Anti Vax from left to right wing

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By any measure, Stephanie Seneff is an accomplished scientist. A senior researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, she’s been a leader in the emerging field of computer response to human speech. After earning two PhDs from MIT in the early ’80s, in the following decades she paved the way for the scientists who worked on virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri. In 2012, Seneff’s many achievements earned her the honor of being named a fellow of the International Speech Communication Association, a professional society for researchers in the field.

Many of Seneff’s MIT lab mates and former graduate students have continued to make breakthroughs; some have gone on to careers at the many tech companies eager to hire scientists with expertise in artificial intelligence. But Seneff has spent the last ten years going in a different direction, publicizing her theory that exposure to minute amounts of the weedkiller glyphosate—commonly known by the brand name Roundup—causes a host of neurological conditions, especially autism. Known as a spectrum disorder, autism manifests in a range of neurological diagnoses that run the gamut from subtle brain differences and trouble reading social cues to significant communication challenges. In a 2014 conference presentation, Seneff predicted that because of the ubiquity of glyphosate, half of all children born in 2025 would eventually be diagnosed as autistic. Since then, she often has repeated this claim in interviews and speeches, warning a tidal wave of autism cases was just around the corner.

There is no evidence that glyphosate exposure causes autism. But the scientific consensus has not stopped her from airing her beliefs on social media and becoming a sought-after speaker at conferences. In 2020, with the onset of the pandemic, she broadened her Roundup theory to include vulnerability to the coronavirus, making the completely unsubstantiated claim that Americans were getting more serious cases of Covid than their international counterparts because glyphosate exposure weakened the immune system and increased the risk of severe infection.

For a quarter of a century, proponents of unproven autism treatments have overlapped with anti-vaccine activists.

Even the largest and most powerful autism advocacy organization, Autism Speaks, which was founded in 2005 and today runs a $50 million budget, did not officially distance itself from vaccine skepticism until 2015. Over the last few decades, many groups and individuals who spread falsehoods about vaccines as the cause of autism began to promote unproven and sometimes dangerous treatments for it—special diets, supplements, cleanses, and pricey medical spa experiences.

This world of dubious autism treatments used to be mostly limited to private social media groups and conferences. Indeed, beginning about a decade ago, the very notion of autism as a disorder began to lose currency among many autistic people and scientists who study autism: They started to view the condition not as an affliction, but rather as an innate brain difference. Autistic people experience the world differently, and that difference, they say, is something to be honored rather than treated.

There is some controversy around this idea: Because the spectrum is so broad, some parents of nonverbal autistic people, for example, argue that their children’s condition can’t be compared to that of someone with slight social differences. Still, the idea that autism was a scourge to be vanquished seemed to be on its way out.

Then came the pandemic—and with it, a setback for the burgeoning autism acceptance movement. Over the last three years, advocates of unproven autism treatments have found powerful allies and new recruits in Covid-related conspiracy groups. Likewise, pandemic conspiracists have begun to attend autism treatment conferences, finding receptive audiences for their theories about Covid being a government plot. The two groups are enjoying a fruitful symbiotic relationship, with each amplifying the other’s ideas and benefitting from the exposure, says Melissa Eaton, an autism-acceptance advocate in North Carolina who monitors the spread of unproven treatments on social media. “There’s always been that market of quackery for parents of autistic children,” she says. “And then when Covid took off, it’s like all these groups have kind of banded together. And it’s actually grown.”

That dynamic has propelled Seneff back into the spotlight. Just a few years ago, she peddled her autism theories only to the fringiest of audiences, but now, the MIT scientist, now 74, has gained new currency and a bigger platform by incorporating Covid into her theories. In January 2022, she told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that parents should do “absolutely everything they can” to avoid giving children Covid vaccines.

When Mother Jones asked Seneff about her decision to appear on these shows, she responded in an email, “I appreciate the fact that the Far Right has taken a stance against this very dangerous mRNA technology.” She added, “I have been a Democrat all my life, but at the moment I would describe myself as being so disenchanted with the government that I support no political party. I would probably vote for Ron DeSantis if he were to run on a Republican ticket.”

