Summary
RFK Jr. is using private medical records to create a registry of people with autism in the United States.
The National Institutes of Health is helping to collect private medical records from government and commercial databases, including “prescription records from pharmacies, lab testing, and genomics records from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, private insurance claims, and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers.”
Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccination, has made the study of autism one of HHS’s primary goals. He has called autism “preventable” and claimed “he can find a cure for the condition by September.”
It’s not contagious you fuckstick.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is using private medical records to create a registry of people with autism in the United States.
That’s a pretty big claim for which The New Republic cited absolutely no source. This is bullshit, I hate the Administration as much as anyone here but I’m not falling for this.
Here’s a different source for you.
The National Institutes of Health will begin collecting Americans’ private health records as part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial plan to discover a cause and a cure for autism. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told a panel of experts about the plan this week.
The NIH plans to gather information from a wide range of private sources, including pharmacy chains, hospitals and wearable devices with health sensors, like smartwatches.
“The idea of the platform is that the existing data resources are often fragmented and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will often pay multiple times for the same data resource,” Bhattacharya told the panel, according to The Guardian. “Even data resources that are within the federal government are difficult to obtain.”
The NIH did not return a request for comment.
Kennedy has made autism research a central pillar of his role as America’s official health advocate. He has made a number of conspiratorial, anti-science claims, including that childhood vaccinations could cause autism, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Earlier this month, he called autism an “epidemic” and vowed to find an “environmental toxin” responsible for the disorder by September.
“Overall autism is increasing in prevalence at an alarming rate,” Kennedy told reporters at the time. “We’re going to get back to it with an answer to the American people very, very quickly.”
He further described autism as “a preventable disease.”
[…]
Bhattacharya, the NIH director, also has a controversial background in the medical community, questioning early on the lethality of COVID-19 and being a vocal opponent to lockdown mandates.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
I’m going to try and play devil’s advocate here, only because my experience in healthcare suggests to me that this is being sensationalized and there’s already enough legitimately awful shit happening without sensationalizing stuff. Now, do want you want, but if you’ll check my history, you’ll clearly see that I’m not fan of this administration. This doesn’t sound all that different in principle from NEMSIS, which is the US government’s clearing house for EMS patient care reports that it uses for research purposes. I don’t trust RFK, I think he’s going to do something monumentally stupid and just go fishing for a way to blame vaccines, but I don’t think that this is actually a kill list. Besides, what would be the point of them building a kill list?
Between Palantir building a target list and the NSA mass surveillance program, it would be a huge duplicated effort.
It doesn’t have to be a kill list, that’s what you’re not understanding. Medicalizing dissent, creating registries of potential scapegoats and vulnerable people to target or practice on, that’s the purpose. They create an outsider group to stigmatize and then broaden the definition as necessary.
You need to look at this step within the totality of the conduct of the regime so far. They are already rolling back child labour laws and openly talking about the need for a baby boom. Children are one of the most vulnerable groups in society, especially in conjunction with other factors like a migrant background or being in foster care. How many kids are in precarious situations with either absent or completely disempowered parents?
They’re already putting unattended children in front of immigration judges without legal representation, if the state simply kidnaps and disappears the children of people it’s trying to deport without due process, what’s to stop them? What do you think these ghouls might want to do with lists of kids?
What you need to recognize is that this is the sort of registry that would be directly accessible by those surveillance initiatives you mentioned. It’s not duplicated effort, it’s part of the same effort, this is just one of the ways they are trying to define their enemies and undesirables.
Tbh, there’s so much damage that’s been done, that’s being done, and that’s going to be done, I’m trying to aggressively filter anything that isn’t immediately tangible (the death of due process is immediately tangible, for example) so I don’t get totally overwhelmed. I know that there’s a strategy Bannon taught them, called “flood the zone with bullshit” that relies on producing so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt that it overwhelms and paralyzes the opposition. That’s what I’m trying to guard against.
