from the tip-off dept
It’s story time! I came home from the grocery store over this past weekend very proud. I rushed to tell my wife about how I was complimented in the check out line by the very nice woman behind me. She mentioned that she was impressed by how I “Tetris-ed” my groceries on the conveyor belt, carefully organizing my purchases not only in proper order so that they’re bagged together (drinks/alcohol, then frozen stuff, then refrigerated items, then warm storage items), but also so that there is no unused real estate on the belt itself. Hence the “Tetris” comment.
My wife’s response was: “Honey, your spectrum is showing.”
This isn’t to make fun of autism spectrum disorder, of course. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s an acknowledgement that I’m somewhere on that spectrum, as are many more of us than probably realize it. I’m an IT guy. This isn’t unexpected.
But I had no idea that one of the potential causes for my landing there was because my parents made the choice to have me circumcised after birth.
During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Kennedy, a longtime proponent of the unfounded theory that vaccines cause autism, went on a tangent about the causes of autism.
Specifically, he talked about how he saw a TikTok video of a pregnant woman “gobbling Tylenol.” Kennedy said that the woman took Tylenol “with a baby in her placenta,” even though the fetus develops in the uterus. In addition, Kennedy said that infant boys who are circumcised have double the rate of autism.
But Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted to confirm Kennedy both in the Senate Finance Committee and on the Senate floor, expressed confusion.
“That’s new,” he told The Independent after chuckling.
Chuckling? Kennedy waxing poetic about how an ancient ritual that’s been around for eons is suddenly causing a spike in autism rates over the past several decades isn’t funny. Spelling your name wrong with a useless “h” in it is funny, but this is something else. The bumblefuck who doesn’t have even the basics down about how in utero development works is running healthcare policy for the entire damned country and he just claimed that there is a link between autism rates and circumcision. The proper response to this is hearings, specifically impeachment hearings for Kennedy, not a guffaw.
Some people, at least, including a large majority of the voting public, don’t find any of this humorous.
Many Americans seem to not trust Trump and Kennedy’s claims. A poll from KFF found that just four percent of Americans believed their claims about Tylenol and autism were definitely true, while 30 percent said it was probably false and 35 percent said it was definitely false.
But Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), a member of the HELP Committee and a sharp critic of Kennedy, said Kennedy’s bizarre and unfounded claims are no laughing matter.
“We’re talking about whether or not parents can rely on the information provided by the Secretary of Health and Human Services,” she said. “ It’s really not funny. This whole thing is dangerous. People will get sick and die based on it. And I think it’s horrible.”
If you’re wondering, these claims are largely built upon a Danish study from 2015 that found that circumcised boys were more likely to be diagnosed with ASD compared with boys who had not been circumcised. And as you would expect, the methods and conclusions drawn by the study were heavily critiqued. It shows a correlation, but no causation. And, as is the case with ASD diagnoses generally, the real factor at play here appears to be contact with medical professionals versus those who have less of those contacts.
The 2015 study found that the risk of autism was higher among circumcised boys under age 5, but after age 5, the association disappeared. “If circumcision truly caused autism,” said Gounder, “that association should continue even after age 5. They’re likely picking up on the fact that kids undergoing circumcision in the health care system have greater contact with the health care system and have parents with higher levels of education and income — all of which are associated with being diagnosed with autism at a younger age than other kids. That association may disappear once kids start school, when teachers and counselors pick up on the symptoms.”
Folks, the timeline for how long it’s going to take to unwind the destruction of trust that Kennedy is currently sowing in our governmental medical institutions is going to be measured in decades. And please miss me with any claims that the COVID response or anything else that may have also caused similar distrust is in any way on par with what is currently going on at HHS. It’s not, and it’s not even close.
Filed Under: angela alsobrooks, autism, circumcision, health and human services, rfk jr., thom tillis
