If they had actually discovered a cause of autism, or even substantially advanced research in that area they would have announced it right away, rather than engaging in this hype cycle bs like they are trying to defraud a venture capitalist.
More to the point, we already know the cause of autism; genetics. This isn't new, it's not some shocking discovery, it's been known about for ages. Most of the research at this point is focused on the interconnections between autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dysphraxia, which all show a high propensity for genetic clustering; basically if one person in a family has one of them, the odds of the others being present in the same or other members shoots up massively. That's really interesting and suggests they might all just be different manifestations of the same underlying genetic condition.
The whole notion that autism has a "cause" is just anti-vaxxer nonsense concocted by a fraud doctor (that's not an accusation, it's a fact; he was stripped of his medical license after it was shown that his "research" was a sham, and that he literally tortured innocent children to concoct his fake results) feeding on the insecurities of parents who want someone to blame for their child being different rather than just accepting that sometimes that's just how people do be.
It's so obvious just looking at my family. We're successful because of the neurodivergence more than anything.
But I always have to remind people, there is a darker reason behind the conservative outcry against autism though. We do not respect authority on the basis of authority alone. There has to be a valid reason. Holding a gun to my head probably won't make me do what you demand, and if it does, you'll shoot me anyway because I'll be slow and complain the whole time vowing to take the steps to make you as miserable as you are making me.
For whatever reason, they cannot comprehend it. They lobotomized people over it. They executed people over it. They sterilized, they institutionalized. Everything for us has to have an answer to "why." And it deeply offends them.
In a weird way autism may have partly spared me from a lot of mental trauma and issues. Growing up I went through a lot of things that tends to people having a lot of self doubt, anxiety, people pleasing tendencies, etc. I knew from a very young age though (maybe not as concretely as I do now) that what was happening to me wasn't my fault. Like sure I knew I was a kid and that certain things about me were difficult, but it was very clear to me when the things adults did made no sense or were hypocritical. That's not to say I didn't end up with other issues like poor social skills, but that still seems a lot better than the previously mentioned options.
Also, I'm still wanting to know when I get all the taxes I paid back since we apparently aren't ever supposed to be paying taxes.
Hey hey, it is still possible that there are environmental factors that make the genetic causes more or less likely to result in full autism. Kennedy certainly hasn't found any of those though.
A lot of the symptoms of that cluster are actually maladaptations. Our brains try and solve 1 problem, but create 2 more. In solving those, it makes even more. It's part of the reason that they manifest so differently in different people.
We could get some Vegas style betting odds going on this.
Vaccines, 2:1 (Best odds cuz this is just the de facto conspiracy theory for it)
5G signals, 4:1
Chemtrails, 8:1
Immigrants, 3:1 (gets a boost from being the big boogeyman of the admin currently)
Wokeness, 20:1 (Seems too vague and nonspecific to be a valid choice, so long odds, but still giving it much better odds than the 10000:1 this one deserves, cuz honestly who knows what they'll pull out of their asses with this.)
Flouride, 12:1 (RFK has said some dumb things about Flouride before, but I'm not really expecting this one.)
Antidepressants, 6:1 (He's blamed them for the existence of school shootings, why not autism as well?)
Pasteurization, 15:1 (Only drinking raw milk will keep the autism away!)
Honestly the only reason Germany ever got the damned thing is because you guys went nuts post industrialization, otherwise it's a question on if Britain or the USA would've kept it. Shit like Wounded Knee was in living memory until but a scant few decades ago, same thing with a bunch of the shit Britain pulled in India and South Africa.
They announced they'd be announcing this last spring. I'm just going to copypasta what I wrote on my Facebook at the time, because I was pretty happy with it to be honest
Humor me for a minute. Let's pretend that HHS promised the cause of type I diabetes by September. This has been researched for years, and suddenly they're going to have the cause pinpointed? And without knowing what that cause is (much less how or even if it could be prevented) they're also promising to say how it could be prevented. Seems kinda unrealistic at best, yeah?