That’s fair and I understand the impulse. The point of flooding the zone is partially to create panic and confusion, but it’s also a way to rapidly scatter a bunch of possible seeds of division or control at once, then focus on tending whatever works best, whatever has the least opposition afterwards.
There’s absolutely no situation in which a fascist regime making registries of “diseased” children is unworthy of alarm though.
I point out the vulnerability of kids because fascists always start with their easiest targets. It allows them to normalize, practice, and develop the systems they are building while also instilling fear and eroding opposition. That’s why we have to take this shit seriously from the start, the longer anyone waits the fewer there are around to fight back.
Furthermore, this article cites absolutely no source to the claim that this is part of an “autism registry.”
I wouldn’t put it past RFK Jr. or this administration but I’m calling bullshit.
RFK advocates for people to be forced to work at farms, for the good of their health. You can expect reports of me and other minority folks to be making license plates or being used as forced sex workers.
My whole family is AuDHD. We’re potentially vulnerable here, but I don’t think that’s where RFK is headed with this. I don’t think he’s planning anything good, but I don’t think extermination is on the menu. I’m still trying to suss out the wellness camp narrative, it doesn’t sound great, but what we know is little and there’s a lot of hype about it.
Trump is already murdering people by sending them to El Salvador. He and his backers want everyone they dislike to die.
I know. You don’t have to convince me that they’re evil Nazi bastards. What I’m trying to be cognizant of is the Bannon strategy of flooding the zone with bullshit.
On one hand, I get this
On the other hand, people have been playing this game ever since Trump was first elected and everyone keeps being shown to be right about them as they go down Hitlers playbook.
One of the groups that got rounded up were people who had things such as autism.
The people who think less of those with autism and who think it destroys people and their families are now creating a database of all autistic people
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst
Yeah, I agree with that. I’m just trying to keep my head in a post truth world, and I know that there’s a dual incentive to spread misinformation and hype; first on the part of the administration to “flood the zone will bullshit” and paralyze the opposition; second on the part of the media to generate more clicks and get more ads and subscriptions in front of people.
I’m more worried about why he’s doing it, than that he’s doing it to be honest, because the only realistic use case I see for this is eugenics.
In 1936, three years after taking power, the Nazis ordered families with a mentally or physically handicapped person to send them to nearby hospitals for the best treatment. Soon after, they started receiving letters that their loved one had passed away.
The first to notice the pattern was the clergy, who realized that the families in their congregations who had vulnerable members were ALL getting these letters, and they rightfully concluded that a euthanasia program was going on.
Many spoke out from the pulpit, demanding an end to this atrocity, and Hitler responded, saying he was shocked at this revelation, and promising to end it. He didn’t, of course, he just buried it, expanded it, and evolved it into the Holocaust.
To Nazis, the best way to reduce the statistics of autistic people, is to reduce the numbers of autistic people, and the first step in doing that is to compile their names.
Of course, the real issue is HOW are they going to reduce the autistic population? Considering how much MAGA openly admires the Nazis, it’s not hard to make an educated guess.
They don’t even have to kill anyone on purpose. They just have to force people to undergo experimental autism cures, which have historically killed patients. An example of this would be chelation therapy, aka using the medication used to remove heavy metals from the body under the (unconfirmed) assumption that autism is caused by heavy metals.
If a database is good enough to connect pharmacy records, medical records, and even health info from smart watches (which a doctor or insurance company would not have access to) then it would need to link patient info together in a way that’s not as anonymous as they claim it to be. Theoretically, this could be enough information to force someone into doing these experimental treatments in order to keep their driver’s license, even if they’re otherwise high functioning enough to not be hospitalized or otherwise force someone to get treatment.
This. This is way more worrisome than first glance.
The only result they will find is that autism diagnosis happens more often in areas where it’s socially acceptable o go see a doctor for concerns about mental health. Deep red states will have “less” autism because hardly anyone will be going to the doctor and expressing concerns that they may have autism, and then they just go undiagnosed.
Why is it so hard for some people to believe that there is genetic variation in the human brain?
