On RFK Jr.'s Recent Autism Speech

RFK Jr. recently gave a very important speech on the autism epidemic, and the mainstream press and related comment sessions are tittering and giggling like a bunch of painted fops in a young adult dystopian novel.

Some of the pushback is understandable if I grit my teeth hard enough. Yes, the diagnostic criteria for autism has widened immensely over the decades. But the direction of causality runs in both directions. The definition has widened in part because we have had an explosion in the number of mild autism cases. And do note that Mr. Kennedy did not say all autistic people are non functional. He said that about a quarter of those diagnosed with autism are. Ye need to hate the mainstream press more. Just watch the first five minutes of the video for yourself.

For Ye Young Whipper Snappers

I'm old enough to remember when things were different -- I was born in the early 60s. But I'm also intimately aware of what autism is. I grew up around it. My next younger sister has full-blown autism. I grew up around temper tantrums over trivialities, roars that would frighten the dead, and the occasional head smashing through a window or door. Getting to school could be an adventure; often my shoe laces would be missing. My sister loved to shake strings -- especially shoe laces -- in front of her face and watch the patterns. And she shook the strings hard enough that they would become a knotted mess. (That's a super power. You try shaking a string and getting a knot. It's not easy.)

And I saw other cases of autism. Parents of the autistic tend to meet together. And when my parents finally gave in and put my sister in a home, I saw more during visitations. Only one of those autistic children could hold a conversation. High functioning autistic people -- people like Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man were rare, practically mythical.

OK, maybe there were some Autism Lite cases in special day schools which I did not visit because my sister was way too unmanageable to go to such a school. But in my regular elementary school there were zero mainstreamed students who had any characteristics that resembled autism. Zero.

And when I moved to Virginia, the junior high school had zero students who had characteristics resembling autism. Ditto for undergraduate college. Not even an Elon Musk style eye-rolling. Only in grad school physics departments did I meet people in my age range whom one might put on the autism spectrum. But what they mainly manifested was painful shyness, not any other autism symptoms.

It was only when I got active in the Libertarian Party in the 1990s did I start to run into people who manifested Autism Lite symptoms. These ranged from the smart teenage activist who did talk like Rain Man to the girl genius who did the Elon Musk eyeroll. The neatly axiomatic libertarian philosophy can be a comfort to those with a certain kind of autism -- as well as certain nerds

But in all but possibly one case, those who manifested Autism Lite symptoms were significantly younger than me. Yes, there were plenty of nerds and other weirdos among older Libertarians. (Place a gun show and a science fiction convention side by side. Those who struggle to decide which event to attend are excellent candidates for becoming libertarians.) But they were weird in ways other than Autism Lite.

The relevant spectrum of my generation was social coolness. On the right of the bell curve was the fashionable In Crowd. On the left were the nerds who played Dungeons and Dragons and Ultimate Frisbee.

But to medicalize the left side of that bell curve is silly. Visualize a pair of concerned parents taking their three year old son to a child psychologist and getting the diagnosis: "I'm sorry. Your son is a nerd. There is no cure. Here's a hacky sac, some special dice, and copy of My First Dungeon Module." The scenario is absurd.

But diagnosable at age 3 Autism Lite is today depressingly commonplace. It's real, and a mere shift in diagnostic criteria would not be sending parents to the child psychologists in the first place. And the epidemic is tearing our country apart.

The Societal Impact

The Autism Lite epidemic is strikingly visible on campus, especially where politics is concerned. Look at any video of students having absolute freakouts when a conservative speaker says something that doesn't fit their worldview. That behavior strongly resembles my sister's temper tantrums over hearing music she didn't like on the radio. That's autism, not ideology.

Ideology can drive people to riot, trash neighborhoods, start fires, deface Teslas, and perform other acts of terrorism. Left wing terrorism was commonplace in the early 1970s. Think Weather Underground and Charles Manson.

But the Snowflake phenomenon is new. Back when I was a callow undergraduate, I was an intellectual bully. I'd pick arguments with liberals. I'd accuse the guy running the Amnesty International booth of advocating violence since he also liked government goodies -- and you cannot have government goodies without some government thuggery to collect the required taxes. And I spent many a happy hour mixing it up with liberals who enjoyed a good argument. At no time did I ever get a Snowflake spazz out. I either got an argument back or an angry brush off.

I do not think the modern Snowflake phenomenon is ideological. I don't think it is due to Helicopter Parenting, Intersectionality Theory, or Herman Marcuse brilliantly combining the pseudo sciences of Marxism and Freudian Psycho-Analysis.

It really looks like Autism Lite. The temper tantrums over trivialities bring back childhood memories.

My Working Hypothesis

So why was autism much more binary in my generation? My hypothesis is that most autism cases back then were caused by some incident in the womb, when the brain is barely developed. In 1964 they were giving polio vaccines to pregnant women. My mother was one of them and she had a severe reaction. Way back in the 1960s a vaccine was the top suspected cause of my sister's autism. Those who think that the vaccine-autism connection was dreamed up by a single crackpot scientist are as well informed as those who think Al Gore invented global warming.

I suspect that most of today's autism cases are triggered by events at or after birth -- after the brain has had more time to develop. Whether the events are C-section births, bad plastics, glyphosate in the environment, commercial childcare too early in life, or the explosion in really early childhood vaccines is up for debate.

Circumstantial evidence points a wagging finger at the explosion in recommended vaccines. The explosion in Autism Lite and increase in infant vaccinations tracks almost perfectly.

And then there is the peanut butter. For my generation peanut butter was a staple food. School cafeterias had peanut butter-chocolate frosting on the sheet cakes and nobody died. Dead virus vaccines have extra ingredients designed to trigger an immune response since the dead viruses are not sufficiently irritating on their own. What's to stop those ingredients from triggering an immune response to something other than the target dead virus? And the earlier the vaccine is given the fewer foods and other environmental irritants the baby has had time to build a tolerance to. This is near iron clad logic.

The mainstream hypotheses run from lame to borderline retarded. The Hygiene Hypothesis is particularly laughable. The 1960s were the era of boiling baby bottles and Peak Lysol. Many mothers with babies stayed home in those days, and when they were bored, the televisions provided dramas called "soap operas." Guess what was heavily advertised?

There may well be multiple factors at work. But the defenders of mass early vaccines bear a heavy burden of proof.