Autism, MAHA, and the Face of God
One part junk science, two parts incompetent government, and with a dash of blasphemy, for seasoning.
1. Eugenics
The executive branch is speedrunning ethnonationalism:
Immigrants are “poisoning the blood.”
With their “bad genes.”
The enemy within are “vermin.”
Speaking to the Other: “You are nothing.”
Yesterday we moved on to the dysgenic portion of the program with Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s press conference on autism where the MAGA/MAHA nexus made it clear that they view autistic people as mistakes; unfortunate victims of weak mothers who must be “cured.”
I can’t adequately summarize the event; you should see it for yourself. But I can offer some highlights.
President Trump said that childhood vaccines should be spaced out further than the current vaccine schedule: “They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace. . . . This is based on what I feel.”
Trump claimed that autism is caused by pregnant women taking Tylenol, and he excoriated the weak mothers who take the over-the-counter medication:
So taking Tylenol is not good. All right, I’ll say it. It’s not good. For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol used during pregnancy unless medically necessary.
That’s, for instance, in cases of extremely high fever that you feel you can’t tough it out. You can’t do it. I guess there’s that. It’s a small number of cases I think.
Trump and his appointees variously called autism an “epidemic” and a “horrible, horrible crisis.”
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said that it is “hard to watch” kids with autism and that “we can end the suffering” and that autism “may be entirely preventable.”