RFK jr says he will reveal cause of autism?

[Parisfranc]

Has anyone seen this?

He claims he will reveal what it is in September.

Not sure I believe it to be honest and I have a feeling whatever answer he gives won't be definitive but will blame a whole range of possible things. I've done a Google search for those who haven't heard anything about it and there are lots of articles but I always see people get attacked based on which source they give so don't know which ones to link to?

A veiled comment about what. So veiled I veiled it from myself?

And?

I know nothing about autism. I live in the US and have a daily barrage of political news. Nothing RFK Jr does is without an agenda. Please, if you or your children are affected by autism, bear in mind that this man has no medical qualifications, and doesn’t have the intellectual ability to read a scientific paper through from start to finish. Nothing - NOTHING - he does is without a political slant towards Trump-style Republicanism. Whatever he says will have next to nothing to do with autism (no matter the words he uses) and almost everything to do with pushing forward his part of Trump’s long-term agenda (which also isn’t Trump’s so much as the people who have him in their pockets).

It’s difficult to convey to people back home (I’m British) how different healthcare and politics (let alone the politics of healthcare) is here. It’s not all terrible as Brits like to think it is. In many, many ways it’s far superior to the NHS (the reverse is also true in some critical respects). It’s just different and very complex. Whatever RFK Jr says can’t be relied on in the same way as something a British Health Secretary says. You can be confident in the UK that the majority of scientific expertise will back up what a Health Secretary says/that the Health Secretary won’t speak without basis, or that if it’s complicated and not clear cut, the Health Secretary will say so and the scientific community will also say so without fear. That’s not the case here.

Honestly, I would ignore whatever he says. No good will come of it/him.

We mainly just laugh at him 😂

Some very odd and flippant responses on this thread, such as the very first one.

I actually think it’s really worrying. He is going to pinpoint vaccines as one of the causes (along with the food industry), and this is going to have hugely worrying implications for public health. It’s going to lead to children dying needlessly. It’s very concerning and doesn’t deserve the flippant replies.

RFK Jr has no scientific training or background either. He is just a gobshite.

Most normal, intelligent, sensible people are at a loss to understand why anyone would be so incredibly gullible as to fall for his fuckwitted utterings.

Vaccine refusal has been going on since the 90s and people have died, so the public health implications aren't new.

I think people that are of the mindset that vaccines are bad, are already avoiding them, so not sure what impact a person like that would have. The fall out from Dr whatshisname (cant remember) who said that MMR caused ND is enough to make people question people like this

Hold on I have just googled this person. This is the son of Bobby Kennedy?

Bloody shameful. Talk about family curse. The state of this!!!

Help them how?

I suppose one can only wonder how transgenerational trauma has addled his brain.

Didn't he have a strop because a study recently showed it isn't caused by aluminium and that's what he wanted to say it was?

There's plenty of other metals he can choose. I never did trust that stainless steel stuff. How is it even stainless? They must add toxic pixie dust to it! Real Americans reject toxic pixie dust -and always vote Republican 😊

Being ND runs in families, in my family we have 2 people diagnosed with dyslexia, 1 with dyspraxia, one with autism and dyspraxia and 1 with ADHD and dyslexia. There are also numerous older relatives that I think have gone undiagnosed.

Perhaps he means the cases that haven't been inherited. But I'd put my money on him just being a bit of a clueless twat tbh.

I'm no expert on any of this but surely the people who have actually conducted this research do have the necessary credentials and he hasn't done it himself?

Do we know who has actually conducted this? That's definitely important to look into as far as how trustworthy this information can be. If it's American big pharma then it's very unlikely to be trustworthy at all.

Of course the implications are new, because they’re going to be grossly amplified. Think of who he is and the reach and platform he has. Someone in his position of office saying that vaccines cause autism? It’s going to be devastating for vaccine take-up rates.

But with the explosion in diagnosis of neurodivergent conditions of people of all ages, it would appear that autism and adhd may not be as rare as first thought. Also your post assumes that these conditions are negative.

It's very possible to see how people with ADHD and autism could absolutely flourish if they had the freedom to live their lives in ways that suit their brain. Viewing these conditions through a modern lens of course they look like negatives. But there are plenty of traits associated with neurodivergency which are not advantageous in a modern society but would have been incredibly useful throughout history.

For example, a person 300 years ago who woke naturally early, gets dopamine from physical activity, has an affinity with animals, yet social difficulties with people, and who was good with their hands, could spot problems before they arise, and who was a creative problem solver who thinks outside the box would make an excellent farmer.