Because the genetic variation is confused and muddled by foundational things they can’t understand.
Simple things like family structure and the importance of it. A lot of autism overdiagnoses are purely from the developmental differences; economic class, quality of life, nutrition, exposure, and obviously parents or lack there of.
For example, simple acts like kids getting to play in the dirt exposes them to beneficial bacteria. Which I could also see laying the groundwork for gut bacteria. With how common kids do try and eat it, along with developing nations cooking with it, seems at least conceptually plausible.
I believe in autism and am not denying its existence as my fiancée has autism.
I am more saying that there is a huge upbringing differential that can cause kids to experience trauma. Trauma that can give the same responses. Social media enables this issue by pushing kids who don’t have access to self identify, pushing a false representation. However, it is good for kids to be trying to put the pieces together - they just need help.
Trauma that can give the same responses.
That’s me! Early in therapy for CPTSD, we spent some time trying to determine if I’m autistic or just have autistic tendencies due to CPTSD. Turns out it was the latter.
The first people Nazi germany systematically exterminated were the disabled
So I guess it means now, that if you’re still undiagnosed in the US (and suspect to be autistic), better don’t let yourself diagnose… Sad times…
he can find a cure for the condition
A “final solution”, if you will…
Their database should track microplastics exposure, pfas exposure, lead exposure, and a whole bunch of other pollution exposure. Bet it won’t, because a correlation with those is not a desirable outcome.
Nope, microplastics made it onto the snowflake no-no naughty boo-boo list of words you can’t use in government documents anymore. Wish I was making this shit up.
This is just them preparing the launchpad for further mass surveillance programs. First, they’ll poke around with innocent sounding programs, testing the waters to see how much data they can sniff out of different private databases without anyone noticing. They’ll claim it’s for the good of autistic people. They’ll enact legislation to further cement their practices of data gathering. If their proof of concept turns out to be delivering results, they’ll keep going.
Slowly they’ll keep tracking all kinds of people they deem as “ill”. They’ll start with vilified minorities that can’t fight back. Most likely trans people. Then the rest of the queer community. Of course, they’ll claim there’s no ill intent in gathering this data, after all, it’s not like they’re going to commit any vile acts.
And slowly but surely, once the public debate around these minorities turns even more sour, you’ll have them enacting all kinds of laws, and these databases will prove to be quite handy tools in aiding their goals.
The first group the Nazis killed were not Jews. They killed the physically and mentally disabled first. Once they saw that the public didn’t push back, they knew they could do whatever they wanted. They believed people born with disabilities were not useful and their blood would tarnish the purity of the superior race. RFK’s bullshit should terrify all of us.
Especially since he’s already been on TV talking about how “these are people who will never pay taxes. they’ll never hold a job. they’ll never play baseball. they’ll never write a poem. they’ll never go on a date. many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” He’s explicitly pushing the narrative that autistic people are useless.
Seriously, I was thinking about getting evaluated, and this gives me the chills. I will not be seeking an evaluation at this time.
Seriously, I was thinking about getting evaluated, and this gives me the chills. I will not be seeing an evaluation at this time.
A lot of people are probably going to make the same rational decision — which, of course, will make the number of issued diagnoses go down. These fuckers will most likely try to take that as evidence that their policies worked.
Also, the term Asperger’s was coined in Nazi Germany to help determine which patients with autism (back then considered a subgroup of schizophrenia) were fit for labor camps and which were destined for death camps.
Which is part of the reason we don’t use the label Asperger’s anymore.
I was diagnosed with ASD as a child in the early 1980s. Fortunately none of the clinic’s records were on computers and the clinic has been out of business for decades. I wouldn’t want RFK, Trump or Musk deciding if I am fit for a labor camp or not.
RFK is not the killing type, he is more of a “grandma giving you kombucha something sweet drink instead of actual medicine” type. He even talks like one.
That’s dangerous, but blood purity is something I’d expect his background to actually prevent him from believing to be good. With ecology, eating raw meat and such things. Not the kind of people to think being inbred is good.