Now let's go back to what's actually being attempted: "finding" the cause of autism. Same thing, except it's being lead by a guy who has been drinking the conspiracy-flavored Kool Aid for years. You would have a hard time convincing me that 1) after years of research, they will have a definitive and final cause in about 6 months, 2) this will be directed with the neutrality needed for proper research, and 3) of all the many many diseases we have in this country, autism just so happens to be the one that needs that immediate attention.
Yes! That's actually something the ancient innut people did. They'd let the whale head mature to give the juice a better body and mouthfeel. They'd strap it to the hood of a couple snowmobiles while they traveled.
As I pointed out in another comment, no guessing is required. It's genetics. We know it's genetics. That's been pretty self-evident from the data for decades. It's just anti-vaxxers who refuse to accept that answer and prefer some made up woo by a quack doctor who tortured children.
Sorry, my bad, two quack doctors. The other sells his blood as an autism "cure".
During the Cabinet meeting, Kennedy pointed to his oft-repeated evidence of environmental factors contributing to autism rates, noting how diagnosis rates have significantly jumped since the 1970s.
Lol yeah no shit. Medicine has improved a lot since the 70s. We can more easily diagnose the behaviour, so naturally the number of cases is going to be higher than it was in the 70s.
That could very well be noise. Autism rates have gone up because more people are checked and, far more importantly, what is diagnosed as autism spectrum disorder has expanded GREATLY in even just the last decade. The greatest increase in rates, by an enormous factor, has occurred in those with very mild to borderline symptoms, the rates of more severe disabilities having effectively been static.
What I expect is that he will try to push the "we need to reserve the autism label for low functioning boys", Trump will sign an executive order titled "Restoring the Integrity of Autism Diagnosis act", with a lot of other disgusting caveats, like forcing a "cure" (read: beating) on the higher functioning ones for acting weird, and also push the "extreme female brain theory of Borderline Personality Disorder" angle of female autism.
It's a complex genetic disorder, where many genes influence an outcome that generates a spectrum of disease. While at one end of the spectrum it can be debilitating at the other end it produces some of the best minds in STEM. In other words, there is an evolutionary advantage in humans to have autism in the population.
This is a very complex genetic disorder from birth. There is definitely is not an environmental cause. By try explaining this to a guy that swims in sewage.
We know it's HEAVILY influence by genetics, but there seems to be some other component as well. That unknown piece, from what I understand, has not been discovered.
In identical twins (same DNA,) If one twin has ASD, the other only has it 96% of the time. If it was purely genetic, this should be 100%.
Not true, that's called twin discordance. It's very common. While they were born with the same DNA sequence, every person develops slightly differently and has a different epigenetic profile. The concept that twins are identical when developed was outdated about 20 years ago.
It's also worth noting that acetaminophen is pretty much the ONLY OTC painkiller you're allowed to take while pregnant (other than baby aspirin as a preventative if you're high risk for pre-eclampsia), so I strongly suspect a sizeable majority of people end up using it at least once during pregnancy. It's common enough that I'd imagine separating correlation from causation on that one might be especially difficult.
In all likelihood the root cause of ASD is multifactoral and appears to be at least partially genetic.
The conclusion from meta analysis reviews of ASD research on environmental causes is that none of it is conclusive, and most of it is poor quality. This is a chronic problem with epidemiology.
I’m sure RFK’s explanation will be something insane like fluoride, but in recent years we have found mounting evidence that autism is caused by a genetically-based cellular malfunction that puts cells into deeply impactful danger response mode (CDR). More importantly, the theory behind this has led to an experimental therapy that has demonstrated almost miraculous results in all participants after one treatment. I’m not sure if it’s too late for an autistic dinosaur like me to see any benefits, but the research on this so far seems overwhelming.
“These are kids 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 out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said. “Autism destroys families.”
Interesting. As an autistic person in their 50s who have done all of those things and have a family of their own, I’d like to say that he seems to be describing wealthy Republicans rather than autistic people.
This is exactly how science normally works. "We've figured out something extremely important, but we aren't going to make it available for a month, so we can build up suspense."
Having known my husband for over 10 years now, it's having an inherently higher coolness than the rest of us; the world at large isn't prepared to deal this fact.
