Trump president win impact on healthcare and autism

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I certainly understand why this topic is triggering. It is nauseating for me to post and comment about this topic. If this topic that may directly affect so many members were not allowed I would seriously have to start to think about leaving.

Everybody handles things in their own way and I certainly respect JamesW’s decision to take a time out.

But why is it triggering? Do people have those same ideologies as Trump and they feel attacked when people criticized him?

People really tell on themselves.

I don't care much for vaccines since i was born long before the MMR was ever issued.

However RFK is right to look at damaging chemicals in our food, water , environment and question big pharma.

Its a fact that the US is fatter & sicker than ever and those that make us sick are making big profits from that.

Unfortunately the autism community is infected with identity politics which poisons any debate on what is in effect a net negative for those with even the mildest traits.

People misrepresent any attempt at cure and prevention as a personal attack against them rather than just referring to a separate medical condition, its not enough to be autistic they literally want to be autism.

The bottom line with autism from a national perspective, if an adult human cannot look after themselves a family member or a paid carer has to step in to provide that. That obviously costs money and human resources, resources that would have gone elsewhere like caring for the elderly for example, so in effect makes autism a burden regardless of vague sweet euphemisms of "difference" & "strengths & weaknesses".

Which is why it cannot be ignored

President-elect Donald Trump suggested that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to run Health and Human Services, will investigate supposed links between autism and childhood vaccines, a discredited connection that has eroded trust in the lifesaving inoculations.

“I think somebody has to find out,” Trump said in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Welker noted in a back-and-forth that studies have shown childhood vaccines prevent about 4 million deaths worldwide every year, have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and that rises in autism diagnoses are attributable to increased screening and awareness. “If you go back 25 years ago,” Trump claimed, “you had very little autism. Now you have it.”

“Something is going on,” Trump added. “I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.” It was unclear whether Trump was referring to opposition by Kennedy and others to fluoride being added to drinking water.

The agency Trump has tasked him with running supports and funds research into autism, as well as possible new vaccines.

Trump, too, has for years suggested a link between autism and vaccines.

Hey, look, I’m not against vaccines,” Trump said during the interview with Welker. “The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me, ‘Get rid of the polio vaccine,’ they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me. I think vaccines are — certain vaccines — are incredible, but maybe some aren’t. And if they aren’t, we have to find out. But when you talk about autism, because it was brought up, and you look at the amount we have today versus 20 or 25 years ago, it’s pretty scary.”

The comments are a shift from when Trump, after Kennedy’s endorsement, said he would let him “go wild” on public health issues.

Trump added he thinks that “a lot of good things” are going to come from Kennedy’s leadership. In the final stretch of the campaign, Kennedy held events under the “Make America Healthy Again” banner — a slogan he has used to promote issues like reducing pharmaceutical companies’ influence on government agencies, combating chronic health issues among children and improving food safety.

“He’s not going to upset any system,” Trump said. “He’s not looking to reinvent the wheel totally. But when you look at the numbers, we really don’t have a very healthy country

Back in September, an X/Twitter account known as Autism Capital posted a screenshot of a written theory that appeared to be taken from 4Chan. The theory postulated that only “high [testostrone] alpha males” and “aneurotypical people” can think freely and be trusted to know what is objectively true. That means “a Republic for high-status males is best for decision making,” the theory continued. Elon Musk, the X owner and Tesla executive, responded: “Interesting observation.”

Little wonder that Musk found such proclamations interesting. He has talked in public a number of times about having “Asperger’s syndrome” (a term that fell out of favor as researchers learned the extent of Hans Asperger’s collaboration with the Nazi regime’s child euthanasia program and one that hasn’t been used clinically since 2013.) The concept of “Aspie supremacy” — a term some disability rights advocates coined for the deeply problematic idea that people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who previously would be considered as having Asperger’s are superior to both neurotypical people and other autistic people — has been around for a while. But it’s gained traction in the past few years in some very online, very right-wing spaces.

It is a comforting ideology for someone like Musk. Musk has talked in the past about his struggles misunderstanding social cues as a child. “I was bullied quite a lot, so I did not have a sort of happy childhood, to be frank,” he said once. But he’s also talked about the possible benefits of his autism, saying: “I think there's maybe some value, also from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers just by myself.”

For someone like Musk, the social isolation is the tax that he paid of being a genius who is able to spend late nights exploring technology. That likely fuels his superiority complex.

One might be surprised, then, to see how easily Musk — who also views his neurotype as a potential contributor to his business acumen — could collaborate so easily with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has become one of the leading proponents of the debunked myth that vaccines cause autism. To believe that, then you have to at least believe autism means something “wrong” with a person.

But the convergence of these seemingly two contrasting streams make a bizarre amount of sense. And to understand why, you have to go back to when Trump himself first started talking about autism.

One of the most common tics in Donald Trump’s language that many people have now adopted in their own cheap imitations of him is his use of the phrase “many such cases.” But few remember that he was using the term even way back in 2014, when he tweeted: “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!”

