What part of 'autism is genetic' doesn't RFK Jr. understand?

     My father has blue eyes, but I do not. Mine are a lovely green. My older son nevertheless has blue eyes, as does his daughter, my granddaughter.
     The reason is obvious. The winter and spring of 1932, when my grandmother was pregnant with my father, were particularly chilly in New York City. While 1960 was exceptionally warm in Ohio. Cool weather, as you know, breeds eyes that are blue, a color associated with cold. While warmth sprouts green. This year was quite balmy, but my son keeps the air conditioning cranked up — his apartment is like a meat locker — and so we can assume that had a significant role in their daughter's ice blue eyes.
     If you're nodding in agreement, here's bad news. The above paragraph is nonsense, cooked up for illustrative purposes. Eye color has nothing to do with environment. It's genetically determined. Nothing that occurs after the moment of conception has any influence on eye color at birth (afterward, it can shift. Most white newborns have blue or gray eyes — Black newborns generally have brown eyes — but that often changes as the melanin pigment in the iris manifests itself).
     How then can someone with captivating green eyes, such as myself, and a classic Van Morrison brown-eyed girl, such as my wife, have a child with blue eyes? Genes are paired, one from each parent. The gene for blue is recessive, meaning it gets overshadowed by a dominant brown gene. If your mom gives you a brown gene, and your dad provides a blue, your eyes will be brown. But you can still turn around and pass that thwarted blue gene along to your child, which, matched with your mate's recessive blue gene, is why a baby born of two non-blue-eyed parents like my wife and myself can still have blue eyes.
     Are you following this? Accepting it? Good, because it is true. It's not controversial. So why run this little genetics lesson in a busy metropolitan newspaper? Here, take my hand, and let's take the leap together. One, two, three, go!
     Autism is genetically determined. Like eye color. I could have mentioned this when U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump held their press conference three weeks back to blame Tylenol for causing autism. But honestly, I was so gobsmacked by their dangerous suggestion that babies not be vaccinated against hepatitis B, I focused on that.
     Last Thursday — it seems a century ago — the secretary of HHS and the president drove this particular crazy bus into the spotlight at a Cabinet meeting, claiming that boys who receive circumcisions at birth get autism at twice the rate as the noncircumcised, citing a 2015 Danish study (doubling it into two studies, perhaps out of habit) that suggests the pain of circumcision could be related to autism. RFK Jr. made the leap to conclude that wee snipped bairns are often given Tylenol, aka acetaminophen, aka autism juice. QED, more proof!

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