In remarks laced with scientific inaccuracies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said on Wednesday that autism was preventable while directly contradicting researchers within his own agency on a primary driver behind rising rates of the condition in young children.
You’ve finally done it maga. You’ve made me sob. What hurtful things to say about me and my son
Someone please shut this stupid grifter up.
The brain of an autistic person is literally built different in the womb, but of course he doesn’t want to admit that. Autistic brains are usually noticably more symmetrical with more long distance connections and fewer local connections.
But he has chosen a different “truth” to act on because he wants to feel special.
The problem with that theory is that it is based on science, they use a different base. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it’s obviouslult not science. Maybe it is just wanting to be special, but even then it doesn’t make sense to me.
Desire. Selfishness. They want what they want and they “don’t have to explain themselves to you.” When that’s your basis, there is no cause and effect, there are no consequences, and there are no reasons why they can’t.
Stupidity is preventable.
Ignorance is preventable. Stupidity is assigned at birth.
I mean, technically? If all your kids get sick and die, congratulations! You prevented them from getting autism!
Who cares anymore? This man is unfit to hold the position. I’d rather focus on us IMMEDIATELY removing this administration whatever means necessary, than highlighting the latest nonsense of RFK, outburst of Trump/Musk, or stupidity of Vance
You know why autism rates have “increased”?
Because we understand a lot more about the condition now, and are a whole fucking lot better at determining whether a person may be on the spectrum or not - a “spectrum” that, I should add, is a whole fucking lot more nuanced and less binary than the “he’s a good worker” vs “let’s hold Timmy back a couple grades” dichotomy that you would have seen up through the late 90s and early 2000s.
Also because preventative factors like obesity, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, etc are strongly linked to having an autistic child
Sure. But the fact remains that autism prevalence in the general population probably looks a lot like the graph about left-handedness of the population throughout the 1900s - that is, logistic growth: growing, but settling towards a relatively steady percentage of the population. Btw, if anyone has a graph of that handy, please post it.
and its also genetic, and not organically caused by chemicals.
By some estimates, 20% of the population is expected to be neurodivergent in one way or another. Autism and ADHD are wildly underdiagnosed to this day. Especially for AFAB people.
I mean, to be fair, stupid people can be manufactured, and are at massive scale.
Our capitalist oligarchs have made a hundred million of em through sabotage of public education into utter ruin and captured for profit media being a combination of dishonest “news” and “reality” TV drivel.
They literally self-harm every election.
Buy why would you want to?
Embrace neurodiversity. All Brains Are Beautiful.
While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t wish for anyone to have ADHD. It’s an incredibly debilitating condition that makes basic things in daily life absurdly difficult.
There’s a difference between “let’s embrace our differences” and “let’s not do anything to improve the lives of people”.
I can’t speak tp ADHD, but as someone with autism I can attest that while things work differently, there are both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are best described as a mismatch between the ways that autistic brains work and the ways that we organize our society and educational systems.
My point is to say that we should make society more inclusive, which is the opposite of “let’s not do anything”. However, I am very much against pathologizing and trying to eliminate autism as RFKjr is doing.
I’m very familiar with autism. While I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, there’s a good chance I have AuDHD. And my wife has been officially diagnosed with ASD, so I know very intimately what it’s like from another person also.
My point is to say that we should make society more inclusive
100% agreed. But that’s not what you originally said.
I am very much against pathologizing and trying to eliminate autism as RFKjr is doing.
Completely disagree. There’s a limit to how inclusive you can make society. And even if you did make society so accommodating that things like ADHD and ASD almost “disappear” from overall societal perception, none of that will ever make the internal things alright. The internal conflict, the struggles, the mental exhaustion from trying to keep up with daily tasks and social situations, etc.
There will always always be a disadvantage for such people. ADHD puts people in a perpetual state of internal turmoil. It is quite an impossibility for someone with ADHD to feel “contented”. Our brains just will not let it happen.
If there was a way to permanently “fix” my ADHD and be normal, I would go for it.
I subscribe to the school of George Carlin on this.
It helps no one, including the afflicted, to dress up a disability.
It doesn’t help a single disabled person walk to be called “handicapable,” and it’s both society’s failing and pointless to, for example, rebrand a term like crippled which had no shame attached to it for a long time to handicapped, etc as if that society has malice in its heart it will shift its anymous to whatever term you want.
A disabled or amputated leg isn’t just different, it’s an extra difficulty for that person outside the norm that their society should pick up the slack for them on through assistance and accommodation.
A brain that can’t orally communicate, can’t self-regulate emotion, can’t grasp simple but important social constructs as those with severe autism can’t, isn’t simply different or beautiful. It often appears like hell to live as even with infinite financial resources and therapies, and that kind of talk diminishes the severity of their disadvantage, which just as the slow march from battle fatigue to post traumatic stress disorder, has a negative effect of minimizing the help that disadvantaged person needs.