Trump and the ‘cure’ for autism
He would repeat this claim during one of the first Republican debates — a claim that triggered television physician Mehmet Oz to tweet at the time: “Just a reminder: there is no evidence that there is any link between vaccines and autism.” Last month, Trump nominated Oz to serve as his director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But Oz and Trump are not entirely misaligned on the issue. Despite coming out against the vaccine theory, Oz has promoted misinformation about autism in the past — such as when he suggested that certain types of vitamins decrease the chances of autism.

Trump came to understanding autism largely thanks to the tutelege of Bob Wright, the former head of NBC Universal who would later go on to found Autism Speaks with his wife, Suzanne Wright. He and Wright came to know each other during the 80s, when Wright led GE Capital and Trump hoped to move NBC to his planned Television City. The two remained friends; indeed, Wright would be instrumental in helping Trump stage his 2000s comeback, when he made Trump the host of The Apprentice on NBC.

While Autism Speaks says it does not believe vaccines cause autism, Wright’s daughter Katie, the mother of his autistic grandson, was a board member of Kennedy’s Children Health Defense.

In his memoir, Wright said that he felt disappointed that President Barack Obama failed to light the White House blue — something the nonprofit had asked for as a gesture of support — during in his first year in office. Trump did, however. And Trump also said during his presidency, in a proclamation on World Autism Day, that “ongoing efforts to scan the human genome carry significant potential to better manage the disorder and, ultimately, find a cure.”

Autism and January 6th
In the wake of January 6, some of the rioters — most famously including the so-called “QAnon shaman” Jacob Chansley — argued that their being on the autism spectrum meant they should not be prosecuted. At trial, a lawyer for one of the defendants who stormed the Capitol and identified as autistic reportedly sought to trigger a sensory meltdown in his client as a means to garner sympathy.

It’s a reprehensible tactic. Furthermore, such use of autism as a defense directly contradicts Musk’s line of thinking. The defendants’ argument postulates that they can be easily manipulated and therefore cannot be held accountable for their own actions due to their neurotype.

Trans rights and autism
Myths and misunderstanding about autism have also seeped into the right’s messaging about transgender people. In 2023, during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Marjorie Taylor Greene said that people who have gender dysphoria are “victims” who have diagnoses “of autism, mental illness. They have depression, they have anxiety, they have psychosis.”

Musk, when talking about his transgender daughter who has since disowned him, said she was “born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria.”

It is true that more plenty of autistic people identify as transgender. But the implication being made by some on the right is that because plenty of people who experience gender dysphoria and transgender people are also autistic, they must somehow have been manipulated into transitioning their gender.

It is entirely likely that, as Republicans re-assume power in multiple health agencies, that this will be used as a rationale to restrict-gender affirming care. Needless to say, such thinking suggests a shocking lack of agency on behalf of those on the spectrum. It is both infantilizing and insulting. And it’s hard to see how this sits alongside the “Aspie supremacy” style of thinking popularized among others on the right — although it’s entirely possible that they see themselves as the “good” autists, and others as the malleable, naive “bad” ones.

Unfortunately, these co-occurring streams of toxic ideology around autism show no signs of abating. And their popularity as Republican talking-points means the legitimate needs of autistic people across America — such as better research into how to support them during their lifespan; research into co-occurring health conditions; and services to support them living in their homes with their family and loved ones — will be pushed to the wayside in favor of misinformed theorizing.

A lonely place for ‘savants’
Very few autistic people are actually savants. The right’s obsession with the idea of such hyperintelligent neurodiverse people — one that has also become popular to discuss on Silicon Valley stages and tech bro podcasts — is mainly a fantasy. Those autistic people who are savants, or who are uniquely skilled, often find cold comfort in their intellect when they are deeply socially isolated. Their isolation can sometimes give them the impression that they are superior to others, when really they are simply struggling to relate because of a difficulty in reading social cues.

Simply put, promoting the idea that autistic people should be welcomed and embraced by society, and that accommodations for their needs should be made, is a good idea. Promoting the idea that lower-needs autistic people are superior to their neurotypical or more high-needs autistic counterparts is not.

The anti-vaccine myths — and the idea, along with them, that autism can be triggered or cured in otherwise neurotypical people — may have been largely debunked. But they have now entered our political bloodstream. Expect more such malaise during a second Trump term.

President-elect Donald Trump refused to say definitively that vaccines do not cause autism at a press conference.

Trump spoke alongside the chief executive at SoftBank, who pledged to invest $100 billion in the United States, as they addressed reporters on Monday.

During the press conference, Trump repeated misinformation that he has previously espoused about vaccines and autism. He also said that he had met with the heads of Pfizer and Eli Lily, as well as Mehmet Oz, his nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Robert F Kennedy Jr., his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, who has repeated the debunked claims about vaccines and autism.

“So 30 years ago, we had, I’ve heard numbers of like one in 200,000 in 1 in 100,000,” he said in terms of how many children are diagnosed with autism. “And now I’m hearing numbers of one in 100. So something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.”

