this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Summary

RFK Jr. is using private medical records to create a registry of people with autism in the United States.

The National Institutes of Health is helping to collect private medical records from government and commercial databases, including “prescription records from pharmacies, lab testing, and genomics records from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, private insurance claims, and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers.”

Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccination, has made the study of autism one of HHS’s primary goals. He has called autism “preventable” and claimed “he can find a cure for the condition by September.”

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[–] Noerknhar@feddit.org 197 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Holy shit, do they want to speedrun fascism?

[–] kobra@lemm.ee 210 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes. They laid it out with Project 2025 and a staggering amount of people voted for it.

[–] Ton@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Pretty sure the staggering amount of people who voted for Trump have never heard of P2025 before the election, as FoxNews pretty much never spoke about it.

Until after the election; https://www.foxnews.com/politics/heritage-president-project-2025-liberals-doge-takes-ax-bureaucracy

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes. There are a lot of ignorant people but I feel they choose to be ignorant.

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[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 month ago

And plenty still heard about it and instead of doing an ounce of actual research, they wrote it off as propaganda. Because it was just "too crazy to be true."

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[–] KingOfSleep@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Why do you think they are so concerned about government efficiency?

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[–] polyploy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 151 points 1 month ago (8 children)

A couple things I would like to highlight for the unfamiliar, and I'll preface this by saying that I am autistic myself.

First, autism is not something for which there are any clear medical indicators, no blood tests or brain scans or anything of the sort are involved in diagnosis. It's entirely subjective and observational, something that states entrust people who are ostensibly professionals to determine.

I point this out because I want people to understand that there is absolutely nothing stopping the present administration from hiring people (or using AI) to simply diagnose undesirables with autism through whatever criteria they decide to deem fit.

This might sound absurd, but we're seeing people with nothing but tattoos being transformed into "criminals", "gang members", and "terrorists" by similar logic.

Second, Asperger was a Nazi, and the child euthanasia program was one of the main projects which experimented with the tools and machinery of mass murder that would later be used in extermination camps. Zyklon B was tested on autistic children and other "diseased offspring" long before it was ever used in the gas chambers.

How long do you think it will take before they are using AI to comb through the social media and medical records of teens looking for any indications of anything they don't like, and flagging them as potentially autistic? September has been RFK's set date since he first started talking about it, and people have been puzzling about that from the beginning. September is the start of the school year.

[–] Zippygutterslug@lemmy.world 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Lists are not neutral; they are tools of social hierarchy and ideological enforcement.

Creating a national database of autistic people could grow from “support services” to stigmatizing surveillance or work farms—especially if the one proposing it has a history of pseudoscientific views or conspiracy ideation, as RFK Jr. does.

[–] marketsnodsbury@lemm.ee 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Work farms? No no no— these are wellness farms! Completely different! The labor will be very therapeutic! Plus, if we determine you’re taking medication for any co-occurring disorders, like ADHD or depression we’ll get you clean of that crippling addiction pronto.

:/

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[–] BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world 105 points 1 month ago (40 children)

It's Eugenics, this is them warming you up to forced sterilisation. This is Timesplitters shit, let's just kill the Billionaires. Come on.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Well technically they're warming people up for full blown death-camps.

It starts with tracking, then sterilization, then "work camps", and then suddenly there are hundreds of thousands stuffed into cargo trains on the way to the furnaces. With tons of them telling themselves they should have done something when they first came for...

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[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 91 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well that's not great. This is the kind of shit why I haven't wanted to get diagnosed. Granted I'm already in it deep for being trans and that resulting million mile paper trail...

Behind the Bastards has a good couple episodes about what happens when people say they can cure autism (spoilers: many children die horribly)

[–] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Their RFK episodes are also highly relevant at the moment.

(spoilers: even more dead children)

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[–] santa@sh.itjust.works 87 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This is fucking terrifying. How is this not a HIPAA violation?

Edit: Fixed spelling. What can we do to protect ourselves and loved ones?!

