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.”

    • enthusiasticamoeba@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 month 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.

    • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Especially since he’s already been on TV talking about how “these are people 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 on a date. many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” He’s explicitly pushing the narrative that autistic people are useless.

      Seriously, I was thinking about getting evaluated, and this gives me the chills. I will not be seeing an evaluation at this time.

      • Novocirab@feddit.org
        0·
        1 month ago

        Seriously, I was thinking about getting evaluated, and this gives me the chills. I will not be seeing an evaluation at this time.

        A lot of people are probably going to make the same rational decision — which, of course, will make the number of issued diagnoses go down. These fuckers will most likely try to take that as evidence that their policies worked.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month 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.

      • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        Exactly. I can see him banning any amphetamine/stimulant medications for ADHD first before having them rounded up, or instead of banning them outright, they decide to use them as a leash on people who could be problematic. “Do this thing for that long, and you get your dose. Break the rules, and we cut you off.”

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 month ago

          I think he was for less regulation for medications, not more, and more regulation for food, not less. Anyway guessing what will he do is not very useful.

  • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
    0·
    1 month ago

    OK, how are they getting consent for this from the subjects? I do basic research with tissue from patients and if they change their mind and revoke consent, we are legally obligated to destroy any remaining tissue or data.

    • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Next will be ADHD people… and I’m sure they all will be sent with a camp, that will help them focus… a concentration camp if you will.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        A camp? Its not like he’s ever suggesting sending people to camps before. Oh wait:

        source

        See? Its not a camp, its a “wellness farm”. Aren’t you relieved now? /s

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 month ago

          So while RFK Jr. is dangerously and stubbornly doing some wrong stuff, this at least conceptually wasn’t a horribly dangerous idea, though perhaps uselessly naive.

          It was proposed as a voluntary sort of facility that someone could go do if they chose, and from how it was described, ability to leave whenever they felt like too.

          Generally speaking, I view RFK Jr as dangerous due to his convictions, naivete, and belief in some gnarly conspiracy thearies, but not intentionally malicious.

    • Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com
      0·
      1 month 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
        0·
        1 month 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”.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    I bet at some point soon he’s gonna suggest the creation of camps for ADHD-havers to help them concentrate better. We can call them “concentration camps”.

    Wait… wait no no NO NO N-

  • Donkter@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    What’s crazy is that it’s perfect. Getting rid of autistic people is exactly the intellectual purging that fascists want when they get into power.

    I know not every autistic person is “an intellectual” but many transgressive artists and radical leftist college professors are autistic.

  • 𝔊𝔬𝔬𝔟𝔶𝔐𝔠𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔟𝔶@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 month ago

    And just last week he spent time dehumanizing autistic people boldly saying that they’ll never have a good life and they’ll never pay taxes (let’s really emphasis on that part). They are a monolith of “useless eaters” regardless if they are “productive” members of society (have jobs) to shit stains like RFK Jr. Like others have stated this isn’t going to stop. Anyone who dares to reach out to therapists and take Rx meds to help them normalize brain chemistry is next (Wellness Farms!)

  • polyploy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    1 month 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.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      1 month 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

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month 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.

      • polyploy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        1 month ago

        “Let’s not demonize the Nazi, didn’t you know he undertook the arduous and benevolent task of creating a special category just for those of you that were exploitable for your labour? Sure he had a bunch of you exterminated but he sterilized and saved some for work and that should count for something.”

        Utterly repugnant worldview. If at any point you find yourself coming up with reasons to defend a Nazi, and you don’t take a moment to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what the fuck you’re doing, you’re failing as a human.

        Someone who actively participated in the mass murder of children might have redeeming qualities (and I’d argue the one you think you’re highlighting isn’t one at all), but none of them will ever outweigh the fact that they are monstrously inhuman.

        Do you have any idea how profoundly his work has negatively impacted every autistic person since? We’re still trying to excise all the fucked up useless gendered concepts his perspective injected into the diagnostics. The notions that we lack empathy, have some kind of extreme “male intellect” and/or psychopathy, that the way we’re born is some kind of defect in humanity that must be studied and purged, that’s his legacy.

        He was one of the first to try to identify and categorize us, not out of altruism, but because he saw us as a diseased branch of humanity that was situationally useful but ultimately unworthy of life. If that’s not worthy of demonization then I don’t know what is.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 month ago

          You might want to read something by his contemporaries on autism, those who were not Nazis so that association can’t be immediately used against them. Also read how people diagnosed autistic were treated in, for example, USA.

          didn’t you know he undertook the arduous and benevolent task of creating a special category just for those of you that were exploitable for your labour?

          Compared to sending all of a bunch to a gas chamber sending only part is morally preferable. Obviously. Mentally impaired people were by default intended for extermination in Nazi Germany. The “Asperger’s syndrome” diagnosis allowed some of autistic people to be considered curious, borderline genius, pathway to making a new supersoldier/superscientist or anything like that not involving euthanasia.

          If at any point you find yourself coming up with reasons to defend a Nazi,

          I don’t care for emotional arguments containing no logical structure. Trying to feed that to your counterparts instead of something meaningful is the most morally repugnant position on any subject. The more morally loaded the subject is, the more repugnant it is to try this.

          Do you have any idea how profoundly his work has negatively impacted every autistic person since?

          His work should be considered in the context of others’ work of the same time.

          The notions that we lack empathy,

          There are three things called empathy, of which autistic people have problems with one, and psychopaths with another. This is correct.

          have some kind of extreme “male intellect”

          Maybe you’d like it back in your cell, your highness? Oops, it’s not exactly a cell, it’s a gas chamber.

          and/or psychopathy

          It’s not a weird concept, it’s the obsolete use of the term. In the 40s psychopathy meant basically every disorder with intelligence not necessarily lower than average.

          He was one of the first to try to identify and categorize us, not out of altruism, but because he saw us as a diseased branch of humanity that was situationally useful but ultimately unworthy of life. If that’s not worthy of demonization then I don’t know what is.

          As I said, sending all of the bunch to the gas chamber instead of some.

          • polyploy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            1 month ago

            If you think that eugenicist views being more common at the time is any kind of defense you’re sorely mistaken, and if you think there’s much of a difference between someone who kills kids and one who tries to decide which kids are worth killing first, you’re wrong.

            That first reply was for everyone else and reality check for you, but seeing as you seem intent on ignoring it I’m not going to bother wasting any more of my time interacting with you. I truly hope you come to realize how fucking disgusting your perspective is, I’ve tried to explain it to you but I can’t understand it for you.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
              0·
              1 month ago

              If you think that eugenicist views being more common at the time is any kind of defense you’re sorely mistaken,

              He worked in Nazi Germany. Say, baron von Stauffenberg, famous for his attempt to kill Hitler, wasn’t a Nazi because he was a Christian fundamentalist and a more traditional chauvinist, the thin difference that today would be ignored, but in that context he’s considered a hero.

              and if you think there’s much of a difference between someone who kills kids and one who tries to decide which kids are worth killing first, you’re wrong.

              Thank you for your opinion, but that’s something people in responsible professions have to decide regularly and by design.

              Like - “the mother or the child”, or “we have an emergency situation with far less donor blood of a certain blood type than we need, how do we share it”, and so on.

              That first reply was for everyone else and reality check for you,

              The reality check is that you consider yourself intelligent enough to do reality checks for others. Yes, don’t let the door hit you and all that

    • Zippygutterslug@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month 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
        0·
        1 month 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.

        :/

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Look! The man with an IQ of 6 wants to keep tabs on autistic people like myself who clearly have above average IQ! Though, to be fair, it’s not that hard to have an IQ higher than 60.