We live in an age when politics trumps science, and the choice of verb is deliberate. Remember “Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory Of Pandemic Emergence”? How about “Social justice matters more than social distance”? During the Covid-19 pandemic, the frequency of scientists and doctors issuing passionate debunkings of any vaguely scientific idea that Donald Trump happened to mention that day, only to issue equally passionate rebunkings the minute the wind changed, became so great that even the New York Times winced.
Science has always been politicised, but it was not always this bad. Cast your mind back to the turn of the century – 1998 to be precise. Antivax sentiment was not completely unknown but in general vaccines were seen by almost everyone as the means by which smallpox, diptheria and polio had been banished to the history books. I still see them this way. Here is a graph taken from the website of the Office for National Statistics of life expectancy at birth in the UK from 1841 to 2011. As the accompanying article says, the fairly steep rise in the second half of the time period was probably due to health improvements in the older population, but the ASTOUNDINGLY steep rise between 1890 and 1950 was probably due to health improvements in the younger population. Take a bow, childhood immunisation. We have forgotten how lucky we are to have been born in the age of the vaccine.
In 1998 something happened that caused trust in vaccines to slip. The following is an extract from the Wikipedia page for Dr Richard Horton, who was then and is now the editor of The Lancet, probably the world’s pre-eminent medical journal:
“On 28 February 1998 Horton published a controversial paper by Andrew Wakefield and 12 co-authors with the title “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” suggesting that vaccines could cause autism. The publication of the paper set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Europe and America and in subsequent years globally.”
I want to make clear that there was nothing wrong in the Lancet publishing Wakefield’s paper. How else is science meant to advance, other than by putting forward hypotheses and inviting all comers to replicate them or refute them? The wrong lay in sticking to this particular hypothesis long after it had been disproved. Horton only retracted Wakefield’s paper in February 2010, after Wakefield had been struck off the register of the General Medical Council for financial and medical misconduct.
There have been at least two switches in the political coding of Wakefield’s theory since it came out. Stereotyping madly, in the first few years after 1998 antivax sentiment was seen as a belief held by low-status Christian hicks in the American South. From about 2005 onwards antivax views also became popular among West and East Coast hippies, practitioners of alternative medicine and the like, most of whom were left wing, and a good deal more media savvy than the former group. Dr Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet who published and defended Wakefield, is, without exaggeration, a Marxist. Back in 2006, I posted about his view that, “As this axis of Anglo-American imperialism extends its influence through war and conflict, gathering power and wealth as it goes, so millions of people are left to die in poverty and disease.”
One of the many evils of the scientific and medical censorship practised during the Covid-19 pandemic is that people whose attitudes ranged from belief in David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards to having doubts about specific Covid-19 vaccines that might be right, wrong, or a bit of both, but which are certainly reasonable, were all lumped together under the heading of “vaccine denialists” and condemned en masse. That meant that people who might have been open to argument were never argued with. Persuasion in either direction cannot happen if people cannot discuss a subject. Science cannot happen if people cannot discuss a subject. I remember commenting to this effect to the Times in late 2021. My comment lasted about five minutes before being deleted.
It is 27 years since 1998, 15 years since 2010, and five years since the start of the pandemic. Time for another burst of news stories about autism and vaccines. The script is much the same but many of the actors have swapped roles.
“RFK’s statements prove autistic people and their families everywhere should fear Trump and his allies”, writes John Harris in the Guardian’s Sunday sister, the Observer. The initials “RFK” refer to Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. There is a video of the speech made by Kennedy on April 16th to which Mr Harris is objecting here and I found a transcript of it here.
I have a lot of respect for John Harris, left-winger though he be. As I have said before, ‘He is a left winger who wanted to remain in the EU, but the series of video reports by him and John Domokos called “Anywhere but Westminster” showed their determination to literally and figuratively move outside their comfort zone on the issue of Brexit.’ Mr Harris has a severely autistic son. I can understand his anger about Kennedy’s never-quite-disavowed support for Wakefield’s theories.
