say something like 25-30% non-verbal or minimally verbal. People seem to group them together, so I think 'minimally verbal' must be nearly as severe. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3869868/
wickedsight
> this freakout about autism seems overblown to me.
That's the point. It's a distraction with no possible verifiable result. His supporters will see this on the news and say: "Wow, Kennedy is finally really doing something about that scary Autism stuff, he's great!"
At some point he can just misrepresent some existing research and blame microplastics (or something else) for autism and proudly talk about this in the media.
jl6
> He promised to look at all possibilities “agnostically” and “follow the science no matter what it says.”
Great talk! Let’s check in on the walk in a year.
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fabian2k
Kennedy already knows the answer, this is just a pretense to justify his unscientific views. No real scientific research on a topic like this can be done on that insane timeline (until September). And of course he put a well-known crank in charge of that study.
They'll blame vaccines, and maybe some other random environmental factors that fit their existing worldview.
4ndrewl
Finding the environment causes of RFK might be better...
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Yizahi
Not surprised. The whole point of this administration is to flood all channels with disinformation and make people distrust everyone. That's the whole point of anti-intellectualism and anti-establishment. Increase paranoia and distrust, isolate and prepare for war, while giving money to the "strong leader" who will lead them.
Ugh. If I believed for a second this was a good faith effort to actually do so, I'd support it. Our previous next door neighbors’ kid was nonverbal and the parents told us a lot about their very challenging life. They made the best of a bad situation, and loved their kid dearly, but it was rough all around. This wasn't autism in the sense of “high paid tech worker without social graces”, but “if something happens to us, will our child die before help comes?”. If that were treatable, let’s do it.
I do not believe for a second that this is a good faith effort.