Another 2015 study examined students in U.S. special education programs between 2000 and 2010. The number of autistic children who enrolled in special education tripled from 93,624 to 419,647. In the same time frame, however, the number of children labeled as having an “intellectual disability” declined from 637,270 to 457,478. The shift of children from one diagnostic category to another explained two thirds of the increase in autism in this population, researchers say.
Some portion of the rise in autism rates may be unrelated to better diagnosis. The likelihood of having an autistic child increases for older parents, and there is a societal trend toward delaying childbirth across developed countries. Children who are born prematurely are also at a heightened risk of autism, and improved neonatal care means many more of these children are surviving to childhood and beyond.
As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy promised “some” of the answers to the causes of autism by September. But his “start from scratch” approach largely ignores research that has already been done. For example, Kennedy told reporters the initiative would look at ultrasounds during pregnancy as a possible risk factor. But a comprehensive multisite study of more than 1,500 pregnancies that found no link between autism and ultrasound use was published as recently as 2023. And scientists definitively ruled out the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as a cause of autism a decade ago (and again in 2019). In addition, the primary study that had suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was found to have falsified data. Despite this, federal officials said in March that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct a study to investigate a link between vaccines and autism. The study will be led by a vaccine skeptic who was previously disciplined for practicing medicine without a license.
Many countries already have MAID style voluntary euthanasia, and as someone with ME/CFS I know many people pressured into taking that option. So in that way I consider the early stages of Aktion T4 “Life unworthy of life” to already be with us and something I’ve been warning people about.
> Instead, the official said, HHS will launch a $50 million research effort to understand the causes of autism spectrum disorder and improve treatments.
Great that they walked it back, but it's hard not read between the lines and see that as "we're gonna waste a pile of money on the question of if vaccines cause autism".
He already said that he will have "cause" for autism in September. I'm guessing he has all the research answers ready about "bad vaccines", straight from the Newsmax or whatever he is watching.
It's not about doing good. It's about mandatory labor camps, he has already announced in some interview. To be clear, for now he says that those would be voluntary. But when ever did an autocrat establish labor camps and not make them a prison for undesirables?
There was a doing something about the slightly ill, or healthy at the edge of the overton window, taking away from the extreme cases getting treatment or attention angle. The sceptic might say there is no clear useful additional treatment or attention!
Extreme autism may different. Treated more by Labour rather than chemicals.
My doctor thought I was being idiotic when I explained I would not discuss possibly incriminating and or humiliating matters with them if they wrote notes for their system
"Totally secure" they said
I was worried about nefarious access. Turns out, I should have been more worried than that.
I have autism and in my case it’s clearly genetic given that I also have hEDS which is a common comorbidity that is autosomal dominant. The RCCX genetic theory of giftedness does appear to explain what I’ve been about to observe in myself and others. I’m less familiar with the more extreme levels of dysfunctional autism.
On one had the poor health sucks, on the other hand being gifted is pretty fun.
With the less severe cases that I’m more familiar with I think it is largely treatable, I’m on a long list of meds that have been pretty effective for me. It would be great the end result of this initiative would be the spreading of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge.
With modern understanding of medicine and genetics people can be helped in ways they could not have been before - which would obviate the need for eugenics.
~Nobody is diagnosing 70 year olds. Children get looked at _far_ more than anyone else, anyone older that would have been diagnosed has learned to cope, died or been written off by society in one way or another.
And let's not underestimate the influence of "died" on statistics. People with autism tend to die either before age 40 or before age 60 (it is strongly bimodal, depending on comorbidities).
I think the answer to your question is that most people impacted to the severe degree you're imagining don't live till 70.
I don't know what the condition was, but I had an aunt who was affected by 'something' and was disabled in many of the same ways you imagine; she was nonverbal and needed full time care from a young age. She lived to 43, and towards the end they had to put in a feeding tube for her.
I have a couple of questions for you:
1. Have you ever personally seen a 'severe case' of autism where someone needs full time care for their entire life? Where are you getting your information about the degree and prevalence of this?