The result of cross-pollination between Covid and autism, says Canadian autism-acceptance activist Anne Borden King, who is working on a book about unproven autism treatments, is an explosive blending of disinformation. As the anti-vaccine movement has increasingly tacked right in recent years, the true believers in autism cures have aligned themselves with the political right. “If it’s a conspiracy that they’re covering up the vaccines causing autism, then it’s also a conspiracy that Bill Gates is involved in the Covid vaccines, and it’s also a conspiracy that Joe Biden won the election,” says King, who is herself autistic. “It’s the perfect storm for right-wingers to recruit.”

Back in the early aughts, the autism-vaccine myth was largely aligned with the political left—vaccination rates were lowest, studies found, among self-proclaimed “health nuts” in liberal enclaves like Boulder, Colorado, and Marin County, California. Yet there was always a right-wing strain, mostly from libertarians who saw vaccination requirements for school as an example of government overreach. In the years before he became president, Donald Trump was quite vocal about his belief that vaccines cause autism. In January 2017, even before being sworn into office, he met with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the possible formation of an autism commission. The commission never materialized, but a few months later, Trump proclaimed April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day, affirming his commitment to “encouraging innovation that will lead to new treatments and cures for autism.

At the beginning of the Trump presidency, even before the pandemic began, there were signs of a rightward creep. Hardly anyone was documenting this trend at the time, but there’s a clear record of it in the schedules of the popular annual conferences of an organization called AutismOne.

AutismOne’s annual budget is modest—around $300,000, but the group’s impact is far greater than its assets. Thousands of people attend its conferences, and it claims to educate “more than 100,000 families every year about prevention, recovery, safety, and change.” In the pre-Trump years, its yearly summit—which it bills as the “world’s largest and most-comprehensive annual autism conference”—seemed designed to appeal to the woo-woo and new-age corners of the left. The 2012 event, for example, featured sessions on curing autism with green interior design, organic gardening, and homeopathy. Seneff, who has warned about the dangers of weedkillers at the conference every year since 2014, fit right in.

By 2018, the language of the libertarian health-freedom movement began to appear. A panel that year called “Understanding Constitutional and Civil Rights as Applies to Personal Health Issues” featured a Texas attorney named Travis Middleton, who in 2016 had sued California Sen. Richard Pan over the removal of religious exemptions for childhood vaccine requirements. Another session, confusingly billed as “Vaccines and the Planned Singularity—Not On My Watch,” offered to educate attendees on how “Vaccines are just one of multiple strategic weapons being deployed in advancing the transhumanist agenda by the new breed of space-age technocrats.”

Politicians at the highest levels had been paying attention to these true believers. In an April 2020 coronavirus task force briefing, President Donald Trump suggested that scientists investigate the possibility of treating Covid patients with disinfectant.

Politicians at the highest levels had been paying attention to these true believers. In an April 2020 coronavirus task force briefing, President Donald Trump suggested that scientists investigate the possibility of treating Covid patients with disinfectant. “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,” he said. “One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

Trump didn’t come up with this outlandish idea on his own. In early 2020, a Florida-based group called Genesis II Church of Health and Healing began claiming that ingesting its patented spray called Miracle Mineral Solution, or MMS, based on chlorine dioxide—basically bleach—could prevent Covid infection. The group, which was founded in the early aughts by entrepreneur Mark Grenon, had long been promoting its use for a grab-bag of other conditions, from HIV to cancer to autism, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a month in revenue. Genesis II wasn’t actually religious; Grenon called it a “church” for “the express purpose of cloaking their unlawful conduct’ by framing all of their activities as protected religious freedoms,” the Washington Post reported.

In 2010, after dozens of reports of serious injuries and two deaths of people who drank MMS, the FDA issued an official warning about the substance, noting that it could cause “severe nausea, vomiting, and life-threatening low blood pressure from dehydration” and advising consumers to “stop using it immediately and throw it away.” The report did nothing to discourage MMS enthusiasts from continuing to promote it widely.

The treatment was controversial even among the more credulous followers of AutismOne, some of whom circulated a petition to ban Rivera from the 2015 conference. “She feeds off the desperation of parents of children on the spectrum to cure them,” one signatory wrote. “Please stop her.” The petition appears to have been successful—Rivera didn’t speak at that year’s conference, nor subsequent ones. In 2016, Rivera agreed not to sell MMS in the state of Illinois, but her social media presence only grew. A 2019 Business Insider investigation turned up a robust network of groups dedicated to MMS, including including one named “Kerri Riverra’s CDautism.” In some groups, parents posted disturbing photos of their children with lesions and rashes, and the bloody feces they developed after their bleach treatments. Group members offered instructions for hiding their use of MMS on children from Child Protective Services.