Exactly. I can see him banning any amphetamine/stimulant medications for ADHD first before having them rounded up, or instead of banning them outright, they decide to use them as a leash on people who could be problematic. “Do this thing for that long, and you get your dose. Break the rules, and we cut you off.”
I think he was for less regulation for medications, not more, and more regulation for food, not less. Anyway guessing what will he do is not very useful.
There, the anti-science conspiracy theorist sure to fill NIH with self-proclaimed physical therapists, snake oil profiteers, and homeopathy fans.
If it’s not killing, it’s him wanting to deny the disabled any financial help and government assistance, insisting the disabled are liabilities.
While true, I’d take homeopathy over ABA. “yOu sHoUld go to tHerApy to leaRn to cOmmuNicate to nOrMal peOple” - “No thanks, I’ll take this little sweetened expensive piece of nothing and thank the Jr, so good we have him in charge of health”.
OK, I haven’t even been to USA, but some “accepted” things about autism are just as bad as his ideas.
Are you saying you have an issue with Applied Behavior Analysis?
Yes.
Who’s laughing at self-diagnosis now??
Anyway, fuck this place (USA)
Lol, gj Muskrat, you’ve been designated the Röhm!
Well that’s not great. This is the kind of shit why I haven’t wanted to get diagnosed. Granted I’m already in it deep for being trans and that resulting million mile paper trail…
Behind the Bastards has a good couple episodes about what happens when people say they can cure autism (spoilers: many children die horribly)
Their RFK episodes are also highly relevant at the moment.
(spoilers: even more dead children)
The RFK Jr episodes also led me to believe that RFK Jr is probably not as neurotypical as he probably wants to think.
Which is not surprising considering the amount of hatred and seething rage that some unrecognized neurodivergent people (primarily low support needs) have for anyone exhibiting neurodivergent traits.
After years of social rejection (especially by family) and being denied support, many neurodivergent people learn to mask their traits at all costs. So when they see others openly express their traits or receive accommodations, it can feel deeply triggering, even infuriating. This resentment often fuels a cycle of shame and suppression that repeats across generations in ND families
Most of the late-diagnosed autistics/ADHDers in my circle have experienced abuse from undiagnosed autistic/ADHD parents. These parents, having been forced to mask their traits due to less obvious support needs, often harshly suppress the same traits in their children to avoid stigma.
Some people who’ve struggled want to ease the path for others; others believe everyone should struggle as they did. The latter are the ones who go on to try to abuse their kids (and sometimes a whole country) out of being neurodivergent.
It’s Eugenics, this is them warming you up to forced sterilisation. This is Timesplitters shit, let’s just kill the Billionaires. Come on.
Just a reminder that forced sterilization is still legal in the US, affirmed by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
Well technically they’re warming people up for full blown death-camps.
It starts with tracking, then sterilization, then “work camps”, and then suddenly there are hundreds of thousands stuffed into cargo trains on the way to the furnaces. With tons of them telling themselves they should have done something when they first came for…
That’s already here, that’s el Salavadore. Specifically I think that’s where the human experimentation with neuralink and putting smart tech into your body is really going to get grotesque.
Trump has signed an executive order to build a 30,000 bed detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, and a $249 million contract has already been awarded. It is due to be complete in 2030, but it will open in stages.
For context, the average maximum security prison in America is about 800-1200 people. The largest, in Angola, LA, is about 8300. That means this new detention facility will be almost 4 times larger than our current largest prison, which is already several times larger than average.
Its also going to be on a foreign island, surrounded by a (supposedly) hostile foreign nation, far from the prying eyes of the media or the courts.
So who do they intend on putting in there? He is making it crystal clear that whoever is destined for Camp Gitmo will NOT be recieving trials, or anything resembling Due Process.
Our first concentration camp is being constructed as we speak, Google it.
What does that have to do with my reply to the other user and why are you instructing me to google anything?
