CDC funds researcher to do RFK Jr’s bidding | Armchair diagnosing Margaret Thatcher
The CDC plans to give a single researcher some unspecified amount of money to get the results Robert F Kennedy the Lesser can’t get through the transparent conduct of science.
The CDC plans to give a single researcher some unspecified amount of money to get the results Robert F Kennedy the Lesser can’t get through the transparent conduct of science.
Robert F Kennedy the Lesser seems to be leveraging his position as US health secretary to dispense an unspecified amount of money to a biomedical engineer to “investigate whether there is a link between vaccinations and autism.” According to a federal database of government contracts:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intends to award a sole source firm fixed price contract to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for Investigation of the Association between Vaccinations and Autism Prevalence. The vendor has unique ability to link children to maternal cohorts using proprietary databases and de-identified data sets, enabling advanced statistical analyses within the project’s timeframe. This contract action is for services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR 6.302-1. All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.
The “sole source” is Juergen Hahn, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Hahn uses statistical models to link one thing he points to and another thing he points to, so even if he purports to find a mathematical link between two things, there is no proof whatsoever that one thing causes the other. Perhaps not surprisingly, he tends to point a lot at things like “heavy metals,” mitochondrial stress and metabolism, and risibly, “lunar cycles.” The word “fecal” appears a lot in his publications because, like many in these overlapping circles, there is a Bob’s Burgers level of obsession with the functions of the large intestine.
Hahn also appears to be convinced that the increase in diagnoses over the years cannot be attributable to diagnostic shift, diagnostic capture, and demonstrably broader global awareness about autism. Instead, he seems to think that studies of environmental contributors are comparatively limited versus studies of genetics. As anyone who’s paid attention to autism research over the last quarter century can attest, that is simply not true. Every possible environmental factor, no matter how unreasonable, has been examined. And none more so than vaccines.
Hahn probably actually knows this because he is on the scientific advisory board of the so-called “Autism Research Institute,” which focuses on a kitchen sink of “environmental” factors and autism. The institute was founded by Bernard Rimland, who held many harmful beliefs and supported many harmful practices, including that autism was caused by vaccines and antibiotics, that chelation could “treat” autism, and that use of aversives, including electric shock, in autistic people is justified. Rimland also founded “Defeat Autism Now!” or DAN, which was predicated on the idea that autism was some sort of disease that the DAN protocol could “cure.” The protocol heavily relied on assumptions about mitochondrial and gastrointestinal dysfunction and entailed dangerous “interventions,” including chelation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I add that it seems to remain rather popular among ABA practitioners, and now you know all you need to know about the foundations of the Autism Research Institute.
The Autism Research Institute is where you’ll also find James Adams, a key figure in the “mitochondria-autism-vaccines” industry that targets parents with supplements intended to address “mitochondrial deficiencies.” I mentioned Adams last week in our newsletter unpacking why Kennedy seems poised to claim that folic acid/folinate could “treat” autism, although yet again, he’s delayed the timeline for that announcement. The Autism Research Institute has a whole explainer devoted to mitochondria and mother-blaming, for those who’d really like to visit both a throwback to Bettelheim and a walloping dose of eugenics for the day.
How Hahn became the chosen tool of Kennedy’s Hail Mary is unclear, although it’s pretty easy to draw straight lines from one of these figures to another. How negotiations went down so that someone in the HHS/CDC decided he was the man to receive our money to pursue Kennedy’s pet idea also is unclear. Who contacted whom and when? How did this plan unfold? How were terms settled?
Regardless, Hahn is poised to be the reported recipient of a no-bid (meaning he’d just be handed the money without competing for it) award to look for a link between vaccines and autism.
Readers, they’ve looked for that link. They’ve looked for that link for more than 25 years. They’ve looked high, low, up, down, and sideways. They’ve looked all over the world. They’ve looked at literally millions and millions of people. They’ve looked at different ingredients, different vaccines, different populations.
They’ve looked, and they have not found.
And the only reason the US government is quietly forking out money for this now is because Robert F Kennedy the Lesser cannot stand to be wrong and he’ll bob and weave and lie even to a Senate committee to avoid it. And he will slip our taxpayer dollars to someone who seems sympathetic to the ideas he holds dear just to have someone, anyone, prove him right.
This is taxpayer money, including money paid by autistic people, whom Kennedy seems to believe aren’t worth anything unless they can pay taxes. And this money is being quietly handed over in a desperate, continuing, endless quest by Kennedy to destroy one of the greatest public health successes in human history just so he find some way to keep autistic people from existing.
Related from TPGA:
News you can use
Findings published in Autism in Adulthood show that although autistic adults in general report experiences with being stigmatized, the type and intensity of stigma vary with identities for Black autistic people, autistic women, and LGBTQ+ autistics. Researchers interviewed 32 autistic adults, 16 of whom were Black and 16 white. The authors found that “Black autistic adults often experienced exclusion tied to both race and autism, whereas women and LGBTQ+ participants of both races shared experiences of being dismissed or misunderstood.” They note that the findings “underscore the need for more inclusive research and supports that attend to the diversity of autistic experiences.”