At the 2022 conference, Del Bigtree, founder of the anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network and producer of the film Vaxxed, delivered a keynote titled “No More Dark Winters,” a full-throated endorsement of the “great reset” conspiracy theory that the pandemic was being exploited by the World Economic Forum in order to gain control over citizens.

Meanwhile, promoters of unproven autism cures were finding a new audience. In 2021, a far-right Oklahoma-based influencer named Clay Clark organized what would later become known as the ReAwaken America Tour, a series of events across the country that brought together Christian nationalists, QAnon enthusiasts, and Big Lie believers. Speakers included marquee headliners like disgraced MAGA-world former national security adviser Lt. General Michael Flynn, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and Eric Trump.

The growth of the audience committed to autism cures frustrates advocates of the neurodiversity movement. Before the pandemic, they had begun to make some inroads with some of the groups that had been promoting supposed cures—some were beginning to acknowledge the fact that not every autistic person wants to be “cured.” In 2019, for example, an influential Southern California-based group called “Talk About Curing Autism” changed its name to “The Autism Community in Action.” Around the same time, a UK group called “Treating Autism” changed its name to “Thinking Autism.”

Yet autism-acceptance advocates note that the groups’ apparent awakening seems to have stopped with their names. Not only do they persist in the notion of autism as an illness, but they also now endorse many of the same dubious treatments that the AutismOne crowd embraces. Thinking Autism promotes oxytocin nasal spray, stem cells, and fecal transplants, among other fringe treatments. Meanwhile, the Autism Community in Action’s current roster of experts includes the CEO of a company that sells a foot detox machine, a naturopath who hawks a “guaranteed protocol of natural supplements to support your child’s language development within 30 days!”, and the owner of a spa that offers electromagnetic field therapy for autism. Its physician advisory committee includes Dr. Bob Sears, who railed against pandemic safety measures and was disciplined by the California Medical Board for issuing questionable medical exemptions for vaccines. In an email to Mother Jones, Thinking Autism chair Anita Kugelstadt clarified that the group had changed its name because it does not provide autism treatments. She added, “While there is strong evidence to show that people diagnosed with ASD can enjoy improved quality of life with appropriate treatments for their symptoms, many of those symptoms reflecting comorbidities common in ASD, as of now there is no treatment for autism.” The Autism Community in Action didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Of course, there are evidence-based therapies that some autistic people find helpful. But thanks to Covid, fringe treatment groups now have a much bigger platform to promote the idea that autism must be driven out—which makes it harder for researchers who are focused on autistic well-being, says Shannon Des Roches Rosa, co-founder and senior editor of the autism blog Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. “Only a tiny percentage of resources are allotted to autistic quality of life and well-being,” she says. “Almost all of it is allotted to causation and cure and treatment.” Indeed, a 2021 study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders found that while about half of NIH autism funding goes to research on treatments and cures, research on services for autistic people made up only 9 percent of the total expenditures.

Thanks to the new prominence of autism conspiracy theorists like Stephanie Seneff, the AutismOne crowd is taking a victory lap. In his keynote address at the 2022 conference, Del Bigtree marveled at the recent growth of the anti-vaccine movement. “Politicians are now stumping to us,” he said—perhaps a subtle reference to Ron DeSantis, who has recently disavowed Covid vaccines, likely as part of an effort to distinguish him from former President Trump in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. “They’re begging to be on our stages,” Bigtree continued. “There are enough of us now that they need our votes. That is so astronomically different from where we were in 2016.” Toward the end of his speech, he bellowed, “They brought their best, they brought their brightest, they sat in the think tank for three days and said, ‘How are we going to stop vaccine hesitancy?’” He jumped up and down on the stage, fists pumping. “They had billions and billions of dollars spent to do it, and in the end, we won!” he yelled. “Bam!”

So you're saying that anti-vax used to be a left wing thing?

How to politicians think that killing off their voters will help them win elections?