Harris writes about that as follows:
Last Wednesday, Kennedy spoke at a press conference staged in response to a report about apparently rising rates of autism published by the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And out it all came: an insistence that autism is an “epidemic” and a “preventable disease”, and – in complete defiance of the science – that the root cause lies with “environmental toxins”. A range of new studies, he said, will begin reporting back in September: with the same banality that defines his boss’s promises on international conflict and global economics, he told his audience that answers would be presented to the public “very, very quickly”.
Most of the people present would have been aware of Kennedy’s past support for the thoroughly discredited idea that autism is somehow linked to the use of vaccines.
But in the next paragraph, Mr Harris veers into a style of argument that is increasingly common on the left – and which is, to put it very mildly, not helpful to those caring for people with severe autism. He writes,
As he spoke, they were presumably reminded of the occasions when he has talked about autistic people with a mixture of disgust and complete ignorance. Autism, he said, “destroys” families; today’s autistic children “will never pay taxes. They’ll 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.” Those comments have rightly triggered a huge backlash. But what has been rather lacking is a broader critique of Kennedy’s ideas, and how they go deep into aspects of the US’s culture and politics.
Once again, here is the link to Kennedy’s speech. He said the words to which Harris objects at 12:16. To see them in context, you need to listen from at least 11:50.
I have several points to make:
1) No, Kennedy does not speak about severely autistic people with “disgust”. He speaks about them with great pity. Maybe it’s his spasmodic dysphonia, but he seemed close to tears at some points in that speech. It helps no one except the Observer‘s circulation manager to slander Kennedy’s motives. Most of the Guardian‘s and the Observer‘s readers seem delighted to be told that any man appointed by Trump must be a cartoon villain. One highly upvoted comment practically says that Kennedy is planning to send autistic people to the gas chambers. But Kennedy’s high level of support from relatives of severely autistic people suggests that few of them believe that. I don’t believe it. I believe he is gravely mistaken, but sincere.
2) No, Kennedy does not speak about autistic people from a position of “complete ignorance”. It is obvious that he has read a great deal about the subject. All that reading does not make him right: it is a common flaw among autodidacts to have examined the bark of one tree at such close range that they are unable to see the tree as a whole, let alone the forest in which it stands. I say again: Kennedy is wrong about vaccines and autism. But he is the opposite of carelessly ignorant. His error is that of letting obsessive focus on individually heart-breaking cases lead him to statistically invalid conclusions. He is correct to state that there has been a spectacular increase in the number of diagnoses of autism. Unlike Kennedy, I ascribe most of that increase to improvements in diagnostic methods. Many people who might have simply been described as “weird” a few years ago are now correctly placed on the autistic spectrum. This, being an increase in our understanding of the world, is a good thing. I also partly ascribe the increase in autism diagnoses to fashion and the desire to get extra time in exams. Not so good.
(1) and (2) could be summed up by saying that in the long run the only way to combat the misunderstandings held by Kennedy and his supporters is by spreading better understanding, not random slanders.
I have been distracted from the main point. Here it is.
3) Harris says that Kennedy’s comments about autistic people who will never pay taxes, never hold a job, never play baseball, never write a poem, never go out on a date and will never use a toilet unassisted “have rightly triggered a huge backlash”.
They have triggered a huge backlash. Two of the most upvoted comments to Harris’s Observer article begin “I’m autistic and pay tax in the 45% bracket” and “I’m autistic, was married (wife passed away), have teenage children, am professionally qualified and in full time employment” Other commenters say how their children are autistic and are doing very well in their careers. My Twitter feed was full of similar outrage from autistic people and their relatives who were deeply insulted by Kennedy’s remarks. “My son is a published author at 15 years old. He is on his third book”, wrote Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in a tweet that has fifteen thousand likes.