As Carlin said, changing the name of the condition doesn’t change the condition. This is, to be clear, an argument FOR society moving heaven and earth to make life as bearable for their struggles as can be done, precisely because they have a profound disadvantage and a society should care for its members in order of most disadvantaged.
The neoliberal “solution” to real problems is relabeling it with detached and/or optimistic language and walking away. It solves precisely nothing, but it doesn’t cost their robber baron bribers a cent so there you go.
People who are different from the norm face people that treat them differently. You are right only giving it a shiny new positive name isn’t gonna solve all of their problems. But at least giving them the respect that other (not different) people get can already make a huge difference in someone’s life. Of course that’s not going to make their disability go away. No matter how well you treat someone who is missing a leg, it is not suddenly going to disappear. But it helps a lot if they don’t also have to deal with stigma. Imagine missing a leg and also being called names, being stared at and never getting an office job because them having a wheelchair would be a nuisance to the company. We need both and it solves precisely a problem, although it is indeed not the main problem.
They should be identified by the rest of society and treated differently.
PREFERENTIALLY every time all day every day. Trying to indicate they are no different goes in the wrong direction on that. Like so many things in this county, the problem is a culture that fails to, from childhood, educate people, in this case educating to seeing a disadvantaged person and going “how can I make their day easier” and not “eww gross and weird.” Same thing we fail to educate Americans on with regards to poverty and homelessness.
I don’t think it’s healthy for them to not consider themselves different fron the mean, as is often pushed. They are different from the mean. Self-delusion is a blight, choosing ignorance is always wrong. It hurts them when reality comes calling, and only those of means can make it from cradle to grave avoiding facing reality.
I would agree if people would experience the things that are different as something good, but that’s often not what happens. Most cases people tend to treat things that are strange and unknown as scary and bad. Also, most people with a disability or mental illness are reminded about that regularly. The guy that misses a leg sees people walking all the time for example. Nobody should delusion themselves, no mater how far or close you are from the norm. That being said, I dont disagree with what you say about American culture and education. Stigma for disabled people, poor people and homeless people is very similar. Let me repeat my point and say that treating these people well is not gonna fix their problem, but it will make it easier to deal with life.
I think we’re mostly on the same page.
I’d just add as someone who was a practicing psychologist that it has been conclusively proven that empathy is learned, it usually needs to be learned young if it is to be learned at all, it is easily tought, and our culture chooses to teach the opposite in glorifying/inflating individual potential with disdain for considering the needs of others.
Which had led us to this collapse as the rugged individual peasants tear eachother down instead of bringing power back down to earth.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/introduction-2/
If it were up go me, this experiment would be required curriculum for all young children, but modern American parents would burn schools down if a teacher DARED to tell half a class that kids with other color eyes were better than them for a single day (and then doing the opposite the next day) to safely instill what it feels like to be deemed less important by others. That’s how anti-empathy, and thus I’d argue antihumanist, Americans are TRAINED to be.
After all, when my kid grows up he needs to COMPETE AGAINST and BEAT your kid so he has MOAR than them. 🇺🇸
Yea I think a lot of valuable traits can be taught, although you probably know more if you actually studied psychology. But unfortunately I think you are right destructive traits can also be learned. Retraining yourself more desirable traits is much harder than learning it when you’re young. A ‘good’ society is a lot more than just a ‘good’ government.
But the traits that come with autism aren’t just a matter of learning (not sure if you imply that), their brains are formed differently before birth already, just like how people are born with other traits (like being more/less athletic than average or more/less intelligent to name something).
I wasn’t implying the empathy deficit was from those with autism, but from most of the US population, and by design.
Fuckin brain worm Bobby
This is the Republican modus operandi:
“This is the fantasy we want to believe. And if the facts do not support our fantasy, we will accuse you of lying to us and call for your death.”
Please, you leather-faced ghoul, show your work and prevent any future cases of autism.
If there were ever someone deserving of the r-word as a slur, it’s him.
His ignition timing is most certainly retarded.
I can think of a few others as well
Why not just say the n-word instead? He sucks, right. So call him a n****r. Pick your favorite slur.
Maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to insult mother fuckers without attacking other groups? Hmm?
As a mother fucker, could you find a different term to avoid offending me please
A nutter?
A Nagger
a Nacho chip double dipper
“People who annoy you”
Asshole.
I mean everybody has one but not everybody is one.
No but I don’t want mine to be associated with him, also assholes are quite useful so
Republican.
Abort all the babies! No autism ever again!
I can entirely believe they take the eugenics implications of this and run with it.
How people can consider even a regular man a guy so blatantly and obviously and clearly stupid and ignorant?
