You’ll never believe how many more moons Saturn got after we started sending probes all around the solar system and started counting tiny rocks as moons

American Academy of Pediatrics statement on the 9/22 WH autism press conference: “Today’s White House event on autism was filled with dangerous claims and misleading information that sends a confusing message to parents and expecting parents and does a disservice to autistic individuals."

I’ve been combating medical misinformation for over two decades, and this feels not just quantitatively different, but qualitatively different.

Ok, enough of those fucking assholes. Look! A really cool book that you should get ASAP 👇🏻

Don’t take medical advice from the President. And vote out every single Senator who is responsible for RFK Jr. leading our Department of Health.

Trump once suggested that injecting bleach could help cure COVID. RFK has a long, long history of peddling medical misinformation to enrich himself. Please talk to your doctor. Please talk to your doctor. Please talk to your doctor.

Every time certain people talk about how many vaccines kids get, they increase the number. At a congressional hearing, a senator claimed kids get 76 vaccines. Now, Trump claims it's 80. Kids are vaccinated against 14 life-threatening diseases, often getting combination shots. He's not even close.

Standing up! Also suspect my grandfather was autistic as well.

I have a nerd basement full of comics, funkos, and collectible figurines that suggests otherwise.

Steve Silberman is rolling in his grave.* *literary license, Steve rejected the idea of an afterlife.

Hiya folks. I'm 53. I was not diagnosed with autism until age 47. I did not even suspect that I was autistic until I was 47--because I (and many others) didn't know that autism shows up differently in women.

To my autistic followers: I see you & I love who you are. To my followers with autistic kids: I see you—& your kid(s)—& I love who you are. To my followers who are expectant parents, living at the intersection of hope and fear, trying to do everything right, I see & love you—you’re doing amazing.

Medical ethicist Arthur Kaplan, quoted in the NYT: “The announcement on autism was the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recyling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies & dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority in the world claiming to know anything about science”

This is currently at the top of the New York Times app when I open it up. It is very good to see such a clear headline that this ignores scientific evidence. But to have this level of misinformation streaming out of the highest office of the land is a public health threat that is hard to overstate.

When Trump and RFK said there is no autism in Amish communities I yelled at the TV. This is persistent medical misinformation. It’s depraved. It’s also the cornerstone of RFK’s eugenic worldview. Here’s an explainer from 2023: publichealthcollaborative.org/alerts/anti-...

AUTISM ANNOUNCEMENT: does anyone wanna come over and build legos

Many studies have found that Tylenol is safe in pregnancy. And Trump's suggestion to use it sparingly, only when needed, at the lowest possible dose -- that's why obstetricians and gynecologists tell their patients to do with every drug.

Let me make this very clear: Being sarcastic about sexual assault while also anti science, and scaring pregnant people into not appropriately treating their pain while simultaneously belittling the lives of autistic people is really a full encapsulation of this administration.

Of the five men at that press conference, none were obstetrician gynecologists, toxicologists, infectious disease experts or pain medicine specialists. www.statnews.com/2025/09/22/t... via @statnews.com

None of the five men at that press conference are pediatricians who take care of kids. None are neurologists or psychologists, who study autism. What Is Leucovorin, the Medicine Being Approved for Autism Treatment? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/w...

Asking Trump for his personal opinion/recommendation of med issues is ridiculous. On the “spectrum” point, however, a mom at the presser also said something ramblingly disapproving re: the spectrum. I suspect they will try to narrow the dx criteria as a means of artificially dropping incidence.

Trump is calling autism “out of control” No… Autism stigma is out of control Ableism is out of control Inaccessibility to basic healthcare and support is out of control

Confucian elder reporting for duty. Bonus: I was diagnosed in grade school in the 60s, and am living proof it was never just for white boys. At least one other girl in metro Chicago was diagnosed at the same time, so blame Lake Michigan

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

🕴️🤷🏻

i am convinced that these people are death worshippers who want to spread as much disease and sickness as possible (i also think this is all tied up in eugenic beliefs about the “survival of the fittest” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/h...

I have zero fucking sense of humor about this rfk shit. besides the obviously gross misreprestation/othering/etc of autistic people it's catastrophic from any sound scientific POV. any doctor who consults governmental guidelines for anything at all under this admin is guilty of malpractice

You don't "see" it in us bc we were never diagnosed. They didn't know shit about autism when we were growing up. Hell, they "knew" there was NO such thing as comorbid autism & ADHD until 2013. There's no way I'm going for an official diagnosis now, putting myself on a gov list is not a top priority

Almost endless list of harmed populations from this announcement: pregnant people, autistic people, children affected by avoidable infectious disease, people who actually need leucovorin for medically established reasons, just about everyone really. Just this cabal causing so much avoidable harm

my father is 72 years old and didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until he was 67, which only happened because I got diagnosed at 27 and he went “wait …” when I described all the symptoms that led me to the psychiatrist in the first place

“I’m less careful about medical claims than is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” is quite a flex.

This autism press conference is an insult to science and medicine. It is a bunch of shameless male quacks shoveling bullshit at pregnant women, families and people with autism. This is a historic embarrassment for America and it is wildly dangerous.

I took Tylenol as needed throughout my pregnancy. I am a doctor. I order Tylenol for pregnant women regularly. Tylenol is safe in pregnancy. RFK Jr is ignoring a huge recent well-done study because he doesn't like the answer it gives. There is no causality between Tylenol and autism.

Let me introduce you to my undiagnosed father, my undiagnosed grandfather, my undiagnosed great-grandfather….

I'm still not really that comfortable admitting I'm over 50, but hey, it's me!

Once again... I have *multiple* ND relatives who were born before 1955, when Tylenol came out. You know what else my family has? A habit of having kids so late in life that I'm only 5 generations removed from our Revolutionary War ancestor. You know what's one of the things science has ...

This was most painfully true in his first term, particularly during the pandemic, and even more true this time around.

My father was so fucking autistic and he died at 74 without ever knowing that because 1) we have only been looking for about 5 minutes and 2) stigma and ableism from people like this fucker

I am 56 Neuro divergent here. I worked in community mental health 20 years ago. I had a client, a man with autism in his 50s. He spent at least 30 years at Torrance State Mental hospital in Pennsylvania

I really hate retroactive diagnosis as a rule, but if I were the kind of person who retroactively diagnosed historical figures, one screamingly obvious example of an autistic person from centuries ago was Immanuel Kant. Dude turned black-and-white thinking into a whole-ass theory of ethics.

Temple Grandin is 78 yrs old.

Hi! 54 in the spring.

Autistic was being used *as an insult* at least FIFTY YEARS AGO. Ask me how the fuck I know.

If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.

My mom got diagnosed in her 60s!

My uncle alas cannot stand up as he died 4 years ago, age 64 from complications from diabetes. But he was very much on the spectrum, it’s just they didn’t call it that when he was diagnosed as a child in the 60s with special needs. His grandson however is also on the spectrum.

I can name about 10 boomers off the top of my head for whom I’d bet good money on them being on the spectrum if they’d get evaluated. This is not an epidemic, it’s just human nature.

I'm 55, they can go to hell.