I’m happy for autistic people who are successful, but not all autistic people fit the cinematic stereotype of a person whose social awkwardness is more than compensated for by uncanny prowess in mathematics or some niche field. Some of them are very far from it indeed. A much-loved member of my husband’s extended family suffered from nonverbal autism. All Kennedy’s “nevers” applied to him and more. I dispute that the backlash to that part of Kennedy’s speech was rightly triggered.
Nor was it honestly triggered. It would have been obvious to anyone who watched his speech – a category which evidently excludes most of the people paid to write about it for the newspapers – that Kennedy was not saying that all autistic people would never pay taxes, hold a job, write a poem etc. At 3:20 in the video, he says,
And most cases now are severe. So about 25% of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are nonverbal, non-toilet trained, and have other stereotypical features, headbanging, tactile and light sensitivities, stimming, toe-locking, et cetera.
Emphasis added. It’s 2025. Social media is everywhere. I can guarantee that practically every parent of a severely autistic child in the developed world is continually being sent videos and links on the topic of autism by well-meaning people. It’s not like they cannot find out what Kennedy actually said. It’s not like they do not know that some autistic people can do the things their child never will. Imagine their feelings upon hearing of this “rightful” backlash to Kennedy’s perfectly reasonable description of their children’s disabilities. No wonder so many of them trust Kennedy, who does not erase them, above the journalists who do.
Great post.
I am perhaps a little more sceptical about some vaccines’ efficacy and have a slightly greater fear of side effects than you do, but that is mainly down to highly increased levels of distrust in the bio-pharmaceutical complex (BPC).
I also always thought that the insistence on delivering the MMR vaccines as a single, tripled jab was unnecessary but probably not harmful.
Of course every vaccine does occasionally cause harm, the question is always whether that harm is outweighed by the benefits on average and whether there are any indicators of increased risk which can be used to differentiate between possible recipients. The BPC has, I think, a pretty poor record on this.
Confessions of an Anti-Vaxer.
A few years ago, I was a little worried about vaccines after the Andrew Wakefield affair. The ferocity of the attacks did make me wonder if “they” had something to hide. With the Covid vax furore my eyes were opened considerably. Then I read ‘Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History, by Roman Bystrianyk and Suzanne Humphries. I suggest you stay clear of this book, because you too may turn into a dreaded anti-vaxer. It’s a bit like a vampires bite; once you read it you will change, and never be quite the same again.
As to the increasing number of autistic children, there’s also the possibility of assortative mating. There are many more opportunities for men and women on the autistic spectrum to meet, marry and have children.
“As to the increasing number of autistic children”
In the UK at least there’s also the added bonus that if your child gets ‘statemented’ it immediately unlocks higher welfare payments from the State. An ‘autistic’ child could well equal a free brand new Motability car for the family, for example. So there is a considerable incentive for people to push the medics to diagnose their child as having something wrong with them.
I think it is mistake to think of autism as one thing. There are a lot of autistic people who can function quite well in society. In fact some have argued that Asperger’s is not a flaw but instead the next level of human evolution. If you look at many successful people, including Musk, the person I think is the greatest human alive today, their disease might make it difficult to fit into conventional society but it often makes them quite a bit more capable, intelligent and productive than those same people who think they are weird. I have heard the term homo aspergerus used to describe this. There are of course many people who are quite severely disabled too, but I just think it is a mistake to think about “autism” as one thing, or to imagine that the cause, prognosis or treatment are the same.
And the same is true of vaccines too. To talk of a “vaccine” is quite misleading. There are many types of vaccine. Some are similar and some are quite different. For my part I had my kids get all the childhood vaccines except varicella (chickenpox), because at the time is was pretty new and didn’t have a lot of test data behind it and the disease really wasn’t very serious. Right now I am going back and forth to try to decide if I should get the Shingles vaccine. Needless to say I did not get, and did not get for my kids, the Covid vaccine. To talk of “vaccines” as if they are the same thing is particularly problematic with Covid since it was an ENTIRELY new method for stimulating immunity and had a shockingly small amount of testing or even post administration adverse effect monitoring.