My post wasn’t just to you, it was an extension of the general conversation about eugenics and death camps. I wasn’t necessarily instructing YOU to Google it, I was inviting anyone who was doubting that American Concentration camps are already under construction.
You already have tracking.
Eugenics seems opposite from RFK Jr’s ideas.
I don’t think so. I think he’s really that delusional. Let’s hope his medical experiments won’t be worse than some hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Yes it is, that’s why the reduction in social security supports, that’s why the measles outbreak. This administration is puppets, acting out word for word, Curtis Yarvin’s butterfly revolution. That is why Trump is offering awards to women with more than 5 children, that is they focussed on reducing the cost of IVF. That is why musk never shuts the fuck up about the great replacement theory. It is blindingly obvious. This whole far right movement is funded by Big Tech, America First, Ireland First, Britain First, Francais Premier. They all appeared immediately after covid, they all have money come from The Heritage Foundation. This is the most obviousl thing, they’re not even hiding it. It’s because the economy is going to collapse within 2 generations because Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple and all of them collect obscene amounts of wealth across every denomination of currency in the world, they pay no tax and this drives inflation by forcing ever country’s central to print more money. We are about to enter indian level poverty in the West, along with the climate disaster, caused by the people who do not want to acknowledge it and have used the culture war, created by Big Tech in order to ignore. How do people not understand this?
It’s because the economy is going to collapse within 2 generations because Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple and all of them collect obscene amounts of wealth across every denomination of currency in the world, they pay no tax and this drives inflation by forcing ever country’s central to print more money.
Not commenting the rest of your statements, this is not how economies work.
We are about to enter indian level poverty in the West, along with the climate disaster
No, you are not. You are about to show everyone else what real poverty is, though, reminding them of pre-XIX century life.
I might agree there is a common interest of power in all this, but that’s obvious anyway, evolution, game theory and all.
Yarvin actually thinks they should be moving faster and more aggressively than they are, and he fears they might actually fail, and what it personally means for him if they do. Here’s the piece on it. He’s actually worried that his butterfly revolution may be unraveling under the weight of its own stupidity.
I want Yarvin to be dancing a jig at the end of a rope. People like him are responsible for the descent of America into madness.
I want Yarvin to be dancing a jig at the end of a rope.
That’s exactly what he’s afraid of. The post referenced in this, is from Yarvin’s own Substack, Gray Mirror, titled "Barbarians and Mandarins ", and Yarvin references a method for killing off bird populations called “foam depopulation”, whereby an area is filled with foam that suffocates birds in large numbers. It seems that Yarvin fears, that if Trump and Co. cannot successfully pull off his dream, that he will be killed by the very same methods that he wishes done to others.
That’s what the articles in this giant skinner box, controlled by the same people trying to collapse society through social media say. Yes, you are correct. Alternatively, is that article exists to make people who would otherwise revolt feel pacified and like they’re winning, so they don’t bother to protest. Social media exists as a way to allow us to vent. To see opinions that agree with ours and feel validated and things are happening. In actuality this is to make sure people DO NOT feel angry enough to mobilise in a meaningful way. As an example with legacy media, Michael Moore is not your friend, Rachel Maddow is not your friend. They exist to make you feel like people are on your side, they are multi-millionaires employed by their corporate masters to pacify and neuter the will of the working class. Read deeper my friend.
Except that the writer of this piece is quoting the latest post on Yarvin’s own Substack, Gray Mirror. The piece is titled “Barbarians and Mandarins”
And while perhaps the first article I shared confirms my bias, I don’t have the time right now to read a bloated 7,000 word essay filled with allusions and metaphors to genocide.
I’m way ahead of them. I self sterilized. I don’t want any hand in bringing more people into this shit show.
He did run on finding the increased cause of autism in the youth. He said it was likely environmental toxins from corporations.
So if hes right and hes not looking to murder people then we get statistics on where its occuring, and he would track it down like we did lead and things like that.
