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.”

  • @[email protected]
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    15010 days 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
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      9 days 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

    • @[email protected]
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      4710 days 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        209 days 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.

        :/

        • Logi
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          39 days ago

          In fact you’ll find that the work sets you free.

    • @[email protected]
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      59 days 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        39 days 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          39 days 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.

          • @[email protected]
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            49 days 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.

            • @[email protected]
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              28 days 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

              • Red Army Dog Cooper
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                18 days ago

                And Hitler killed Hitler, I see no one lining up to give him a medal because we understand what fucking context is.

                also interesting that you are comparing Triage to Eugenics,

  • isles
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    4510 days ago

    Who’s laughing at self-diagnosis now??

    Anyway, fuck this place (USA)

  • [email protected]
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    1110 days ago

    claimed “he can find a cure for the condition by September.”

    Is it camping? Oh boy do I hope it’s camping!

  • @[email protected]
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    769 days ago

    I’m more worried about why he’s doing it, than that he’s doing it to be honest, because the only realistic use case I see for this is eugenics.

    • Pyr
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      149 days ago

      The only result they will find is that autism diagnosis happens more often in areas where it’s socially acceptable o go see a doctor for concerns about mental health. Deep red states will have “less” autism because hardly anyone will be going to the doctor and expressing concerns that they may have autism, and then they just go undiagnosed.

    • @[email protected]
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      699 days ago

      In 1936, three years after taking power, the Nazis ordered families with a mentally or physically handicapped person to send them to nearby hospitals for the best treatment. Soon after, they started receiving letters that their loved one had passed away.

      The first to notice the pattern was the clergy, who realized that the families in their congregations who had vulnerable members were ALL getting these letters, and they rightfully concluded that a euthanasia program was going on.

      Many spoke out from the pulpit, demanding an end to this atrocity, and Hitler responded, saying he was shocked at this revelation, and promising to end it. He didn’t, of course, he just buried it, expanded it, and evolved it into the Holocaust.

      To Nazis, the best way to reduce the statistics of autistic people, is to reduce the numbers of autistic people, and the first step in doing that is to compile their names.

      Of course, the real issue is HOW are they going to reduce the autistic population? Considering how much MAGA openly admires the Nazis, it’s not hard to make an educated guess.

      • @[email protected]
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        9 days ago

        They don’t even have to kill anyone on purpose. They just have to force people to undergo experimental autism cures, which have historically killed patients. An example of this would be chelation therapy, aka using the medication used to remove heavy metals from the body under the (unconfirmed) assumption that autism is caused by heavy metals.

        If a database is good enough to connect pharmacy records, medical records, and even health info from smart watches (which a doctor or insurance company would not have access to) then it would need to link patient info together in a way that’s not as anonymous as they claim it to be. Theoretically, this could be enough information to force someone into doing these experimental treatments in order to keep their driver’s license (even if they’re otherwise high functioning enough to not be hospitalized) or force someone to be hospitalized with promises of being taught to be more independent later down the line.

        • lechekaflan
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          8 days ago

          They don’t even have to kill anyone on purpose.

          They intend to starve the disabled financially as community outcasts.

          • @[email protected]
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            18 days ago

            What are you saying? That the poor are outcasts looked down upon by the vast majority of people regardless of their political beliefs?

        • @[email protected]
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          28 days ago

          They don’t even have to experiment on people, they just have to forcefully sterilize them.

  • @[email protected]
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    239 days ago

    Their database should track microplastics exposure, pfas exposure, lead exposure, and a whole bunch of other pollution exposure. Bet it won’t, because a correlation with those is not a desirable outcome.

    • @[email protected]
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      9 days ago

      Nope, microplastics made it onto the snowflake no-no naughty boo-boo list of words you can’t use in government documents anymore. Wish I was making this shit up.

  • @[email protected]
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    1110 days ago

    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!

  • @[email protected]
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    289 days 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    149 days ago

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

    That’s a pretty big claim for which The New Republic cited absolutely no source. This is bullshit, I hate the Administration as much as anyone here but I’m not falling for this.

    • @[email protected]
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      249 days ago

      Here’s a different source for you.

      The National Institutes of Health will begin collecting Americans’ private health records as part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial plan to discover a cause and a cure for autism. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told a panel of experts about the plan this week.

      The NIH plans to gather information from a wide range of private sources, including pharmacy chains, hospitals and wearable devices with health sensors, like smartwatches.

      “The idea of the platform is that the existing data resources are often fragmented and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will often pay multiple times for the same data resource,” Bhattacharya told the panel, according to The Guardian. “Even data resources that are within the federal government are difficult to obtain.”

      The NIH did not return a request for comment.

      Kennedy has made autism research a central pillar of his role as America’s official health advocate. He has made a number of conspiratorial, anti-science claims, including that childhood vaccinations could cause autism, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

      Earlier this month, he called autism an “epidemic” and vowed to find an “environmental toxin” responsible for the disorder by September.

      “Overall autism is increasing in prevalence at an alarming rate,” Kennedy told reporters at the time. “We’re going to get back to it with an answer to the American people very, very quickly.”

      He further described autism as “a preventable disease.”

      […]

      Bhattacharya, the NIH director, also has a controversial background in the medical community, questioning early on the lethality of COVID-19 and being a vocal opponent to lockdown mandates.