As can be expected from the AP this is a hit piece on RFK and the Trump administration.
The following statement:
“Doctors and medical experts have attributed the rise in autism cases — about 1 in 31 U.S. kids are now diagnosed with it — to increased awareness, especially around milder forms of the disorder.”
Increased awareness accounts for at most 1/3 of the rise in autism, some studies put it closer to 20%. The rise would not be continuing after 30 years because it’s well known in school screening programs. It should be at a plateau but it’s not.
I’ve studied the vaccine link and there is no evidence to link vaccines to autism because it has not been properly studied. If you don’t want to find something and you’re not willing to look (”settled science”) then you’re not going to find it.
It is a definite possibility in cases of regressive autism, where a child has normal development and then backslides. Too many parents say that specifically the MMR shot caused backsliding.
Then comes the parent who says:
“I don’t appreciate people presenting themselves as experts when they don’t know a damn thing about something,”
It’s not Kennedy’s job to know all about autism. His job is to find the researchers who do know about autism to find an answer. That’s what an executive does.
This piece is an obvious hit job.
Can’t ignore the fact that the steep rise in the incidence of autism or brain damaged children since 1965 closely parallels the rise in the use of illicit drugs by young people. The human brain is 90% phospholipids and develops very early in an embryo. Nobody but nobody understands the biochemistry of human thought or just how those fats in the brain churn to to generate higher intellectual function. It is known that most illicit drugs cross the blood brain barrier. If a pregnant woman parties, those drugs probably have some effect on a fetus’ developing brain and subsequent function.