4 ms·

"Kennedy also claimed most autism cases are severe before citing a statistic from the report that said 25 percent of children with autism are nonverbal. HHS did

"Kennedy also claimed most autism cases are severe before citing a statistic from the report that said 25 percent of children with autism are nonverbal. HHS did not respond to a question as to whether the 25 percent statistic accounts for all severe cases." The tricky thing about a (probably misleading) statistic like that is 0% of the autistic people I know are nonverbal, but I suppose if I know them in any real capacity, they have to be verbal. Anyway, this freakout about autism seems overblown to me. Can any RFK championers explain this one to me?

wickedsight 2y ago
> this freakout about autism seems overblown to me. That's the point. It's a distraction with no possible verifiable result. His supporters will see this on the news and say: "Wow, Kennedy is finally really doing something about that scary Autism stuff, he's great!" At some point he can just misrepresent some existing research and blame microplastics (or something else) for autism and proudly talk about this in the media.
recursivecaveat 2y ago
I have no dog in this, but the sources I can find all say something like 25-30% non-verbal or minimally verbal. People seem to group them together, so I think 'minimally verbal' must be nearly as severe. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3869868/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3869868/
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
There was a CDC report recently that defined "profound autism" as "nonverbal, were minimally verbal, or had an intelligence quotient <50". They found roughly 25% of kids diagnosed by age 8 fitted this category. This category seems to be growing, but not as fast as autism disgnosis generally. The obvious statistical issue here is that to have received a diagnosis by age 8 you need to be showing more severe symptoms. This shows up in the fact that these kids are "more likely to be female, from racial and ethnic minority groups, of low socioeconomic status" compared with kids with autism generally because the ability to get diagnosed for milder forms is harder for those groups (more mildly autistic girls seem to mask their social symptoms better than boys, which has historically led to them being undercounted and unrepresented in the common stereotype). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00333549231163551 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00333549231163551

wickedsight 2y ago

> this freakout about autism seems overblown to me. That's the point. It's a distraction with no possible verifiable result. His supporters will see this on the news and say: "Wow, Kennedy is finally really doing something about that scary Autism stuff, he's great!" At some point he can just misrepresent some existing research and blame microplastics (or something else) for autism and proudly talk about this in the media.

recursivecaveat 2y ago

I have no dog in this, but the sources I can find all say something like 25-30% non-verbal or minimally verbal. People seem to group them together, so I think 'minimally verbal' must be nearly as severe. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3869868/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3869868/

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

There was a CDC report recently that defined "profound autism" as "nonverbal, were minimally verbal, or had an intelligence quotient <50". They found roughly 25% of kids diagnosed by age 8 fitted this category. This category seems to be growing, but not as fast as autism disgnosis generally. The obvious statistical issue here is that to have received a diagnosis by age 8 you need to be showing more severe symptoms. This shows up in the fact that these kids are "more likely to be female, from racial and ethnic minority groups, of low socioeconomic status" compared with kids with autism generally because the ability to get diagnosed for milder forms is harder for those groups (more mildly autistic girls seem to mask their social symptoms better than boys, which has historically led to them being undercounted and unrepresented in the common stereotype). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00333549231163551 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00333549231163551