In a recent interview with NBC, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that his nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will investigate the relationship between early childhood vaccines and autism. Kennedy has a long history of blaming vaccines for autism. Now, he and his lawyer, Aaron Siri, are petitioning for the government to revoke approval for the polio vaccine and pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines.

These unfounded attacks on vaccines pose serious threats to public health, risking the spread of preventable diseases and misinformation. Medical scientists have made it clear: vaccines save lives and do not cause autism. Yet, many Americans share Kennedy’s skepticism and question the importance of early childhood vaccines. For instance, a 2024 survey by Gallup suggests that the share of Americans who consider childhood vaccines to be “extremely important” has declined from 58% in 2019 to just 40%. The same survey found that 13% of Americans believe vaccines can cause autism, up from 6% in 2015, and roughly half of Americans are unsure if vaccines cause autism. Just 36% understand that vaccines do not cause autism.

So why does this myth persist? The reason isn’t because people are uninformed or want children to get sick. It is because for many, the idea of a vaccine-autism link gives them hope.

A cause for autism implies a cure for autism
As a medical sociologist, I spent three years studying parents of autistic children, practitioners, and researchers who are convinced that early childhood vaccines cause autism. Like Kennedy, they believe that children are born non-autistic and then made autistic by vaccines and other environmental triggers.

This belief tragically portrays autistic people as having been born "typical" but then "broken." Although debunked, this causal theory is incredibly appealing to families because it suggests that autism can be reversed with alternative and experimental treatments that address vaccine "injury." Believing in a vaccine-autism link, parents access an ever-expanding market of questionable products that claim to mitigate autistic symptoms—specialized diets, supplements, and riskier treatments, like chelation and parasite therapy. For these consumers, the hope of autism “recovery” depends on vaccines causing autism.

The reality is, autism is not something that can be cured and researchers do not know the precise cause. In this context of multiple unknowns, the increasing prevalence of autism evokes urgency and fear—feelings Trump has historically capitalized on.

In a recent interview with TIME, Trump expressed concerns about a rise in diagnosed cases of autism. “The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible,” he said. “If you look at things that are happening, there's something causing it.”

And this is not the only time Trump has made such comments. “If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100,” he once told NBC.

Trump’s numbers here are inaccurate. In 2000, autism impacted an estimated 1 in 150 children in the United States; today, it is 1 in 36 children. This steep increase can be largely attributed to the closure of residential institutions which many people with autism were once sent to, greater public awareness about autism, and expansion of the diagnostic criteria. In other words, measuring the true rise of autism is complicated and not based on biology alone. A vaccine-autism link is attractive because it would simplify the challenge at hand.

If vaccines cause autism, then we would have a prevention strategy and new directions for treatment research—but vaccines do not cause autism. Continued research into this imaginary relationship would be wasteful and is not likely to satisfy vaccine skeptics. Moreover, the randomized, double blind control trials that vaccine skeptics have demanded are unethical because they would require child participants to “receive less than the recommended immunization schedule.” This would put them at risk of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases. Humoring conspiracy theorists serves to distract from the fundamental problem: we live in a country that makes being disabled dangerous.

The challenges autistic people face
When talking to parents of autistic kids, mothers often tell me that one of their greatest fears is dying because who will care for their autistic child after they are gone?

Unfortunately, their fears are not unfounded. Earlier this year, 15-year-old autistic teen, Ryan Gainer, was shot by police because he was waving a gardening tool. Tragically, other autistic children, particularly Black autistic boys, have experienced similar fatal encounters. By the age twenty-one, 20% of autistic youths will have had a police encounter. Moreover, autistic people are more likely to experience victimization through bullying, child abuse, sexual assault and rape, and other crimes. Among young autistic adults, only 58% are employed and of that group, most work part time in low-wage jobs. To make matters worse, it is still legal to pay disabled employees less than minimum wage. Scholars have long pointed to the inadequacies of disability services. While allocation for services and supports research has doubled between 2014 and 2020, it still makes up only 8% of autism research spending. The point is: our political priorities are broken, not autistic people. And it is difficult to fix our political priorities.

The vaccine-autism link is more than a myth—it is a wish. For some parents of autistic children, a vaccine-autism relationship is tantalizing because it nurtures the hope of recovering from autism. These parents recognize that the U.S. is not going to make space for disabled people. In their calculation, their chances of reversing vaccine injury with unsupported, experimental treatments are better than convincing policy makers to care for disabled people.

In 2000, autism impacted an estimated 1 in 150 children in the United States; today, it is 1 in 36 children. This steep increase can be largely attributed to the closure of residential institutions

These parents recognize that the U.S. is not going to make space for disabled people

All sorts of people who society could not handle were institutionalized. I am sure there are plenty of misdiagnosed autistics among them.

The height of the deinstitutionalization was the '70s, not the 2000's

What's that got to do with CDC figures of kids getting diagnosed at 8, especially in the last 10-20 years.

It makes no logical sense