Business
Commentary: RFK Jr.'s views on autism show that anti-science myths are rampant at the agency he leads
A number of otherwise skeptical senators took at face value the pledge by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Senate hearings in January to “follow the science” on issues related to the causes of disease in the U.S., helping him receive confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services.
As he demonstrated last week at his very first news conference as the government’s top healthcare official, he was blowing smoke.
The topic was what he described as an “alarming … epidemic” of autism, supposedly documented by a new report by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s not that the amount of autism in the population has changed, it’s that more people are getting the tools necessary to get a diagnosis.
— Autism Self Advocacy Network
His advice was to ignore what decades of scientific research have established as contributors to the reported increase in autism prevalence. These include genetic factors; the ever-broadening definition of autism itself, now known as autism spectrum disorder, or ASD; and vastly improved screening programs nationwide.
The inescapable conclusion is that Kennedy’s HHS is in the grip of a pseudoscience revolution in which misinformation and disinformation are ascendant. The cost to scientific research generally and to households caring for those with chronic conditions such as ASD is incalculable.
Kennedy’s words left much of the autism community aghast. At both his news conference and an accompanying HHS press release, “Kennedy repeated false claims that autism was a ‘preventable’ ‘epidemic’” and that the CDC report’s findings “could not be explained by improved access to screening,” stated the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. ASAN accused Kennedy of having “cherry-picked” data and having misinterpreted basic science.
“It’s not that the amount of autism in the population has changed,” the network’s statement said — “it’s that more people are getting the tools necessary to get a diagnosis.”
Observes Holden Thorp, the editor of Science, who disclosed last year that he was diagnosed with autism at the age of 53 (he’s now 60), “almost everything in the CDC report talked about better identification and better diagnosis being the source of the increase. … The main recommendation is to get people more access to services.”
I asked HHS to provide me with Kennedy’s response to these and other criticisms, but didn’t receive a response.
Kennedy’s words were so averse to understanding the truth about autism that they deserve to be set forth here in some detail. To a great extent, they’re refuted by the CDC report itself, which Kennedy referred to repeatedly at his news conference. The CDC estimated the rate of autism in the general population at about one in 31 children born in 2014. That’s a higher rate than was found even two years earlier.
But it doesn’t amount to an “epidemic” that is “running rampant,” as Kennedy said. He said “most cases now are severe,” which is untrue. In fact, the vast majority of new cases involve children without the intellectual disabilities often associated with stereotypical autistic behavior, such as sensitivities to touch and an absence of verbal skills. The prevalence of more severe cases has actually declined in recent years, according to a 2023 study from Rutgers.
Kennedy took special aim at what he called “the ideology that … the relentless autism prevalence increases are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria.” He said “this epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media and it’s based on an industry canard” perpetrated by “people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.”
Well, no. The contributions made by updated diagnostic standards and improved screening to changes in prevalence rates aren’t concoctions of the media, but findings from professional research — including the CDC report.
Kennedy scoffed at research that has established a genetic component to autism, even though such findings have been conclusive; he implied that spending on such studies is a waste of money because the research is a “dead end.”
He painted a dire picture of the lives of autistic people. “Autism destroys families,” he said. “These are kids who will never pay taxes, never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
Kennedy’s fans played the “what he really meant to say” game on social media, arguing that he was referring only to the most seriously impaired. But that distinction wasn’t clearly made either in the HHS press release or at Kennedy’s news conference. Just to be plain, given Kennedy’s effort to shroud autistic people in stigma, many pay taxes. Many hold jobs. Many play baseball. Many write poetry, go on dates, don’t need help to use a toilet.
Put it all together, and Kennedy’s performance raises urgent questions about whether he understands autism at all or is just using it as a stalking horse to promote his assertion that “environmental toxins” are the root of chronic diseases.
Kennedy’s erroneous ideas about autism aren’t new. He has long favored the long-debunked claim that autism is related to childhood vaccinations. He didn’t specifically mention vaccines during his appearance, but more than once he claimed that “someone is putting environmental toxins into … our medicines.”
