As we noted in the TPGA newsletter last week and on social media, the federal advisory panel on autism has been stocked with some of the most notorious pseudosciencers of the 21st century, people who have spent their time “fighting against autism” and ignoring the rights and needs of autistic people.

The advisory group, known as the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), now consists largely of people who have spent the last 20 years scrambling for relevance before fading into has-beens with no business near evidence-based decision-making about autistic people. The public health nadir of their actions was possibly the Disneyland measles outbreak of 2014-2015 (not to be confused with the one gaining steam right now amid the inane policies of Robert F Kennedy the Lesser as the hot-air–bloated head of a gutted national public health enterprise).

Some names on the IACC list are such musty public health threats that they trigger an Obi Wan–like feeling of “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” paired with an ardent wish never to hear it again. But here we are. In the upside-down that is this timeline, the IACC now includes:

• Daniel Rossignol, founder of the erstwhile Defeat Autism Now!, who’s unfortunately already been on our radars this year thanks to the leucovorin bullshit.

• Ginger Taylor, a dreadful antivaxxer whose Facebook DMs to some of us would make a fifth-grader feel mature; her stated to-do list as an IACC member includes every debunked, bullshit, money-wasting, time-wasting, public health–endangering claim about vaccines and autism cure-seeking she’s ever wanted to make. She makes a couple of nods to support for families and “maternal and caregiver health” but tellingly places those after the curebie antivaxxine desiderata.

• Lisa Ackerman, founder of Talk About Curing Autism (no, thanks, go away) who, in the way of their kind, has immediately hopped on the leucovorin bandwagon.

• Walter Zarodny, willing statistics-looping henchman to Jill “uses wealth to buy the data actual science won’t give me” Escher.

• Three autistic people who have been appointed fall into similar categories of cure-seeking and antivaccine proponents.

It’s as though Kennedy opened a long-sealed Pandora’s box labeled “Antivaxxers and other perils to autistic people” and released all of the little demons contained therein. Hope lies at the bottom, awaiting resuscitation, one presumes.

The coverage of these appointments is all over the place. Mother Jones is on-point about the non-autistic committee members but off-base about the autistic members, focusing on how they communicate instead of their untenable, non–evidence-based views. Autism Society’s statement couldn’t be more bland and timid. The New York Times deployed their Journalist Whose Stories Harm Trans Children to cover the committee. Caving to an apparently overwhelming urge to feature contrarian, needlessly divisive, evidence-free brain farts from rich white people, said journalist dragged in “profound autism” and a quote from one of said people about “jumping for joy” over the committee.

Thankfully The Autistic Self Advocacy Network remains on target, with their statement,"This IACC is illegitimate and does not represent our community. We do not trust it. We think no one should trust it. ASAN will work to hold the government accountable and spread accurate and science-backed information. We will continue to fight for the dignity and respect of all autistic people."

News you can use

• The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is also looking for people who are interested in serving as vigil site coordinators for the Disability Community Day of Mourning on March 1, 2026. Find more information and the sign-up form here.

• CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, with her unerring instinct for grifters – as in, she unerringly orients towards them – has announced the hiring of Dr. Mark Hyman, whose interest in our circles is his claim that cod liver oil is a treatment for autism. He also has been called a “germ theory denialist” because apparently some people really think we should have stopped time in the 1700s.

• Aliya Rahman, an autistic woman in Minnesota who was brutally attacked by ICE agents, also was the target of their mockery when she told them she is autistic. According to a report in The Nation, she says that “They laughed at me and told me this wouldn’t have happened if I was a ‘normal’ human being.”

• Despite efforts of wealthy grievance parents, antivaxxers, and curebies (but I repeat myself) to subdivide autistic people into artificial and exclusionary categories, a study published in Nature suggests that the dozens of gene variants linked to autism all converge on similar pathways. According to the analysis, these variants ultimately lead to similar effects on how neurons mature and form connections with each other.

• People sometimes think of science as an ever-building, organized accumulation of evidence that eventually becomes overwhelming enough to support the word “consensus.” I think of science as more of an eternally swinging pendulum most of the time, including now. In November, we described a study that news reports claimed showed a link between Covid in pregnancy and having an autistic child (that claim was fuzzy at best). At the time, we averred that “We don’t need ‘autism risk’ as a reason to prevent Covid infections during pregnancy.” The pendulum heaved the other direction in a new study suggesting no link between Covid exposure during pregnancy and having an autistic child.

• Do we not have eleventy billion actual reasons to reduce exposure to wildfire smoke without dragging autism into it? Yes, yes we do.

People you should know

• For Jodi DiPiazza, music took precedence over using words from an early age. The autistic musician and singer first gained fame in 2012 when she sang with Katy Perry during a an autism-related benefit. Her first album, “Believe,” is now out. Ability Magazine writes that the work “reflects her commitment to kindness, resilience, and authenticity—values shaped by her lived experience as an autistic artist navigating both higher education and the music industry.” Her advice for self-advocacy? “I was taught in school how to advocate for myself. It’s important to know yourself and your limits, and it’s okay to take your time and ask for help when you need it.”

• Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou autistic? Autistic performer Liam Pierce debuted on Broadway in 2023 in How to Dance in Ohio, about seven autistic young people readying for a formal dance. But for the last 15 months, he’s played Romeo on Broadway in &Juliet. Nevertheless, he still thinks about his “Ohio” days all the time, telling Broadway.com that before that show, “I'd never really spent a ton of time around other neurodivergent people, but to be with that group was so affirming and incredible to myself as an artist, but also as a person. I loved every second of it. Those guys are still such good friends.”

Thanks for reading, and let’s all take time to ask for help when we need it.

Got something autism-related to share with us? Send it along to editorial@thinkingautism.com.

Got a comment? We’d love to hear from you, so drop us a line below. Please note that comments are moderated per TPGA guidelines.