2. Putting "cases are clearly on the rise" alongside "where are the 70 year old severely autistic people" implies that you (via RFK Jr.) think that the number of severe cases is on the rise, not just that more people are being diagnosed with some level of autism. Do you know severe cases are on the rise, or are you (or RFK Jr.) just making some assumptions?
The reason I ask #2 is that the 'severe autism' we're imagining in this narrative would be, as you point out, obvious. But what if our understanding of symptoms has gotten better, and we're diagnosing more not-obvious cases, i.e. not severe cases.
Please keep in mind that the first person officially diagnosed with autism only died a couple of years ago. Donald Triplett. He lived to be 89, by the way.
Post those statistics then, that account for all the changes in the criteria, tested population, extended reach/understanding, starting to include women, and still show the 100x increase. If couldn't be missed, someone showed that with proper data, right?
Another 2015 study examined students in U.S. special education programs between 2000 and 2010. The number of autistic children who enrolled in special education tripled from 93,624 to 419,647. In the same time frame, however, the number of children labeled as having an “intellectual disability” declined from 637,270 to 457,478. The shift of children from one diagnostic category to another explained two thirds of the increase in autism in this population, researchers say.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-reason-a...
Some portion of the rise in autism rates may be unrelated to better diagnosis. The likelihood of having an autistic child increases for older parents, and there is a societal trend toward delaying childbirth across developed countries. Children who are born prematurely are also at a heightened risk of autism, and improved neonatal care means many more of these children are surviving to childhood and beyond.
As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy promised “some” of the answers to the causes of autism by September. But his “start from scratch” approach largely ignores research that has already been done. For example, Kennedy told reporters the initiative would look at ultrasounds during pregnancy as a possible risk factor. But a comprehensive multisite study of more than 1,500 pregnancies that found no link between autism and ultrasound use was published as recently as 2023. And scientists definitively ruled out the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as a cause of autism a decade ago (and again in 2019). In addition, the primary study that had suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was found to have falsified data. Despite this, federal officials said in March that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct a study to investigate a link between vaccines and autism. The study will be led by a vaccine skeptic who was previously disciplined for practicing medicine without a license.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/26/rfk-jr-vaccine-study-of-...
The link should've be relevant these days, yet here we are... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
Many countries already have MAID style voluntary euthanasia, and as someone with ME/CFS I know many people pressured into taking that option. So in that way I consider the early stages of Aktion T4 “Life unworthy of life” to already be with us and something I’ve been warning people about.
That sounds terrible. Is the pressure coming from medical professionals or caregivers?
Already walked back https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/24/no-new-autism-registry-h...
> Instead, the official said, HHS will launch a $50 million research effort to understand the causes of autism spectrum disorder and improve treatments.
Great that they walked it back, but it's hard not read between the lines and see that as "we're gonna waste a pile of money on the question of if vaccines cause autism".
He already said that he will have "cause" for autism in September. I'm guessing he has all the research answers ready about "bad vaccines", straight from the Newsmax or whatever he is watching.
There should be a registry of known psychopaths, with mango mussolini topping the chart.
I don't know but I would NOT register myself like this with this government. What good could ever come from this?
It's not about doing good. It's about mandatory labor camps, he has already announced in some interview. To be clear, for now he says that those would be voluntary. But when ever did an autocrat establish labor camps and not make them a prison for undesirables?
This is a reason people got upset. Nothing about it appeared to be opt-in.
I am in a similar situation. Mental health issue: bipolar as a spectrum not an on/off. It also often has comorbidities. But bipolar is treated first!
There was a doing something about the slightly ill, or healthy at the edge of the overton window, taking away from the extreme cases getting treatment or attention angle. The sceptic might say there is no clear useful additional treatment or attention!
Extreme autism may different. Treated more by Labour rather than chemicals.
Time to switch back to my Casio F91W
How about tackling deadly and preventable diseases instead of the Autism Boogeyman?
