this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Summary

RFK Jr. is using private medical records to create a registry of people with autism in the United States.

The National Institutes of Health is helping to collect private medical records from government and commercial databases, including “prescription records from pharmacies, lab testing, and genomics records from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, private insurance claims, and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers.”

Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccination, has made the study of autism one of HHS’s primary goals. He has called autism “preventable” and claimed “he can find a cure for the condition by September.”

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[–] [email protected] 197 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Holy shit, do they want to speedrun fascism?

[–] [email protected] 210 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes. They laid it out with Project 2025 and a staggering amount of people voted for it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Pretty sure the staggering amount of people who voted for Trump have never heard of P2025 before the election, as FoxNews pretty much never spoke about it.

Until after the election; https://www.foxnews.com/politics/heritage-president-project-2025-liberals-doge-takes-ax-bureaucracy

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes. There are a lot of ignorant people but I feel they choose to be ignorant.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago

And plenty still heard about it and instead of doing an ounce of actual research, they wrote it off as propaganda. Because it was just "too crazy to be true."

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Why do you think they are so concerned about government efficiency?

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[–] [email protected] 151 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

A couple things I would like to highlight for the unfamiliar, and I'll preface this by saying that I am autistic myself.

First, autism is not something for which there are any clear medical indicators, no blood tests or brain scans or anything of the sort are involved in diagnosis. It's entirely subjective and observational, something that states entrust people who are ostensibly professionals to determine.

I point this out because I want people to understand that there is absolutely nothing stopping the present administration from hiring people (or using AI) to simply diagnose undesirables with autism through whatever criteria they decide to deem fit.

This might sound absurd, but we're seeing people with nothing but tattoos being transformed into "criminals", "gang members", and "terrorists" by similar logic.

Second, Asperger was a Nazi, and the child euthanasia program was one of the main projects which experimented with the tools and machinery of mass murder that would later be used in extermination camps. Zyklon B was tested on autistic children and other "diseased offspring" long before it was ever used in the gas chambers.

How long do you think it will take before they are using AI to comb through the social media and medical records of teens looking for any indications of anything they don't like, and flagging them as potentially autistic? September has been RFK's set date since he first started talking about it, and people have been puzzling about that from the beginning. September is the start of the school year.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Lists are not neutral; they are tools of social hierarchy and ideological enforcement.

Creating a national database of autistic people could grow from “support services” to stigmatizing surveillance or work farms—especially if the one proposing it has a history of pseudoscientific views or conspiracy ideation, as RFK Jr. does.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Work farms? No no no— these are wellness farms! Completely different! The labor will be very therapeutic! Plus, if we determine you’re taking medication for any co-occurring disorders, like ADHD or depression we’ll get you clean of that crippling addiction pronto.

:/

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 3 weeks ago (40 children)

It's Eugenics, this is them warming you up to forced sterilisation. This is Timesplitters shit, let's just kill the Billionaires. Come on.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

Well technically they're warming people up for full blown death-camps.

It starts with tracking, then sterilization, then "work camps", and then suddenly there are hundreds of thousands stuffed into cargo trains on the way to the furnaces. With tons of them telling themselves they should have done something when they first came for...

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well that's not great. This is the kind of shit why I haven't wanted to get diagnosed. Granted I'm already in it deep for being trans and that resulting million mile paper trail...

Behind the Bastards has a good couple episodes about what happens when people say they can cure autism (spoilers: many children die horribly)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Their RFK episodes are also highly relevant at the moment.

(spoilers: even more dead children)

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

This is fucking terrifying. How is this not a HIPAA violation?

Edit: Fixed spelling. What can we do to protect ourselves and loved ones?!

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Because it's called HIPAA, not HIPPA. The second P is the one that stands for privacy.

Fifty years ago, doctors would protect their patients by accidentally losing certain files if they didn't think the authorities had a good reason for seeing them. Under HIPAA, they're required to keep and maintain good records in case the government subpoenas them.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

HIPAA died when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Roe v. Wade guaranteed Americans the right to medical privacy.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

He's looking for the solution to the autistic people question

[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Next will be ADHD people... and I'm sure they all will be sent with a camp, that will help them focus... a concentration camp if you will.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

A camp? Its not like he's ever suggesting sending people to camps before. Oh wait:

source

See? Its not a camp, its a "wellness farm". Aren't you relieved now? /s

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago

Might you call it the final solution?

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Get ready my fellow autists, for you are the new jews, this time in magastan instead of Germany.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago

The Nazis started with the disabled, trans, gays, and autistic. The Jews came after the political dissidents.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 weeks ago

Who's laughing at self-diagnosis now??

Anyway, fuck this place (USA)

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's not contagious you fuckstick.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

Didn’t the Nazi’s do this too?

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

I bet at some point soon he’s gonna suggest the creation of camps for ADHD-havers to help them concentrate better. We can call them “concentration camps”.

Wait… wait no no NO NO N-

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Absolutely nothing good will come from this.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 weeks ago

This is just them preparing the launchpad for further mass surveillance programs. First, they'll poke around with innocent sounding programs, testing the waters to see how much data they can sniff out of different private databases without anyone noticing. They'll claim it's for the good of autistic people. They'll enact legislation to further cement their practices of data gathering. If their proof of concept turns out to be delivering results, they'll keep going.

Slowly they'll keep tracking all kinds of people they deem as "ill". They'll start with vilified minorities that can't fight back. Most likely trans people. Then the rest of the queer community. Of course, they'll claim there's no ill intent in gathering this data, after all, it's not like they're going to commit any vile acts.

And slowly but surely, once the public debate around these minorities turns even more sour, you'll have them enacting all kinds of laws, and these databases will prove to be quite handy tools in aiding their goals.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The first people Nazi germany systematically exterminated were the disabled

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

he can find a cure for the condition

A "final solution", if you will…

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Why is it so hard for some people to believe that there is genetic variation in the human brain?

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

“Fund a cure” — a solution, as it were.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago

What's crazy is that it's perfect. Getting rid of autistic people is exactly the intellectual purging that fascists want when they get into power.

I know not every autistic person is "an intellectual" but many transgressive artists and radical leftist college professors are autistic.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Their database should track microplastics exposure, pfas exposure, lead exposure, and a whole bunch of other pollution exposure. Bet it won't, because a correlation with those is not a desirable outcome.

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