What medicines have most children received by their second birthday, when autism is commonly diagnosed? Vaccines, that’s what.
Kennedy seemed impervious to the findings of scientific researchers. That was the conclusion of Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine expert whose daughter Rachel is autistic. In 2017, the National Institutes of Health asked Hotez to meet with Kennedy to move him off the hobbyhorse of a vaccine-autism link. “I couldn’t engage him,” Hotez told me. “But he was so deeply dug in about vaccines that he wasn’t interested in listening.”
What’s behind the rise in autism rates? Contrary to RFK Jr.’s claim, it’s mostly among milder cases without intellectual disability (blue line), not among severely disabled autistic people (green line), where rates are actually dropping.
(American Academic of Pediatrics)
His encounter with Kennedy was what prompted Hotez to write his 2018 book “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.”
The truth is that researchers have made great strides in unearthing the causes and characteristics of autism. They’ve identified some genetic anomalies that lead to a predisposition to the spectrum.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina, Stanford and UC Davis have found unusual prenatal growth patterns in the brain that appear to correlate with ASD diagnoses in early childhood, though it’s unclear what triggers that growth. Some have found evidence of environmental factors, chiefly experienced by women in pregnancy, though some question whether any such factors can be primary determinants of ASD.
Kennedy would have been well-advised to spend more time reading his own agency’s report before citing it at his news conference. That’s because it refuted much of what he claimed.
To begin with, the report took a more nuanced view of autism than the horrific picture he painted of autism sufferers. Throughout, it refers to ASD — “autism spectrum disorder” — rather than painting it as “autism” with a single broad brush, as he did. The report explicitly states that the change in reported prevalence of ASD “can reflect differing practices in ASD evaluation and identification,” as well as differences in the availability of services for autistic people and their families.
Among other factors, the report states that ASD diagnoses among Black, Hispanic and other ethnic groups have increased because those “previously underserved groups” have received “increased access to … identification services” in recent years. That has certainly contributed to the apparent increase in ASD prevalence overall.
Until about 10 years ago, the report notes, the highest prevalence of ASD was found among white children and those from wealthier neighborhoods, plainly those with both the incentive to track their children’s intellectual development and the best resources to obtain services. (Access to health insurance covering autism diagnosis and treatment also correlated with prevalence rates, the CDC found.) Black, Hispanic and other ethnic groups have been catching up.
The report further documented how reported rates of ASD are related to differing approaches to screening and diagnostic services among states and local communities. The reported ASD rate was 9.7 per 1,000 children in Texas, but 53.1 in California.
Why would it be so high in California? The report notes that California has trained local pediatricians to screen and refer children for assessment as early as possible — at an average of 36 months, compared with the Texas average of nearly 70 months — which “could result in higher identification of ASD, especially at early ages.” California, moreover, has established “regional centers throughout the state that provide evaluations and service coordination for persons with disabilities and their families.”
What is Kennedy’s endgame here? He portrays himself as a seeker of scientific truth, but throughout his news conference he denigrated scientists for purportedly ignoring what he said were clear signals of an autism epidemic rendering “thousands of profoundly disabled children somehow invisible.” In doing so, he overlooked decades of fruitful research efforts aimed at uncovering the causes and nature of autism.
He left the impression that research into genetic or prenatal causes will get short shrift in grants from the National Institutes of Health, which comes under his jurisdiction. Instead, he’ll favor studies aimed at identifying specific environmental toxins, although their significance is unclear. He has already indicated that he plans to revive research tying vaccines to autism, though that connection consistently has been disproved.
Perhaps most disturbing is that Kennedy showed almost no awareness of the diversity of ASD — and the contribution that it has made to humanity. “Some neurodivergent people are meticulously observant and are able to connect seemingly disparate concepts — assets in the world of science,” Thorp wrote in connection with his own diagnosis. “Neurodiversity scholars and advocates have stressed that autistic thinkers are responsible for many innovations and advances across human history.”