Measles for example?
We were too successful in eradicating measles, so now everybody knows somebody with autism, but nobody can remember measles. or polio.
[flagged]
My doctor thought I was being idiotic when I explained I would not discuss possibly incriminating and or humiliating matters with them if they wrote notes for their system
"Totally secure" they said
I was worried about nefarious access. Turns out, I should have been more worried than that.
Ha, you should have gone to the cybersecurity for a diagnosis!
Related: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2800142/
That seems far fetched, I hope it is
But given that autism seems largely genetic in origin, and RFK has promised a cure, then eugenics is not far fetched
Every week a far fetched thing happens for the last few months. Somehow people keep saying the far fetched things will not continue to get too evil...
I have autism and in my case it’s clearly genetic given that I also have hEDS which is a common comorbidity that is autosomal dominant. The RCCX genetic theory of giftedness does appear to explain what I’ve been about to observe in myself and others. I’m less familiar with the more extreme levels of dysfunctional autism.
On one had the poor health sucks, on the other hand being gifted is pretty fun.
With the less severe cases that I’m more familiar with I think it is largely treatable, I’m on a long list of meds that have been pretty effective for me. It would be great the end result of this initiative would be the spreading of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge.
With modern understanding of medicine and genetics people can be helped in ways they could not have been before - which would obviate the need for eugenics.
> That seems far fetched
"It can't happen here"
[flagged]
If we were back in the 1930's would you be worrying about the rate[0] of people being diagnosed with left-handedness?[1]
[0]https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image...
[1]https://archpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...
[flagged]
The rate of autism DIAGNOSIS has increased
Before we had lots of people who everyone knew were "a bit weird".
That's a meme, not based in reality or scientific data.
If that was true, then 70 year olds would have the same increase in autism diagnosis, but they have not.
Nonverbal autism has increased significantly, by at least one order of magnitude. There is no way anyone could have missed that.
~Nobody is diagnosing 70 year olds. Children get looked at _far_ more than anyone else, anyone older that would have been diagnosed has learned to cope, died or been written off by society in one way or another.
And let's not underestimate the influence of "died" on statistics. People with autism tend to die either before age 40 or before age 60 (it is strongly bimodal, depending on comorbidities).
I am talking about severe cases where they need full time care for their entire life. Nonverbal. Obvious. Impossible to miss.
Autism ranges from mild to extremely severe.
I think the answer to your question is that most people impacted to the severe degree you're imagining don't live till 70.
I don't know what the condition was, but I had an aunt who was affected by 'something' and was disabled in many of the same ways you imagine; she was nonverbal and needed full time care from a young age. She lived to 43, and towards the end they had to put in a feeding tube for her.
I have a couple of questions for you:
1. Have you ever personally seen a 'severe case' of autism where someone needs full time care for their entire life? Where are you getting your information about the degree and prevalence of this?
2. Putting "cases are clearly on the rise" alongside "where are the 70 year old severely autistic people" implies that you (via RFK Jr.) think that the number of severe cases is on the rise, not just that more people are being diagnosed with some level of autism. Do you know severe cases are on the rise, or are you (or RFK Jr.) just making some assumptions?
The reason I ask #2 is that the 'severe autism' we're imagining in this narrative would be, as you point out, obvious. But what if our understanding of symptoms has gotten better, and we're diagnosing more not-obvious cases, i.e. not severe cases.
Please keep in mind that the first person officially diagnosed with autism only died a couple of years ago. Donald Triplett. He lived to be 89, by the way.
> Have you ever personally seen a 'severe case' of autism where someone needs full time care for their entire life?
Yes I have seen it in person. Search on YouTube to see what "profound autism" looks like.
https://youtu.be/9Wx5cdjJ0Cg?t=1435
Post those statistics then, that account for all the changes in the criteria, tested population, extended reach/understanding, starting to include women, and still show the 100x increase. If couldn't be missed, someone showed that with proper data, right?