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.”

  • dogs0n@sh.itjust.works
    14·
    2 days ago

    An admirable goal, even though I’m pretty sure current science says it’s not possible. I don’t think he’s smart, but maybe the actual smart people working on this will get somewhere, and if that helps people, that’s good.

    Might not get anywhere, but I suppose it’s worth a try (assuming the academics involved think there’s a good reason).

    At face value, it does seem like an invasion of privacy, if there’s no consent to share medical records, etc.

    p.s. the nazi comments are kinda gross, if they wanted to exterminate disabled people, they surely wouldn’t need to make headlines about them gathering data, it could be a private affair.