So I've been thinking about this, and I think he's going to come back saying it's mothers breast milk, and not a contaminant in it, but the very nature of itself.
To solve the issue, everyone will need to migrate to using a special infant formula only Nestlé has.
If they had actually discovered a cause of autism, or even substantially advanced research in that area they would have announced it right away, rather than engaging in this hype cycle bs like they are trying to defraud a venture capitalist.
More to the point, we already know the cause of autism; genetics. This isn't new, it's not some shocking discovery, it's been known about for ages. Most of the research at this point is focused on the interconnections between autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dysphraxia, which all show a high propensity for genetic clustering; basically if one person in a family has one of them, the odds of the others being present in the same or other members shoots up massively. That's really interesting and suggests they might all just be different manifestations of the same underlying genetic condition.
The whole notion that autism has a "cause" is just anti-vaxxer nonsense concocted by a fraud doctor (that's not an accusation, it's a fact; he was stripped of his medical license after it was shown that his "research" was a sham, and that he literally tortured innocent children to concoct his fake results) feeding on the insecurities of parents who want someone to blame for their child being different rather than just accepting that sometimes that's just how people do be.
It's so obvious just looking at my family. We're successful because of the neurodivergence more than anything.
But I always have to remind people, there is a darker reason behind the conservative outcry against autism though. We do not respect authority on the basis of authority alone. There has to be a valid reason. Holding a gun to my head probably won't make me do what you demand, and if it does, you'll shoot me anyway because I'll be slow and complain the whole time vowing to take the steps to make you as miserable as you are making me.
For whatever reason, they cannot comprehend it. They lobotomized people over it. They executed people over it. They sterilized, they institutionalized. Everything for us has to have an answer to "why." And it deeply offends them.
Ain't that the fucking truth.
In a weird way autism may have partly spared me from a lot of mental trauma and issues. Growing up I went through a lot of things that tends to people having a lot of self doubt, anxiety, people pleasing tendencies, etc. I knew from a very young age though (maybe not as concretely as I do now) that what was happening to me wasn't my fault. Like sure I knew I was a kid and that certain things about me were difficult, but it was very clear to me when the things adults did made no sense or were hypocritical. That's not to say I didn't end up with other issues like poor social skills, but that still seems a lot better than the previously mentioned options.
Also, I'm still wanting to know when I get all the taxes I paid back since we apparently aren't ever supposed to be paying taxes.
It sure as fuck is, The Truth!
Hey hey, it is still possible that there are environmental factors that make the genetic causes more or less likely to result in full autism. Kennedy certainly hasn't found any of those though.
A lot of the symptoms of that cluster are actually maladaptations. Our brains try and solve 1 problem, but create 2 more. In solving those, it makes even more. It's part of the reason that they manifest so differently in different people.
Also illegal immigrants
And not enough raw milk.
You misspelled chemtrails.
We could get some Vegas style betting odds going on this.
Vaccines, 2:1 (Best odds cuz this is just the de facto conspiracy theory for it) 5G signals, 4:1 Chemtrails, 8:1
Immigrants, 3:1 (gets a boost from being the big boogeyman of the admin currently) Wokeness, 20:1 (Seems too vague and nonspecific to be a valid choice, so long odds, but still giving it much better odds than the 10000:1 this one deserves, cuz honestly who knows what they'll pull out of their asses with this.) Flouride, 12:1 (RFK has said some dumb things about Flouride before, but I'm not really expecting this one.) Antidepressants, 6:1 (He's blamed them for the existence of school shootings, why not autism as well?) Pasteurization, 15:1 (Only drinking raw milk will keep the autism away!)
Contrails are illegal now though
Disordered humors and curdled vapors, caused by the happiness of trans people.
Artificial colors.
Anything but genetics!
Genes come to in two types, the kind you wear and Simmons. -RFK jr. probably
The autistics yearn for the concentration camp - RFK probably
As a German, I appreciate the Americans taking the medal of cruelty away from us, but as a human being... what the fuck?
It's actually Israel, but we're ramping up!
Palestine.
