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.”

  • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • WaitThisIsntReddit@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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?

      • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • WaitThisIsntReddit@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          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?

          • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            2 months ago

            I can accept that. But the problem is that autism is not a disease, it’s a different kind of brain wiring. Our brains are different, you can’t “treat” autism without changing the brain itself. In some cases, autism brings people to a state in which they can’t live in a neurotypical society without support, but you wouldn’t be able to cure them because you’d need a new brain for them.

            The solution is not “curing” or “treating” autism, the solution is making a society that has in mind also the neurodivergences, something that doesn’t happen today.

            • WaitThisIsntReddit@lemmy.world
              0·
              2 months ago

              the problem is that autism is not a disease, it’s a different kind of brain wiring

              Intellectual disability, Schizophrenia, Depression, Bipolar. We shouldn’t be treating any of this? Part of the autism spectrum is as debilitating as those can be. As far as I can tell the only question is who gets to decide when Autism is disorderly, and it sure as fuck shouldn’t be RFK or any Trump administrator.