Summary

RFK Jr. is using private medical records to create a registry of people with autism in the United States.

The National Institutes of Health is helping to collect private medical records from government and commercial databases, including “prescription records from pharmacies, lab testing, and genomics records from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, private insurance claims, and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers.”

Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccination, has made the study of autism one of HHS’s primary goals. He has called autism “preventable” and claimed “he can find a cure for the condition by September.”

  • febra@lemmy.world
    4·
    45 minutes ago

    This is just them preparing the launchpad for further mass surveillance programs. First, they’ll poke around with innocent sounding programs, testing the waters to see how much data they can sniff out of different private databases without anyone noticing. They’ll claim it’s for the good of autistic people. They’ll enact legislation to further cement their practices of data gathering. If their proof of concept turns out to be delivering results, they’ll keep going.

    Slowly they’ll keep tracking all kinds of people they deem as “ill”. They’ll start with vilified minorities that can’t fight back. Most likely trans people. Then the rest of the queer community. Of course, they’ll claim there’s no ill intent in gathering this data, after all, it’s not like they’re going to commit any vile acts.

    And slowly but surely, once the public debate around these minorities turns even more sour, you’ll have them enacting all kinds of laws, and these databases will prove to be quite handy tools in aiding their goals.

  • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 hours ago

    There, the anti-science conspiracy theorist sure to fill NIH with self-proclaimed physical therapists, snake oil profiteers, and homeopathy fans.

    If it’s not killing, it’s him wanting to deny the disabled any financial help and government assistance, insisting the disabled are liabilities.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 hours ago

      While true, I’d take homeopathy over ABA. “yOu sHoUld go to tHerApy to leaRn to cOmmuNicate to nOrMal peOple” - “No thanks, I’ll take this little sweetened expensive piece of nothing and thank the Jr, so good we have him in charge of health”.

      OK, I haven’t even been to USA, but some “accepted” things about autism are just as bad as his ideas.

  • The_Caretaker@lemm.eeEnglish
    42·
    6 hours ago

    The first group the Nazis killed were not Jews. They killed the physically and mentally disabled first. Once they saw that the public didn’t push back, they knew they could do whatever they wanted. They believed people born with disabilities were not useful and their blood would tarnish the purity of the superior race. RFK’s bullshit should terrify all of us.

    • enthusiasticamoeba@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 hours ago

      Also, the term Asperger’s was coined in Nazi Germany to help determine which patients with autism (back then considered a subgroup of schizophrenia) were fit for labor camps and which were destined for death camps.

      Which is part of the reason we don’t use the label Asperger’s anymore.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 hours ago

      RFK is not the killing type, he is more of a “grandma giving you kombucha something sweet drink instead of actual medicine” type. He even talks like one.

      That’s dangerous, but blood purity is something I’d expect his background to actually prevent him from believing to be good. With ecology, eating raw meat and such things. Not the kind of people to think being inbred is good.

  • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zipEnglish
    631·
    12 hours ago

    Well that’s not great. This is the kind of shit why I haven’t wanted to get diagnosed. Granted I’m already in it deep for being trans and that resulting million mile paper trail…

    Behind the Bastards has a good couple episodes about what happens when people say they can cure autism (spoilers: many children die horribly)

      • enthusiasticamoeba@lemmy.ml
        4·
        1 hour ago

        The RFK Jr episodes also led me to believe that RFK Jr is probably not as neurotypical as he probably wants to think.

        Which is not surprising considering the amount of hatred and seething rage that some unrecognized neurodivergent people (primarily low support needs) have for anyone exhibiting neurodivergent traits.

        After years of social rejection (especially by family) and being denied support, many neurodivergent people learn to mask their traits at all costs. So when they see others openly express their traits or receive accommodations, it can feel deeply triggering, even infuriating. This resentment often fuels a cycle of shame and suppression that repeats across generations in ND families

        Most of the late-diagnosed autistics/ADHDers in my circle have experienced abuse from undiagnosed autistic/ADHD parents. These parents, having been forced to mask their traits due to less obvious support needs, often harshly suppress the same traits in their children to avoid stigma.

        Some people who’ve struggled want to ease the path for others; others believe everyone should struggle as they did. The latter are the ones who go on to try to abuse their kids (and sometimes a whole country) out of being neurodivergent.

  • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
    75·
    13 hours ago

    It’s Eugenics, this is them warming you up to forced sterilisation. This is Timesplitters shit, let’s just kill the Billionaires. Come on.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Eugenics seems opposite from RFK Jr’s ideas.

      I don’t think so. I think he’s really that delusional. Let’s hope his medical experiments won’t be worse than some hallucinogenic mushrooms.

    • Raltoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 hours ago

      Well technically they’re warming people up for full blown death-camps.

      It starts with tracking, then sterilization, then “work camps”, and then suddenly there are hundreds of thousands stuffed into cargo trains on the way to the furnaces. With tons of them telling themselves they should have done something when they first came for…

    • turnip@lemm.eeEnglish
      213·
      7 hours ago

      He did run on finding the increased cause of autism in the youth. He said it was likely environmental toxins from corporations.

      So if hes right and hes not looking to murder people then we get statistics on where its occuring, and he would track it down like we did lead and things like that.