There’s reason to fear that Kennedy’s quest for a cause or even a cure for autism will shoulder aside other research more important for those with ASD. As Emily Hotez, Rachel Hotez’s older sister and a leading autism researcher at UCLA, noted in an article she co-wrote after the CDC report’s release, the effort to identify autism’s cause has overlooked “something far more urgent: improving the lives of autistic people and their families, here and now.”
Roomba maker IRobot filed for bankruptcy and will go private after being acquired by its Chinese supplier Picea Robotics.
Founded 35 years ago, the Massachusetts company pioneered the development of home vacuum robots and grew to become one of the most recognizable American consumer brands.
Over the years, it lost ground to Chinese competitors with less-expensive products. This year, the company was clobbered by President Trump’s tariffs. At its peak during the pandemic, IRobot was valued at $3 billion.
The bankruptcy filing, which happened on Sunday, has raised fear among Roomba users who are worried about “bricking,” which is when a device stops working or is rendered useless due to a lack of software updates.
The company has tried assuaging the fears, saying that it will continue operations with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality, customer programs or product support.
The majority of IRobot products sold in the U.S. are manufactured in Vietnam, which was hit with a 46% tariff, eroding profits and competitiveness of the company. The tariffs increased IRobot’s costs by $23 million in 2025, according to its court filings.
In 2024, IRobot’s revenue stood at $681 million, about 24% lower than the previous year. The company owed hundreds of millions in debt and long-term loans. Once the court-supervised transaction is complete, IRobot will become a private company owned by contract manufacturer Picea Robotics.
Today, nearly 70% of the global smart vacuum robot market is dominated by Chinese brands, according to IDC, with Roborock and Ecovacs leading the charge.
The sale of a famous household brand to a Chinese competitor has prompted complaints from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and politicians, citing the case as a failure of antitrust policy.
Amazon originally planned to acquire IRobot for $1.4 billion, but in early 2024, it terminated the merger after scrutiny from European regulators, supported by then-Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. IRobot never recovered from that.
The central concern for the merger was that Amazon could unduly favor IRobot products in its marketplace, according to Joseph Coniglio, director of antitrust and innovation at the think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Buying IRobot could have expanded Amazon’s portfolio of home devices, including Ring and Alexa, he said, bolstering American competition in the robot vacuum market.
“Blocking this deal was a strategic error,” said Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics. “The consequence is that we have handed an easy win to Chinese rivals. IRobot was the only significant Western player left in this space. By denying them the resources needed to compete, regulators have left American consumers with fewer alternatives to Chinese dominance.”
“While IRobot has become a peripheral player recently, Amazon had the specific capacity to reverse those fortunes — specifically by integrating IRobot into its successful ecosystem of home devices,” Auer said. “The best way to handle global competition is to ensure U.S. firms are free to merge, scale and innovate, rather than trying to thwart Chinese firms via regulation. We should be enabling our companies to compete, not restricting their ability to find a path forward.”
California lost jobs for the fourth consecutive month in September — and it’s expected to add only 62,000 new jobs next year as high taxes drag on business formation, according to a report released Thursday.
The annual Chapman University economic forecast released Thursday found that the state’s job growth totaled just 2% from the second quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of this year, ranking it 48th among all states.
That matches California’s low ranking on the Tax Foundation’s 2024 State Business Tax Climate Index, which measures the rate of taxes and how they are assessed, according to the Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research report by the Orange, Calif., school.
The state also experienced a net population outflow of more than 1 million residents from 2021 to 2023, with the top five destinations being states with zero or very low state income taxes: Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Florida, the report noted.
What’s more, the average adjusted gross income for those leaving California was $134,000 in 2022, while for those entering it was $113,000, according to the most recent IRS data on net income flows cited by the report.