ProPublica reports that the US Department of Education has stopped funding for public school programs that support students with dual vision and hearing loss. The reason given for pulling the funds in eight states is “concerns about DEI” – specifically “divisive concepts” and “fairness.” I suppose that if you’re concerned that diversity, equity, and inclusion (and fairness) are bad, then making education less inclusive is one way to address that. According to ProPublica, the funding supported programs to provide training and resources to help families and educators support students who are deaf and blind and had been slated to continue through 2028. The affected states are Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The trigger for the funding pullback appears to have been the use of “forbidden” words in grant applications, such as reference to “transition to adulthood” and mention of “privilege” in a note from a parent commenting on what a “privilege it was” to be part of the program.
From the “you don’t say” files, thanks to industry publication Healthcare Management: A survey of more than 800 disabled and neurodivergent doctors and medical students has revealed that in the last 2 years in the UK, more than half considered leaving or actually left the profession. More than a third reported bullying or harassment, and a large majority reported not receiving reasonable accommodations that they need.
Is it better for autistic people if science somewhat condescendingly acknowledges that nature might actively have selected for their existence? I’m not sure, but here’s a study published in Molecular Biology & Evolution that indicates some features of the autistic brain might have been adaptive generally at some point in human evolution and thus preserved. I’ve written before that among primates, humans seem to be able to enjoy a relatively unconstrained neurobehavioral repertoire. Perhaps that’s not just an accident of nature but a choice.
New at TGPA
Neurodivergent Trauma Responses and How Others Can Help — THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autistics can more easily deal with trauma if they are surrounded by people who understand what is happening, and can respond effectively.
People you should know
Bella Zoe Martinez is an autistic actor and screenwriter who wrote and starred in a short film called “Once More, Like Rain Man” that debuted in 2024. Martinez wrote the film with autistic director Sue-Ann Pien, and their work won awards on the film festival circuit. Martinez appeared recently on California Live to talk about being an autistic artist in Los Angeles and how she works to support others like her. In a Q&A for Deadline in 2024, she called for Hollywood to expand its conception of autistic people, noting that one motivation for her film was that she’d “never really seen a character where it’s not really about their autism, and it’s about something they’re more passionate about and not something where it feels [forced] but an actual [natural] interest. But also, we are silly little goblins who love our hyper-fixations.”
Bits and bobs
Go ahead and add Margaret Thatcher, of all people, to the list of historic figures diagnosed as autistic. In this case, biographer Tina Gadoin bases her conclusion that Thatcher was “mildly” autistic on traits she infers about the Iron Lady that aren’t especially recognizable as autistic. Among them: that Thatcher was “utterly incapable of feeling embarrassment,” according to her private secretary. I daresay one doesn’t need more than a cursory acquaintance with autistic people to understand how very opposite of the autistic experience that can be. The checklist is a litany of other misconceptions about autistic people, including that Thatcher lacked empathy, struggled to sleep, and self-indulgently documented her personal things and experiences in letters, which Gadoin tries to frame as an autistic “special interest.” Gadoin writes that experts she consulted said that if the Iron Lady had been autistic, it would have been “at the mild end of the spectrum.” Gonna say it again: Autistic people don’t exist in discrete bands on a spectrum, much less occupy one “end” or another. Then she pops in the dreaded word “superpower” and requisite mention of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein before going on to write the most non–autistic-sounding descriptions imaginable of Thatcher: “She cared deeply about her appearance and regarded her immaculate presentation as a marker of respect to her voters” and had an “extraordinary level of bodily awareness.” Gadoin’s experience with autistic people seems to consist of having friends with autistic children. She says she consulted with “experts” about all of this, but it doesn’t sound to me like any of those “experts” could have been autistic adults.
Speaking of consulting with autistic people, here’s an insightful short piece by autistic advocate and consultant Helen Edgar on the autistic experience of grief. Edgar writes, “While every individual experiences loss differently and it is always painful, many Autistic people describe grief as arriving on a different timescale, taking alternative forms, and often being misinterpreted and misunderstood by those around them. Things like alexithymia and our interoceptive differences will all likely impact how some people process grief differently.”
If you have a moment, consider attending this September 18 online event where autistic author and mental health consultant Jodie Clarke will be giving a talk with a completely relatable title: “Stop the world, I want to get off”: Understanding Autistic Burnout in Children and Young People.”
Thanks for reading, and may we all continue being silly little goblins who love our hyper-fixations.
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About the Author
Dr. Emily Willingham is a 2022 MIT Knight Science Project Fellow, and the author of several books, including the upcoming If Your Adolescent Has Autism: An Essential Resource for Parents from Oxford University Press, and has served as a regular contributor to Scientific American and other national publications.