In regards to JFKJ, the truth is that I don’t think the CDC or FDA should be deciding these things. That should be down to the medical establishment. Don’t get me wrong, I think the AMA and the American Pediatric association have done a totally shit job on this, and I don’t doubt they are shamelessly in the pocket of the drug companies. But at least they can only make recommendations, they can offer no force of law. Of course the other place this is a major burden is in public schools where if you want your kid to get an education you have to genuflect to the health police. But that is just one more argument for eliminating public schools and replacing them with a robust private school network with tax credits to support it.
I distinguish in my mind between old-style autists, and the new models.
I do this much the same as I distinguish between old-style transgendered people, and the new models.
They both became fads, fashions, a cool way to differentiate from the herd. The numbers of both exponentially grew as a result of this fad.
Now, any kid who is slightly socially awkward but smart is called autistic. Any adult who enjoys cold rudeness claims autism. Because there’s a connection in the popular mind between autism and high intelligence, everyone seems to want to claim it. It excuses jerks.
Long ago, in a previous life, I interacted with twenty or so actual autistic boys. None of those boys were ever going to be able to function well in society. Very smart, but absolutely no connections could be made to them. They were not the same as the “autists” of today.
So, yeah, fake autism is a thing, a big thing, and it skews any vaccine discussion away from the truth.
One thing that struck me about that graph is how the “ASTOUNDINGLY steep rise between 1890 and 1950” turned into “the fairly steep rise in the second half of the time period”. So why did the slope of the graph get so much worse? What happened in about 1950 that impacted the health of the nation? The one thing I can think of is the formation of the NHS. Yes, I know, correlation is not causation, but can anybody think of anything else that happened about that time that could cause this?
It’s like when people advocate “disabled people should be paid lower wages”. Sorry, my missing kneecap does not reduce my living costs, or reduce my aspiration for the work I do to be comensuately compensated.
@FrankH You may have a point. I always assumed that it was because the easy wins had gone- sewerage improvements, hygiene (particularly perinatal) and improved nutrition.
Whether Covid was released by “accident” (or on purpose) I do not know – but it certainly came from the lab in Wuhan.
“Social Justice” means plundering and tyranny, it is evil. It is the opposite of justice.
As for the Covid “vaccines” – they neither stopped people getting the disease or infecting others but they may (perhaps) have made the disease less bad in some cases. On the other hand these injections have caused many injuries and deaths, and to give them to children (who are not really at risk from Covid) is insane.
WRT “autism” (not a single thing), i read some clinical articles (just the abstracts, to be honest) claiming that the symptoms can be decreased with a short-term ketogenic diet. Since RFK Jr already recommends a diet low in grains and refined sugars, i am somewhat surprised that he has not been talking about this.
My own experience has been that decreasing carb consumption leads to the lifting of a mental fog (which did not prevent me from getting a PhD, but there is always room for improvement), less irritability, and an increased ability to see things from other people’s point of view.
All of this might be simply an outcome of better sleep; but it is of interest that being unable of seeing things from other people’s point of view, might well be considered a mild form of autism.
(In fact, like Elon Musk, and i suppose a lot of libertarians, i am a self-diagnosed Aspie, since the time when i watched a documentary about Asperger’s syndrome on British TV, about 30 years ago.)
Fraser Orr: “Of course the other place this is a major burden is in public schools where if you want your kid to get an education you have to genuflect to the health police.”
One of my boys was a handful in elementary school. He would get great grades when he was interested, less great when he wasn’t. He was easily distracted. When he was distracted, he got into trouble.
His teachers wanted us to have him tested for ADHD, and perhaps light Asperger’s. They described for us all of the extra tutoring help and access to individualized instruction plans that he would receive if he attained this holy diagnosis. (They also let slip that their school funding increased with every such diagnosis.)
Hint: He was just bored. Too many slow students controlling the pace at which everyone else could advance.
We went along for a very short time, and then pulled him out of that mess. Long story short, he ended up in advanced classes, did just fine, and today, just 30, has a growing family, a happy life, and is making more than I made as a lawyer at my peak.
