Autism awareness or alarmism?

To the Editor:

I write with alarm and disagreement in reference to the three autism-referencing pieces in the April 11 issue of The Lakeland Times: the editorial, “Finally, an administration that cares about autism”, and the two related news pieces, the front-page headline “NIH to launch study to find causes of autism”, and “Meta-analysis: Environmental pollutants are significant risk factors for autism” on page 9. Alarm because your editorial would conclude that in a national health crisis anyone could be legitimately licensed by our elected representatives to kill or cripple me.

I take it the endgame or your editorial is to persuade your readers to accept your conclusion that public health agencies have shown they can no longer be trusted to issue public health directives because, for example in connection with Covid, their vaccine mandates resulted in injection of “a product that … has killed countless numbers of people, many young people among them, and caused serious side effects in millions more.” And that the power to issue such directives should be taken away from the public health scientists and vested in elected politicians: “…the sole mission of the health agencies [must be] to present the data to the public and let the public make the policies through their elected representatives.”

Which is almost word-for-word out of Project 2025, p. 454: “CDC should report on the risks and effectiveness of all infectious disease-mitigation measures dispassionately and leave the ‘should’ and ‘must’ policy calls to politically accountable parties.”

This endgame seems based on a political philosophy that public health policy must respect individual freedom. Or, as you put it: “Science is never served by refusing to test the strength of our convictions. It’s about informed consent and informed choice. That’s what freedom is all about.” 

Which too sounds like Project 2025: “By statute or regulation, CDC guidance must be prohibited from taking on a prescriptive character. For example, never again should CDC officials be allowed to say in their official capacity that school children ‘should be’ masked or vaccinated … or prohibited from learning in a school building. Such decisions should be left to parents and medical providers.” (p. 454)

Your editorial is aimed at persuading your reader of the desirability of a shift of power away from the public health scientists by criticizing them yourself (by accusing them, quite incredibly, of killer vaccines, above) and by taking the opportunity of Autism Awareness Month to suggest that not only have they ignored investigating possible causes of autism themselves, they’ve tried to marginalize an “engaged grassroots army,” a “committed if small group of scientists” that “has preformed yeoman’s work in conducting unpopular studies that suggest environmental causes and triggers, even though they have had to endure savage attempts to ruin their careers.”

Following up on your exemplary non-establishment scientists’ promising work on possible causes of autism could help create public distrust in the public health “establishment” that’s been ignoring or outright denigrating the “grassroots army” of such scientists and their work, and thereby build support for your call to take the “establishment’s” prescriptive authority away and give it to the people (‘s representatives).

The “Meta-analysis” article, following up on your editorial reference to possible environmental toxin — autism links, reports on a large survey at a Brazilian university medical school of studies indicating presence of environmental toxins in autistic persons, but doesn’t mention vaccines at all. A postscript at the end does: in a report by a former CBS reporter of links between toxins and each of 52 illnesses that lists exposure to vaccines as “plausible associated toxins” in juvenile diabetes and in obesity, but does not list exposure to vaccines (although it does list seven other “toxins” as proven links, and four other “toxins” as probable links) as having a connection to autism. In sum, with no movement in this article from environment-autism link to vaccine-autism link, and with no vaccine-autism link in the list of toxin-autism links, the “Meta-analysis” article can’t support connecting the “grassroots army’s” environmental toxin — autism research with a vaccine — autism criticism of public health scientists, and so can’t draw any public trust away from public health scientists, and so doesn’t contribute anything to support your editorial endgame.

Even less so does the “NIH…” article, though it starts off promising, sounding like it might be going to say something about environmental toxins included in vaccines: “As vaccines in general come under more scrutiny in the post-Covid mRNA world, and as environmental toxins are increasingly eyed as a major factor in triggering autism, including those in vaccines, this week the [NIH] confirmed that it would undertake a study….” But the article continues to the end without another word about environmental toxins in vaccines and without citing any source for its up-front implication that some vaccines may have environmental toxins in them. Without either one, this “NIH…” article too can’t support the environmental toxin — autism progress of the anti-establishment grass roots army as starting to show up the “zombies” and “fraudsters” (your terms) at our public health agencies, thereby drawing public trust away from those zombies and fraudsters. So the NIH article, too, doesn’t support your editorial endgame.

So aside from your robust editorial voice, maybe your call to freedom: “Science is never served by refusing to test the strength of our convictions. It’s about informed consent and informed choice. That’s what freedom is all about.” — my right, that is, to freedom from control by government scientists, freedom subject only to my control through representatives that I elect — maybe your call to freedom will drum up support to shift public health mandate power over the public from government scientists and their science to elected representatives listening to their voters. 

And then the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk, ruling in the next deadly public health crisis that people only have to get vaccinated if they want to, could in effect be granting your freedom-lovers a license to kill or cripple their kids, their neighbors, and their neighbors’ kids. 

No thanks. 

Tom Dickson

Rhinelander