Which there doesnt seem to be a counter-point to what hes doing, heres MSNBC who obviously hates Trump, and as she says theres not been clear answers yet. Which maybe with the data he is gathering there will be some insights:
He’s a cunt with half a brain, he’s the new Mengele. His delusions have already killed people, I don’t believe in his supposed good intentions.
I believe it’s more likely that they (this administration, obviously) would change the meaning of the term “autistic” to mean any unwanted person. Basically, the Autist would become the new Jew under Trump’s regime.
Autism has a genetic origin. Even with today’s gene therapy techniques, it would not be possible to alter the already formed brains of adults so that they would not be autistic.
The simplest way to eliminate autism in the population would be to identify all autistic individuals and sterilize them or to genetically modify the zygotes or embryos of autistic individuals, but these, especially the first, have serious ethical implications and completely violate individual freedom. All this not to mention that we would be destroying part of the diversity of Humanity’s genotype, which could even have long term consequences that are difficult to predict.
Dude, these people are puppets of big tech. Donald Trump ran on lowering the price of eggs. Come on.
RFK must be very upset with Trump letting coal-fired power plants pump arsenic and mercury into the atmosphere unrestricted then
Ah yes, this is clearly a person who is gathering information purely for science and the public good
I dont like the guy, but clearly it is an issue according to this MSN interview. So if he can figure it out I’d like that he did, so that the corporation causing it is held to account. Or what, do we just wait until a democrat is the one to do the same thing?
RFK is also talking about the obesity epidemic, specifically tying it to our food quality that many large donors really dont want to hear. I think some of these things seem sane, and I’m glad the republicans are starting to appreciate these ideologies.
Except, you know, autism can’t be cured and, you know, the uptick in cases is not because a raise in the numbers but a better diagnosis.
If they spent that money and time in improving autistic people life quality instead of “curing” them, the world would be a much better place.
Why are you so sure autism can’t be cured? Is “autism” even a narrow enough diagnosis to cure?
I didn’t vote for trump. I don’t support rounding up autistic people. RFK is a maniac. Can we have civil discussion?
Ehm, because It’s not a disease…? How do you know being Chinese can’t be cured?
You don’t get diagnosed as Chinese.
Because we are not ill. We have a differently wired brain. You can’t just rewire my synaptic connections in a neurotypical way. The only way to “cure” autism is by removing autistic people from the world and… I’m not gonna agree with such solution.
I really hope you are asking this out of innocent ignorance, because the alternative would make you part of the problem and… there are words for you in that case, words that could probably get me banned.
I am ignorant about autism. I’m pretty sure humanity is ignorant about autism. There are people suffering degraded quality of life attributed to autism, is that not worth treating? Are people like Chrischan not ill or is that not related to autism?
I will speak for you, if you are willing.
If people try to kill us, we will kill them. We will defend ourselves from genocide.
Because whatever causes it, it’s a difference in synaptic connectivity that can’t be medicated or trained away. The only effective way to remove autism from society is removing autists from society and that’s exactly what rfk jr wants to do.
Are you trying to be a unhelpful walrus or is this just happening organically, can you actually add something of function or substance to the conversation of just being a little detracting asshole?
I’m asking questions. I think just stating autism can’t be “cured” is a wild claim considering we barely understand what it is. Do I need to state my politics before asking questions or do you just immediately think I’m a trump loving maniac that is okay with rounding up all the autistic?
Yes, well, there are good statistics and studies on autism and it’s mostly genetic. A bug of some of our far ancestors being related enough to have kids, but not enough to avoid weird bugs. Like - some of the neanderthals were not eaten. And parts of their genes were kinda compatible to those of bog standard homo sapiens sapiens, but not entirely. Which mostly doesn’t show in humans, and when it does, it’s autism. Or green eyes. Or something like that. Point being - really nothing to do with environment.
BTW, RFK Jr really with his manner of speech seems like a high-functioning autistic person, give or take. I wonder if he knows that you don’t have to hide in a room all day and smell and have problems talking at all to be that. I also wonder if he knows that his survival\camping interests too match that a lot.