“High relative state taxes not only drive out jobs, but they also drive out people,” said the report, which expects just a 0.3% increase in California jobs next year leading to the 62,000 net gain.
More unsettling, the report said, was a “sharp decline” in the number of companies and other advanced industry concerns established in California relative to other states, in such sectors as technology, software, aerospace and medical products.
California accounted for 17.5% of all such establishments in the fourth quarter of 2018, but that dropped to 14.9% in the first quarter of this year. Much of the competition came from low-tax states, the report said.
California saw the number of advanced industry establishments grow from 89,300 to 108,600 from 2018 through this year, but low-tax states saw a 52.2% growth rate from 164,000 to 249,600 establishments, it said.
Also on Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly states jobs report, which had been delayed by the government shutdown. It, too, showed California had a weak labor market with the state losing 4,500 jobs for the month, edging up its unemployment rate from 5.5% to 5.6%, the highest in the nation aside from Washington, D.C.
The state has lost jobs since June as tech companies in the Bay Area and elsewhere shed employees and spend billions of dollars on developing artificial intelligence capabilities.
There have also been high-profile layoffs in Hollywood amid a drop-off in filming, runaway production to other states and countries, and industry consolidation, such as the bidding war being conducted over Warner Bros. Discovery. The latter is expected to bring even deeper cuts in Southern California’s cornerstone film and TV industry.
Michael Bernick, a former director of California’s Employment Development Department, said such industry trends are only partially to blame for the state’s poor job performance.
“The greater part of the explanation lies in the costs and liabilities of hiring in California — costs and especially liabilities that are higher than other states,” he said in an emailed statement.
Nationally, the Chapman report cited the Trump administration’s tariffs as a drag on the economy, noting they are greater than the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 thought to have exacerbated the Great Depression.
That act only increased tariffs on average by 13.5% to 20% and mainly on agricultural and manufactured products, while the Trump tariffs “cover most goods and affect all of our trading partners.”
As a consequence, the report projects that annual job growth next year will reach only 0.2%, which will curb GDP growth.
The report predicts the national economy will grow by 2% next year, slightly higher than this year’s 1.8% expected rate. Among the positive factors influencing the economy are AI investment and interest rates, while slowing growth — aside from tariffs and the jobs picture — is low demand for new housing.
The report cites lower rates of family formation, lower immigration rates and a declining birth rate contributing to the lower housing demand.
The battle between California and the White House escalated as President Trump signed an executive order to block state laws regulating artificial intelligence.
The president’s power move to try to take over control of the regulation of the technology behind ChatGPT through an executive order Thursday was applauded by his allies in Silicon Valley, who have been warning that many layers of heavy-handed rules and regulations were holding them back and could put the U.S. behind in the battle to benefit most from AI.
The order directs the attorney general to create a task force to challenge some state AI laws. States with “onerous AI laws” could lose federal funding from a broadband deployment program and other grants, the order said.
The Trump administration said the order will help U.S. companies win the AI race against countries such as China by removing “cumbersome regulation.” It also pushes for a “minimally burdensome” national standard rather than a patchwork of laws across 50 states that the administration said makes compliance challenging, especially for startups.
“You have to have a central source of approval when they need approval. So things have to come to one source. They can’t go to California, New York and various other places,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the order, stating it “advances corruption, not innovation.”
“They’re running a con. And every day, they push the limits to see how far they can take it,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is working on behalf of Americans by building the strongest innovation economy in the nation while implementing commonsense safeguards and leading the way forward.”
The dueling remarks between Newsom and Trump underscore how the tech industry’s influence over regulation has increased tensions between the federal government and state lawmakers trying to place more guardrails around AI.
While AI chatbots can help people quickly find answers to questions and generate text, code, and images, the increasing role the technology plays in people’s daily lives has also sparked greater anxiety about job displacement, equity, and mental health harms.
The order heavily impacts California, home to some of the world’s largest tech companies such as OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and Meta. It also jeopardizes the $1.8 billion in federal funding California has received to expand high-speed internet throughout the state.