Honestly the only reason Germany ever got the damned thing is because you guys went nuts post industrialization, otherwise it's a question on if Britain or the USA would've kept it. Shit like Wounded Knee was in living memory until but a scant few decades ago, same thing with a bunch of the shit Britain pulled in India and South Africa.
They announced they'd be announcing this last spring. I'm just going to copypasta what I wrote on my Facebook at the time, because I was pretty happy with it to be honest
This guy is a professional moron, his father would be appalled
NGL I'm morbidly curious how insane the supposed causes will be.
I'm guessing processed foods, vaccines, and a sprinkle of whatever makes the kids trans. But good news! Drinking bear blood can cure it!
/s
What about whale juice?
So long as it's fresh squeezed. You can really only get that in coastal areas. The stuff you get inland has lost its potency.
Is it okay if you get it from a whale head that you let marinate on your car roof for a bit?
Yes! That's actually something the ancient innut people did. They'd let the whale head mature to give the juice a better body and mouthfeel. They'd strap it to the hood of a couple snowmobiles while they traveled.
You need fresh whale cum.
Only if the whale was sustainably beached.
As with any great modern scientific discovery, nothing is shared, or can be guessed from existing evidence, until the great reveal!
Well lets not forget the curtain it needs to be kept behind.
RFK’s meat curtains
Please no. Don't make me think of such things.
We're gonna get the zonk.
Was thinking more let's make a deal, but sure he he.
Who you gonna trust? Scientists who have researched the problem for their whole professional lives, or Maggot Brain?
Don’t call him that, please. Stick with worm brain or something else, anything else, I beg you.
Please don’t sully the title of both a fantastic album and the greatest guitar solo ever put to recording.
Don’t let these people soil yet another thing in this life.
Whaaaaat?!? How dare you?! I'm going to trust the scientists that maggot brain will put in front of the microphone!
/s just to be sure. There should be some reaaaaally large air quotations marks around the word scientists.
Imagine an ignorant like RFK Jr telling the world for the first time the cause of autism 🤯
It's probably him.
"The cause is not having a brain worm."
They're gonna mandate its install on all "true" citizens, just you watch.
Change the word "reveal" to "guess at".
Nah, straight up lie about.
More like "Bullshit about"
As I pointed out in another comment, no guessing is required. It's genetics. We know it's genetics. That's been pretty self-evident from the data for decades. It's just anti-vaxxers who refuse to accept that answer and prefer some made up woo by a quack doctor who tortured children.
Sorry, my bad, two quack doctors. The other sells his blood as an autism "cure".
It was me, I did it. I caused autism.
I'm ready to accept blame for my acts.
But I stand by what I did.
https://youtu.be/qN7be1ADhKI
I guarantee that they bring up “woke”
Inb4 vaccines
Inb4 god punishing parents for queer thoughts
Lol yeah no shit. Medicine has improved a lot since the 70s. We can more easily diagnose the behaviour, so naturally the number of cases is going to be higher than it was in the 70s.
Except there is some evidence that pollution can contribute to it. He's the epitome of "A broken clock is right twice a day."
That could very well be noise. Autism rates have gone up because more people are checked and, far more importantly, what is diagnosed as autism spectrum disorder has expanded GREATLY in even just the last decade. The greatest increase in rates, by an enormous factor, has occurred in those with very mild to borderline symptoms, the rates of more severe disabilities having effectively been static.
Since both autism and ADHD are developmental disorders, I'd honestly be shocked if environmental factors including pollution weren't involved.
At worse we reduce pollution for no reason.
"We have found that autism is caused by woke"
What I expect is that he will try to push the "we need to reserve the autism label for low functioning boys", Trump will sign an executive order titled "Restoring the Integrity of Autism Diagnosis act", with a lot of other disgusting caveats, like forcing a "cure" (read: beating) on the higher functioning ones for acting weird, and also push the "extreme female brain theory of Borderline Personality Disorder" angle of female autism.
Woke vaccines, I knew it all along!
looks at the CDC
Suuuuuuuure you will.
