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.”
claimed “he can find a cure for the condition by September.”
Is it camping? Oh boy do I hope it’s camping!
It’s brainworm infested bear meat.
I’m going to try and play devil’s advocate here, only because my experience in healthcare suggests to me that this is being sensationalized and there’s already enough legitimately awful shit happening without sensationalizing stuff. Now, do want you want, but if you’ll check my history, you’ll clearly see that I’m not fan of this administration. This doesn’t sound all that different in principle from NEMSIS, which is the US government’s clearing house for EMS patient care reports that it uses for research purposes. I don’t trust RFK, I think he’s going to do something monumentally stupid and just go fishing for a way to blame vaccines, but I don’t think that this is actually a kill list. Besides, what would be the point of them building a kill list?
Between Palantir building a target list and the NSA mass surveillance program, it would be a huge duplicated effort.
Furthermore, this article cites absolutely no source to the claim that this is part of an “autism registry.”
I wouldn’t put it past RFK Jr. or this administration but I’m calling bullshit.
RFK advocates for people to be forced to work at farms, for the good of their health. You can expect reports of me and other minority folks to be making license plates or being used as forced sex workers.
My whole family is AuDHD. We’re potentially vulnerable here, but I don’t think that’s where RFK is headed with this. I don’t think he’s planning anything good, but I don’t think extermination is on the menu. I’m still trying to suss out the wellness camp narrative, it doesn’t sound great, but what we know is little and there’s a lot of hype about it.
Trump is already murdering people by sending them to El Salvador. He and his backers want everyone they dislike to die.
I know. You don’t have to convince me that they’re evil Nazi bastards. What I’m trying to be cognizant of is the Bannon strategy of flooding the zone with bullshit.
On one hand, I get this
On the other hand, people have been playing this game ever since Trump was first elected and everyone keeps being shown to be right about them as they go down Hitlers playbook.
One of the groups that got rounded up were people who had things such as autism.
The people who think less of those with autism and who think it destroys people and their families are now creating a database of all autistic people
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst
Yeah, I agree with that. I’m just trying to keep my head in a post truth world, and I know that there’s a dual incentive to spread misinformation and hype; first on the part of the administration to “flood the zone will bullshit” and paralyze the opposition; second on the part of the media to generate more clicks and get more ads and subscriptions in front of people.
It doesn’t have to be a kill list, that’s what you’re not understanding. Medicalizing dissent, creating registries of potential scapegoats and vulnerable people to target or practice on, that’s the purpose. They create an outsider group to stigmatize and then broaden the definition as necessary.
You need to look at this step within the totality of the conduct of the regime so far. They are already rolling back child labour laws and openly talking about the need for a baby boom. Children are one of the most vulnerable groups in society, especially in conjunction with other factors like a migrant background or being in foster care. How many kids are in precarious situations with either absent or completely disempowered parents?
They’re already putting unattended children in front of immigration judges without legal representation, if the state simply kidnaps and disappears the children of people it’s trying to deport without due process, what’s to stop them? What do you think these ghouls might want to do with lists of kids?
What you need to recognize is that this is the sort of registry that would be directly accessible by those surveillance initiatives you mentioned. It’s not duplicated effort, it’s part of the same effort, this is just one of the ways they are trying to define their enemies and undesirables.
Tbh, there’s so much damage that’s been done, that’s being done, and that’s going to be done, I’m trying to aggressively filter anything that isn’t immediately tangible (the death of due process is immediately tangible, for example) so I don’t get totally overwhelmed. I know that there’s a strategy Bannon taught them, called “flood the zone with bullshit” that relies on producing so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt that it overwhelms and paralyzes the opposition. That’s what I’m trying to guard against.
That’s fair and I understand the impulse. The point of flooding the zone is partially to create panic and confusion, but it’s also a way to rapidly scatter a bunch of possible seeds of division or control at once, then focus on tending whatever works best, whatever has the least opposition afterwards.
There’s absolutely no situation in which a fascist regime making registries of “diseased” children is unworthy of alarm though.
I point out the vulnerability of kids because fascists always start with their easiest targets. It allows them to normalize, practice, and develop the systems they are building while also instilling fear and eroding opposition. That’s why we have to take this shit seriously from the start, the longer anyone waits the fewer there are around to fight back.
Why is it so hard for some people to believe that there is genetic variation in the human brain?
Because the genetic variation is confused and muddled by foundational things they can’t understand.
Simple things like family structure and the importance of it. A lot of autism overdiagnoses are purely from the developmental differences; economic class, quality of life, nutrition, exposure, and obviously parents or lack there of.
For example, simple acts like kids getting to play in the dirt exposes them to beneficial bacteria. Which I could also see laying the groundwork for gut bacteria. With how common kids do try and eat it, along with developing nations cooking with it, seems at least conceptually plausible.
I believe in autism and am not denying its existence as my fiancée has autism.
I am more saying that there is a huge upbringing differential that can cause kids to experience trauma. Trauma that can give the same responses. Social media enables this issue by pushing kids who don’t have access to self identify, pushing a false representation. However, it is good for kids to be trying to put the pieces together - they just need help.
Trauma that can give the same responses.
That’s me! Early in therapy for CPTSD, we spent some time trying to determine if I’m autistic or just have autistic tendencies due to CPTSD. Turns out it was the latter.
Some believe that their way of thinking, their neurological tendencies are the “right way” to do things in life. Others who arent like that are wrong in their eyes. Same with skin color and religion.
Get ready my fellow autists, for you are the new jews, this time in magastan instead of Germany.
I don’t think they are the “new” anything… LGBT will be the new jews… I’m pretty sure autistic people will have their same place in the new reich that they did in the old one.
Yeah, being “euthanised”.
Don’t worry. I’m sure MAGA will start openly hating Jews soon enough.
The Nazis started with the disabled, trans, gays, and autistic. The Jews came after the political dissidents.
Those seasonal depression Palestinians won’t know what hit ‘em. /s
He’s looking for the solution to the autistic people question
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.
A camp? Its not like he’s ever suggesting sending people to camps before. Oh wait:
See? Its not a camp, its a “wellness farm”. Aren’t you relieved now? /s
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.
Might you call it the final solution?
A fine ‘ol solution?
A Nazi does what???
“Fund a cure” — a solution, as it were.
finally!
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.
Based on recent history, Trump will declare some sort of national health emergency that will allow him to ignore laws and court orders that get in his way.
Consent is required only if you believe in the law.
This is fucking terrifying. How is this not a HIPAA violation?
Edit: Fixed spelling. What can we do to protect ourselves and loved ones?!
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.
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”.
HIPAA died when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Roe v. Wade guaranteed Americans the right to medical privacy.
This must be the final solution to autism
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-
Yep, I remember seeing that a while ago. That’s what I was referencing.
Pretty sure he’s already done that.
sigh he did already say that
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/rfk-wellness-farms-us-disabilities
The resulting court case, Buck v. Bell, went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who wrote for the majority, declared in reference to Carrie, her birth mother, and Carrie’s daughter that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” In the end, Carrie Buck was sterilized against her will. Buck v. Bell was never overturned, and 31 states still allow the forced sterilization of disabled people, according to a 2022 report from the National Women’s Law Center.
Land of the free. Yeah, right.
Yet we have an imbecile in the White House
Oh yay.
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.
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 emphasize 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!)
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.
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.
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.
:/
In fact you’ll find that the work sets you free.
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
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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
Yeah that’s totally something we did Nazi coming.
They going to start camps for “fixing” disabled people and those with autism or ADHD? Might as well throw trans and gay people under the banner “illness” right?
These Nazis need to fuck right off!