Some analysts said Trump’s order is a win for tech giants that have vowed to invest trillions of dollars to build data centers and in research and development.
“We believe that more organizations are expected to head down the AI roadmap through strategic deployments over time, but this executive order takes away more questions around future AI buildouts and removes a major overhang moving forward,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a statement.
Facing lobbying from tech companies, Newsom has vetoed some AI legislation while signing others into law this year.
One new law requires platforms to display labels for minors that warn about social media’s mental health harms. Another aims to make AI developers more transparent about safety risks and offers more whistleblower protections.
He also signed a bill that requires chatbot operators to have procedures to prevent the production of suicide or self-harm content, though child safety groups removed support for that legislation because they said the tech industry successfully pushed for changes that weakened protections.
States and consumer advocacy groups are expected to legally challenge Trump’s order.
“Trump is not our king, and he cannot simply wave a pen to unilaterally invalidate state law,” state Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista), who introduced the chatbot safety legislation that Newsom signed into law, said in a statement.
In addition to California, three other states — Colorado, Texas and Utah — have passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, according to the International Assn. of Privacy Professionals. Those laws include limiting the collection of certain personal information and requiring more transparency from companies.
The more ambitious AI regulation proposals from states require private companies to provide transparency and assess the possible risks of discrimination from their AI programs. Many have regulated parts of AI: barring the use of deepfakes in elections and to create nonconsensual porn, for example, or putting rules in place around the government’s own use of AI.
The order drew both praise and criticism from the tech industry.
Collin McCune, the head of government affairs at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said on social media site X that the executive order is an “incredibly important first step.”
“But the vacuum for federal AI legislation remains,” he wrote. “Congress needs to come together to create a clear set of rules that protect the millions of Americans using AI and the Little Tech builders driving it forward.”
Omidyar Network Chief Executive Mike Kubzansky said in a statement that he is aware of the risks posed by poorly drafted rules, but the solution isn’t to preempt state and local laws.
“Americans are rightly concerned about AI’s impact on kids, jobs, and the costs imposed on consumers and communities by the rapid development of data centers,” he said. “Ignoring these issues through a blanket moratorium is an abdication of what elected officials owe their constituents — which is why we strongly oppose the Administration’s recent executive action.”
Investors seemed unimpressed by the possible boost the sector could get from the White House.
The stock market fell sharply on Friday, led by AI shares.
Bloomberg and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Illinois officials investigating death connected to Rock Co. homicide
Central Indiana schools announce closures, delays planned for Tuesday
Local business highlights Iowa agriculture impact during Iowa Secretary Mike Naig visit
Patrick Mahomes undergoes surgery to repair ACL day after injury
Unexpected death of central Kentucky woman prompts community fundraising effort
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Video: Brown Student Has Survived Two School Shootings
DC police accused of manipulating crime stats as federal probe finds thousands of misclassified cases
All eyes on Italy as Mercosur deal hangs in the balance
Australia announces strict new gun laws. Here’s how it can act so swiftly
Video: Rob Reiner and His Wife Are Found Dead in Their Los Angeles Home
-
Alaska1 week agoHowling Mat-Su winds leave thousands without power
-
Texas1 week agoTexas Tech football vs BYU live updates, start time, TV channel for Big 12 title
-
Washington7 days agoLIVE UPDATES: Mudslide, road closures across Western Washington
-
Iowa1 week agoMatt Campbell reportedly bringing longtime Iowa State staffer to Penn State as 1st hire
-
Iowa3 days agoHow much snow did Iowa get? See Iowa’s latest snowfall totals
-
Miami, FL1 week agoUrban Meyer, Brady Quinn get in heated exchange during Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami CFP discussion
-
Iowa1 day agoAddy Brown motivated to step up in Audi Crooks’ absence vs. UNI
-
Cleveland, OH1 week agoMan shot, killed at downtown Cleveland nightclub: EMS