Donald Trump has said Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism – despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection.
In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, the US president-elect claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.
“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked him if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated – a position for which Kennedy has argued.
“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.”
Yeah cause no one who’s been diagnosed with ASD can look at their parents or aunts, uncles and grandparents and say “wow that’s where it comes”
My mum collects felt mice, gets overwhelmed extremely easily and has pretty obvious autistic meltdowns. My dad has clear ASD social interaction issues, will bore you for hours about his special interests. My brother also demonstrates signs. My grandad had a entire room dedicated to his train set and more books and videos about trains than I could count.
But, no I’m the first person with autism in my family. Clearly it’s vaccines and not genetic.
Self, brother and daughter.
I’m a techno-janitor (IT geek).
My daughter is… Odd. I’m a fun way. Cheerful girl.
My brother is a principal scientist and working on physics in biological systems… Literally working to save the world.
Pretty sure my mother was to some degree. We’re all different types but there’s definitely commonality.
Only knew the man a few years but pretty sure my great grandfather was on the spectrum.
It’s almost like society just ignored or shunned the details.
“That’s just weird ol Tim” etc…
Pretty sure Einstein and a few other super nerds would be classed today as well.
Screw RFK with a rusty hacksaw.
Can confirm, my whole family, from both sides is fucked up as well. I could clearly see ADHD and ASD signs in many of my family members, some of them born in the 20s. But yeah, it’s probably the vaccines as well!