      Which there doesnt seem to be a counter-point to what hes doing, heres MSNBC who obviously hates Trump, and as she says theres not been clear answers yet. Which maybe with the data he is gathering there will be some insights:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0OxB7DzBGQ

      • CoolThingAboutMe@aussie.zone
        5·
        2 hours ago

        RFK must be very upset with Trump letting coal-fired power plants pump arsenic and mercury into the atmosphere unrestricted then

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 hours ago

        Yes, well, there are good statistics and studies on autism and it’s mostly genetic. A bug of some of our far ancestors being related enough to have kids, but not enough to avoid weird bugs. Like - some of the neanderthals were not eaten. And parts of their genes were kinda compatible to those of bog standard homo sapiens sapiens, but not entirely. Which mostly doesn’t show in humans, and when it does, it’s autism. Or green eyes. Or something like that. Point being - really nothing to do with environment.

        BTW, RFK Jr really with his manner of speech seems like a high-functioning autistic person, give or take. I wonder if he knows that you don’t have to hide in a room all day and smell and have problems talking at all to be that. I also wonder if he knows that his survival\camping interests too match that a lot.

        • turnip@lemm.eeEnglish
          27·
          7 hours ago

          I dont like the guy, but clearly it is an issue according to this MSN interview. So if he can figure it out I’d like that he did, so that the corporation causing it is held to account. Or what, do we just wait until a democrat is the one to do the same thing?

          RFK is also talking about the obesity epidemic, specifically tying it to our food quality that many large donors really dont want to hear. I think some of these things seem sane, and I’m glad the republicans are starting to appreciate these ideologies.

          • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
            9·
            5 hours ago

            Except, you know, autism can’t be cured and, you know, the uptick in cases is not because a raise in the numbers but a better diagnosis.

            If they spent that money and time in improving autistic people life quality instead of “curing” them, the world would be a much better place.

              • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
                3·
                44 minutes ago

                Because we are not ill. We have a differently wired brain. You can’t just rewire my synaptic connections in a neurotypical way. The only way to “cure” autism is by removing autistic people from the world and… I’m not gonna agree with such solution.

                I really hope you are asking this out of innocent ignorance, because the alternative would make you part of the problem and… there are words for you in that case, words that could probably get me banned.

              • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world
                3·
                1 hour ago

                Because whatever causes it, it’s a difference in synaptic connectivity that can’t be medicated or trained away. The only effective way to remove autism from society is removing autists from society and that’s exactly what rfk jr wants to do.

              • dickalan@lemmy.world
                1·
                2 hours ago

                Are you trying to be a unhelpful walrus or is this just happening organically, can you actually add something of function or substance to the conversation of just being a little detracting asshole?

  • polyploy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    110·
    14 hours ago

    A couple things I would like to highlight for the unfamiliar, and I’ll preface this by saying that I am autistic myself.

    First, autism is not something for which there are any clear medical indicators, no blood tests or brain scans or anything of the sort are involved in diagnosis. It’s entirely subjective and observational, something that states entrust people who are ostensibly professionals to determine.

    I point this out because I want people to understand that there is absolutely nothing stopping the present administration from hiring people (or using AI) to simply diagnose undesirables with autism through whatever criteria they decide to deem fit.

    This might sound absurd, but we’re seeing people with nothing but tattoos being transformed into “criminals”, “gang members”, and “terrorists” by similar logic.

    Second, Asperger was a Nazi, and the child euthanasia program was one of the main projects which experimented with the tools and machinery of mass murder that would later be used in extermination camps. Zyklon B was tested on autistic children and other “diseased offspring” long before it was ever used in the gas chambers.

    How long do you think it will take before they are using AI to comb through the social media and medical records of teens looking for any indications of anything they don’t like, and flagging them as potentially autistic? September has been RFK’s set date since he first started talking about it, and people have been puzzling about that from the beginning. September is the start of the school year.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Second, Asperger was a Nazi, and the child euthanasia program was one of the main projects which experimented with the tools and machinery of mass murder that would later be used in extermination camps.

      Let’s not demonize him, the whole point he separated the “Asperger syndrome” from the more notable parts of the spectrum is to prevent some of those children from being killed.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      5 hours ago

      comb through the social media and medical records of teens looking for any indications of anything they don’t like, and flagging them as potentially autistic?

      anything woke must be autism

      woke mind virus etc

      Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places

      it literally doesn’t matter if this is the correct interpretation… the fact that it’s possible is the problem. it should be completely impossible

    • Zippygutterslug@lemmy.world
      32·
      13 hours ago

      Lists are not neutral; they are tools of social hierarchy and ideological enforcement.

      Creating a national database of autistic people could grow from “support services” to stigmatizing surveillance or work farms—especially if the one proposing it has a history of pseudoscientific views or conspiracy ideation, as RFK Jr. does.

      • marketsnodsbury@lemm.ee
        8·
        7 hours ago

        Work farms? No no no— these are wellness farms! Completely different! The labor will be very therapeutic! Plus, if we determine you’re taking medication for any co-occurring disorders, like ADHD or depression we’ll get you clean of that crippling addiction pronto.

        :/

  • santa@sh.itjust.works
    76·
    5 hours ago

    This is fucking terrifying. How is this not a HIPAA violation?

    Edit: Fixed spelling. What can we do to protect ourselves and loved ones?!

    • Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com
      331·
      15 hours ago

      Because it’s called HIPAA, not HIPPA. The second P is the one that stands for privacy.

      Fifty years ago, doctors would protect their patients by accidentally losing certain files if they didn’t think the authorities had a good reason for seeing them. Under HIPAA, they’re required to keep and maintain good records in case the government subpoenas them.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        15·
        15 hours ago

        For those trying to keep the spelling straight, it helps me to think the last two letters stand for “Accountability Act” meaning it can never be spelled “HIPPA” as there is only one “a”.