RFK Jr. is wasting your tax dollars

Remember when RFK Jr. promised to have an answer to the cause of autism by September 2025? He’s already walking that back:


“We will have some studies completed by September, and those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done. We’re also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of scientists. We’re going to send those grants out to bid within three weeks,” he told Collins.  

“Kennedy added that he expects the results of those completed replication studies to begin to be finalized six months after September.”

If there are results by March, they won’t be based on new data, they will be using currently published data. Those data from studies going back decades demonstrate 50-80% heritability for autism. I know. I’m a geneticist and I’ve read those papers. 

Autism has nothing to do with vaccines. Never did, never will.

I have reminded graduate students and several faculty that we don’t do research to “show,” we do research to test. What RFK Jr. wants to fund is research that will “show” an environmental cause of autism. Twin pair studies that have been published have tested the “nature vs nurture” question and come down squarely on the side of nature, i.e., genetics.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5316100-autism-causes-hhs-deadline-march/ 

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