He or she wouldn't do so well trapped in a modern school forced to sit at desks for 7 hours a day, negotiating 300 other people and being made to learn about trigonometry and Shakespeare. It's mostly society that disables neurodivergent people trying to force them to be the same as the neurotypicals.

Unfortunately we have to keep the billionaires rolling in the money so we can't allow neurodivergent people to step out of the neurotypical rat race. Society doesn't value people who are different and get by with just enough. It values only those with more money. Success is only measured by how much money you have or what job you do. Not how happy or fulfilled you are.

I'm interested in research on this OP, as it personally impacts my life. But you only need to do a tiny bit of reading up on RFK to know that he's a charlatan who uses his platform to spread dangerous health information in order to further his own political ideals. See his comments about covid and ethnicity.
He's a dangerous man and it would be a mistake to put any faith in someone who has consistently proved himself untrustworthy.

As the genetic factors are now well known and considering his previous environmental work, I imagine the announcement will focus on the environmental factors that are present in addition to the necessary genetic predisposition.

If a new environmental factor is found to be significant, my money is on glyphosate. It’s permeated our food chain, our water systems and our air. It’s already been found to cause many cancers and disrupt human cells in a myriad of ways. Significant exposure in pregnancy and/or childhood could be a factor.

But I know someone with a daughter whose expression of autism is so severe she couldn't walk properly and couldn't speak. Wouldn't eat anything except bottled milk and rusk. Would act like she couldn't 'see' a limb if it became compromised. So if she cut her hand, would literally let the entire arm hang limp and not use it, and if you referred to the 'dead' arm would act confused. Just use one arm to reach and grab things with. Something I was totally unaware of being a feature of autism. She's got better with time, speech and language therapy and special schooling, but I can't see how that would ever be an advantage in nature. She'd have died very quickly if she wasn't simply exposed and left to die.

Every single member of this family save the grandfather has either ADHD or Autism. Even cousins. They also have comorbidities like asthma, eczema and food allergies. I find it interesting that they often appear together

I just think modern medicine is helping too many people at a societal cost (I include myself. I have several autoimmune illnesses one that is really severe and without antibiotics would have died as a child from asthma, but am now alive at great cost to the NHS and have reproduced and potentially passed down my compromised genes)

What we need is routine genetic screening and and maybe even a deliberate assortive mating database so people can check each others genetic background before having kids.

All pretty dystopian, people like me would not exist, but we did an genetic ethics class at university debating this and I think we need to start having these uncomfortable conversations.

*embryo screening

God, he’s probably going to reignite the ‘autism caused by childhood vaccinations’ myth …

I think it's vital to be able to assess what I know and what I don't.

Many people ARE better informed than me. Choosing carefully who to believe and who to trust keeps me safe.

The poster you attack makes very good points.

I find this line of thought troubling. It suggests that disabled people are first and foremost a burden. There’s no way to tell how severely someone will be affected by many conditions. Not all conditions can be screened for. My stepdaughter has Cystic Fibrosis. Yes, her life looks different: she takes a lot of medication and has hospital stays. But she’s also a brilliant young woman with talents, humour, and relationships that matter. She's on the verge of flying the nest and she has a very bright future ahead of her. She deserves to live as much as anyone else. Throughout human civilization, humans take care of those within their communities. It is what makes us human. Shall we start practicing eugenics because medicine can be expensive? What happens to society when all screenable conditions have been screened, all necessary abortions have been done, and autistic people no longer exist?

Once you start talking about screening people out based on genetics, the question becomes: who decides which lives are worth living? Because those conversations very quickly stop being theoretical when it’s your own child on the list - I doubt that you and your children would be front of the hypothetical queue. If any individual has doubts or regrets about having chosen to have children, then therapy is probably a good idea, rather than eugenics.

I assume he will blame vaccinations. Who knows maybe in some cases it is the trigger? Some people are for example genetically predisposed to type 1 diabetes and then develop it after a virus- something just switches it on. Maybe some cases of autism are similar they need triggering and even a weakened vaccine virus is capable BUT even if that was the case and it was listed as a definite potential side effect I’d still vaccinate. I’d rather have another severely autistic child than a dead child or one left severely physically disabled or brain damaged / blind from something like measles.

Edited to add personally I’m suspicious about microplastics being a contributing factor somehow .