Aside from politics, do scientists actually know what causes autism? Sorry if this question is ignorant, but I have no clue about that.
It's a complex genetic disorder, where many genes influence an outcome that generates a spectrum of disease. While at one end of the spectrum it can be debilitating at the other end it produces some of the best minds in STEM. In other words, there is an evolutionary advantage in humans to have autism in the population.
This is a very complex genetic disorder from birth. There is definitely is not an environmental cause. By try explaining this to a guy that swims in sewage.
We know it's HEAVILY influence by genetics, but there seems to be some other component as well. That unknown piece, from what I understand, has not been discovered.
In identical twins (same DNA,) If one twin has ASD, the other only has it 96% of the time. If it was purely genetic, this should be 100%.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/severity-autism-symptoms-varies-greatly-among-identical-twins
Not true, that's called twin discordance. It's very common. While they were born with the same DNA sequence, every person develops slightly differently and has a different epigenetic profile. The concept that twins are identical when developed was outdated about 20 years ago.
Isn't twin discordance only referring to different weights/sizes at birth?
Could be down to gene drift or random mutation at that point, pretty sure that 4 percent is well within such variables.
Epigenetics (differences in gene expression) is more than sufficient; an actual mutation isn't necessary.
is is?
I read a thing the other day that acetaminophen during pregnancy is now suspected as a cause.
It inhibits cell division and is now considered harmful to pregnancy and conception.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40819833/
But there’s also a recent finding suggesting it doesn’t
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38592388/
I hadn’t seen that second result before writing this comment
It's also worth noting that acetaminophen is pretty much the ONLY OTC painkiller you're allowed to take while pregnant (other than baby aspirin as a preventative if you're high risk for pre-eclampsia), so I strongly suspect a sizeable majority of people end up using it at least once during pregnancy. It's common enough that I'd imagine separating correlation from causation on that one might be especially difficult.
In all likelihood the root cause of ASD is multifactoral and appears to be at least partially genetic.
It's also used to treat things that have also shown potential links to ASD, like certain viral infections.
The conclusion from meta analysis reviews of ASD research on environmental causes is that none of it is conclusive, and most of it is poor quality. This is a chronic problem with epidemiology.
Thanks! That’s interesting.
besides having sex with your mom?
I'm placing my bet they claim something like "testing for autism causing autism"... they'll ban the tests. Problem "solved"!
They are going to blame immigrants.
why blame immigrants when you can blame trans immigrants
Pregnancy, final answer.
people who announce what they're gonna announce don't have sh to say.
I’m sure RFK’s explanation will be something insane like fluoride, but in recent years we have found mounting evidence that autism is caused by a genetically-based cellular malfunction that puts cells into deeply impactful danger response mode (CDR). More importantly, the theory behind this has led to an experimental therapy that has demonstrated almost miraculous results in all participants after one treatment. I’m not sure if it’s too late for an autistic dinosaur like me to see any benefits, but the research on this so far seems overwhelming.
https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/autism-suramin-evolution/
Interesting. As an autistic person in their 50s who have done all of those things and have a family of their own, I’d like to say that he seems to be describing wealthy Republicans rather than autistic people.
I hope it's electricity. The chaos would be engaging.
wow what shitty, dangerous rhetoric to spread
This is exactly how science normally works. "We've figured out something extremely important, but we aren't going to make it available for a month, so we can build up suspense."
Having known my husband for over 10 years now, it's having an inherently higher coolness than the rest of us; the world at large isn't prepared to deal this fact.
Ah, autism is nature self-correcting to fight climate change.
And these causes I'm sure will be backed by scientific evidence right? Or are they going to pulled out of rfk maggoty ass?
The cause is RFK jr.
So I've been thinking about this, and I think he's going to come back saying it's mothers breast milk, and not a contaminant in it, but the very nature of itself.
To solve the issue, everyone will need to migrate to using a special infant formula only Nestlé has.
It apparently was already done in July without his help.
But he's probably scrambling to pin the blame in something that isn't tied to big oil / plastic.
Ooh, this will be good.
Will this be like "infrastructure week"?
Oh great, another distraction for the voter base.