[–] Cuberoot@lemmynsfw.com 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because it's called HIPAA, not HIPPA. The second P is the one that stands for privacy.

Fifty years ago, doctors would protect their patients by accidentally losing certain files if they didn't think the authorities had a good reason for seeing them. Under HIPAA, they're required to keep and maintain good records in case the government subpoenas them.

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[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

HIPAA died when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Roe v. Wade guaranteed Americans the right to medical privacy.

[–] boydster@sh.itjust.works 80 points 1 month ago (3 children)

He's looking for the solution to the autistic people question

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Next will be ADHD people... and I'm sure they all will be sent with a camp, that will help them focus... a concentration camp if you will.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 53 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A camp? Its not like he's ever suggesting sending people to camps before. Oh wait:

source

See? Its not a camp, its a "wellness farm". Aren't you relieved now? /s

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[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago

Might you call it the final solution?

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[–] KingOogaBooga@lemmy.world 61 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 47 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Get ready my fellow autists, for you are the new jews, this time in magastan instead of Germany.

[–] BozeKnoflook@lemmy.world 34 points 1 month ago

The Nazis started with the disabled, trans, gays, and autistic. The Jews came after the political dissidents.

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[–] isles@piefed.social 45 points 1 month ago

Who's laughing at self-diagnosis now??

Anyway, fuck this place (USA)

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not contagious you fuckstick.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

I bet at some point soon he’s gonna suggest the creation of camps for ADHD-havers to help them concentrate better. We can call them “concentration camps”.

Wait… wait no no NO NO N-

[–] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Absolutely nothing good will come from this.

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[–] Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago (15 children)

Didn’t the Nazi’s do this too?

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[–] febra@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

This is just them preparing the launchpad for further mass surveillance programs. First, they'll poke around with innocent sounding programs, testing the waters to see how much data they can sniff out of different private databases without anyone noticing. They'll claim it's for the good of autistic people. They'll enact legislation to further cement their practices of data gathering. If their proof of concept turns out to be delivering results, they'll keep going.

Slowly they'll keep tracking all kinds of people they deem as "ill". They'll start with vilified minorities that can't fight back. Most likely trans people. Then the rest of the queer community. Of course, they'll claim there's no ill intent in gathering this data, after all, it's not like they're going to commit any vile acts.

And slowly but surely, once the public debate around these minorities turns even more sour, you'll have them enacting all kinds of laws, and these databases will prove to be quite handy tools in aiding their goals.

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

he can find a cure for the condition

A "final solution", if you will…

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The first people Nazi germany systematically exterminated were the disabled

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[–] pleasegoaway@lemm.ee 24 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Why is it so hard for some people to believe that there is genetic variation in the human brain?

[–] sunflowercowboy@feddit.org 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because the genetic variation is confused and muddled by foundational things they can't understand.

Simple things like family structure and the importance of it. A lot of autism overdiagnoses are purely from the developmental differences; economic class, quality of life, nutrition, exposure, and obviously parents or lack there of.

For example, simple acts like kids getting to play in the dirt exposes them to beneficial bacteria. Which I could also see laying the groundwork for gut bacteria. With how common kids do try and eat it, along with developing nations cooking with it, seems at least conceptually plausible.

I believe in autism and am not denying its existence as my fiancée has autism.

I am more saying that there is a huge upbringing differential that can cause kids to experience trauma. Trauma that can give the same responses. Social media enables this issue by pushing kids who don't have access to self identify, pushing a false representation. However, it is good for kids to be trying to put the pieces together - they just need help.

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[–] resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

“Fund a cure” — a solution, as it were.

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[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago

What's crazy is that it's perfect. Getting rid of autistic people is exactly the intellectual purging that fascists want when they get into power.

I know not every autistic person is "an intellectual" but many transgressive artists and radical leftist college professors are autistic.

[–] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Their database should track microplastics exposure, pfas exposure, lead exposure, and a whole bunch of other pollution exposure. Bet it won't, because a correlation with those is not a desirable outcome.

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