It really is an industry. Everyone involved was very eager to get another special needs student on their list. Everyone did better from it, except the student.
The system’s purpose is to perpetuate the system. Nothing else.
SG: ” . . . being unable of seeing things from other people’s point of view, might well be considered a mild form of autism.”
If one accepts that, then isn’t a sub-100 IQ a disease just as much as autism? Everyone is on a continuum for every human quality and capability – do we label everyone who is sub-average in some measurement as diseased?
(Unless, of course, we are accepting the definition of “autistic” to contain “unable to accept others’ POV’s, unempathetic.” But if we are, we’ve just created a tautology and a meaningless label.)
Bobby b
One of my boys was a handful in elementary school. He would get great grades when he was interested, less great when he wasn’t. He was easily distracted. When he was distracted, he got into trouble.
Sounds like he had that most terrible of medical afflictions: “being a boy”.
In a school with exactly one male teacher.
Normal people as a group have abdicated too many important roles in society.
Bobby:
First of all, i just wanted to explain why my own experience makes me believe the connection between a high-carb diet and “autism” broadly defined.
As for ‘everybody is on a continuum’, that was implicit in my comment.
Where do we set the threshold between sub-clinical and clinical defects? For practical purposes, that hardly matters. Everybody would probably benefit from a higher IQ, or more intellectual empathy*. Everybody should be interested in how to enhance both.
* as distinct from emotional empathy, which is beneficial in moderate doses and normal circumstances, but can be a pain otherwise.
Check the time-frame/age vs number of vaccinations these days(as opposed to say early 60’s), add in the fact that pharma no longer has to face any liability for what ever they produce, and get back to me.. I know the ptb jammed 13 vacs into my grand daughter before she was 6 months old. Yeah and find out who is funding that bint’s scribblings.
bobby b – it could have been even worse, they could have given him drugs for his, mythical, ADHD. Drugs, medical drugs, are messing up the brains of a lot of young people.
I am glad that you did not do down this path – and that your son turned out well.
Is Robert Kennedy always correct? Of course not – but he is a good counter weight to the corporate bureaucracy.
As someone (definitely) on the Spectrum, I’m stirred by what I have read above. As members of this parish appreciate, the organs of a collectivist society tend to ends with bad side-effects. Unnecessary vaccinations, prescriptions, programs. I sympathize with parents of children who should just just be allowed to grow without unnecessary labels. Many who are blithely given labels like Autism or ADHD ought not be burdened by those tags, and the cultural freight that comes with. In my own case, I sailed (strangely) through most of life as just that eccentric smart guy… until my Spectral limitations caught up with me in adulthood. Scientists usually mature (ferment?) into managers, and my path through Silicon Valley sure pushed me in that direction. But I could not make that move, to the frustration of myself, and my supporters both corporate and social. I have a mild savantism that powered my fumbling career, but I can’t manage others. Can’t. The natural easy social discrimination that is the birthright of every “normal” person, is for me a rickety construct of experience, unleavened by ability, punctuated by disasterous faux pas, multiplied by the lack of understanding of my peers. I chastised myself pretty much endlessly for my failure to realize my gifts, until finally at age 66, four years ago, I got my diagnosis. It cast my entire life in a new light. With the assistance of my lovely wife of 43 years, I have found new direction, and it is fulfilling precisely because I’m no longer fighting against myself, but rather leaning in on the true gifts I do have. Would my life have been different if I had known decades earlier? Certainly. Do I wish that I had known? Not sure. But I have empathy for the kids who might be as bent by their brains as I am by mine. And I hope that, admid the turmoil added by the organs of collectivist society, we can find ways to help those who truly need it and want it, in ways that don’t excessively burden the rest of us.
Myno, it’s unfortunate that the phrase “Thank you for sharing” has become such a cliche that it is now almost always said sarcastically. I mean it non-sarcastically. Thank you for so eloquently sharing your experience, including your uncertainty about whether it would have been better or worse for you to have had a diagnosis when you were younger.