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Wednesday, October 15, 2025

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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21 comments:

  1. Keep your wits about you is spot on.

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  2. Expecting science from a heroin addict like Brainworm Bobby is like expecting a lifelong conman like his demented, insane moronic boss to have an intelligent idea!

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  3. What part does idiot boy not get? Why all of itof couse

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  4. Another call to join my letter writing campaign to Sen. Bill Cassidy MD (R-LA) to shame him into doing something about insane RFK Jr. before he kills any more babies.

    Meanwhile, eye color is really interesting. My mother had hazel eyes, my dad had brown eyes. My sister and I got brown eyes, our two brothers got blue eyes! My wife has fine green eyes. We have three brown-eyed boys, though each of them has different shades of brown.

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  5. Bobby Jr. is a lunatic who was hired by a bigger lunatic. The orange one.
    Glad his father and his uncles are not around to see their name besmirched.
    The Kennedy name actually stood for something positive, back in the day.

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    1. You mean like Chappaquiddick?

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    2. Did I say which Kennedy uncles? No. RFK Jr. had three of them, not two.

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  6. Our future is directly tied to the media that is left speaking the truth.

    None of this both sides ism. There is fact, and there is fiction. The fact that the front page of every news media is not calling for MULTIPLE people to resign from the administration daily, is a travesty.

    This is the end of our great nation, and those with power or purchase have willingly bent the knee for a few more dollars.

    my what ever god there is have mercy on us all.

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  7. And yet the Repubs voted him in for this Cabinet post and approved the appointment. What does that say?

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    1. Anonymous, it's clear to me (and clearly you) that any and all republicans are complicit aiding and abetting the overthrowing of American democracy. There is no defending republicans or conservatives.

      Listening to Mike Johnson's press conferences daily is maddening.

      For year's I've been calling for the prosecution of people for their clear acts against the state. People need to be held accountable for their actions; if we can make it to that, it is the only way we continue.

      It will be labeled a witch-hunt and/or political attack on the "right" because there will be 999 republicans or conservatives charged for every left radical, but it won't be. It's just a fact that this is an attack on every single American institution and principle by the right.

      Anyone who doesn't say that or see it is literally part of the problem.

      I'm so tired of people not speaking the truth.

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  8. Unfortunately, the "nonsense" explanation of eye color is easier to understand than the informed rational explanation. Simpletons like simple solutions, but most of us are simpletons with regard to some knowledge, regardless of the depth of our understanding of other fields of study. There's no doubt that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has knowledge and skills with regard to some matters; unfortunately, he seems completely ignorant of the intricacies of the health care field which he is called on to guide. Not completely his fault; after all, none of of us can know everything. And it's not even President Trump's fault...at least not entirely. We the People elected him our leader, after being fully apprised of his incapacities and ignorance. For shame.

    tate

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    1. Tate, i think its clear that there are three "people" at fault here. And i don't blame trump at all, he's merely a symptom.

      Republicans, the media, and the non voters are responsible for this mess. How many republicans in office would it take to stop any of these things? Two, three four? Yet we never see more than a single one. They are complicit no matter what they say. so our their supporters. full stop.

      The media could be honest, but they really only care about money at the end of the day. Since Reagan killed the fairness doctrine media has been about money and control, not making the news. the slow slide to authoritarianism started then. Just look at almost any interview over the last 40 years. The closest we've gotten to good reporting was Stephonopolis cutting of JD Vance for lying on Sunday.

      The non voters could have tipped the election further for any candidate. Every day trump claims a mandate, he won by an incredibly small margin. Anyone who didn't vote -- for what ever reason they claimed -- has hastened our nations decent into tyranny. There is no excuse to not vote. none. Anything that happens is on them

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    2. He didn't win a majority. Something like 49.94% . A minority President, again

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    3. Final results, issued in December 2024:
      Stealers: 77.30 million (49.72%)
      Patriots: 75.02 million (48.25%)
      Others: 3.15 million (2.03%)

      Margin: 2.28 million (1.47%)

      Blame the non-voters...including the ones who stayed home because they thought Harris was not "pure enough." And, for the third time in a quarter-century (2000, 2016, 2024), the ones who threw their votes away on the "others"...the nobodies, thus handing the keys to the Orange Maniac. Again.

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  9. We need to be careful about how we use the word genetic. As you pointed out, we don’t yet know enough about autism to say what causes it. It appears to have genetic components, but saying it’s genetic, when read simplistically, may lead people to believe that it’s similar to inherited conditions such as Huntington’s. Complexity confounds understanding and explanation. Until
    more is known about autism’s mechanisms, we can have a more immediate effect on improving outcomes through improvements in early diagnoses and support for families.

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  10. Starting this column with the coincidental eye-color correlation was very clever.

    "Trump also got his shots, though don’t expect him to thunder about it on social media." Right, do you imagine that snake-oil salesmen actually quaffed their own snake oil? The news about him getting the vaccine should be referred to frequently to try to actually get some of his minions to understand how his charlatanism works. Do what I and my crackpot HHS director say, not what I do.

    "The bad news is that people are increasingly making choices in a whirlwind of official disinformation." On Monday, the cartoon "Pearls Before Swine" (found daily in the Sun-Times...) pondered: If the 1700s were known as "The Age of Enlightenment," what will our time be known as? The answer there was "The Age of the Dumbass," but I think one could do worse than "The Age of Disinformation." I believe that, if there weren't a very well-funded, decades-long enterprise dedicated to spreading one-sided, often false information, we would not be in the situation we find ourselves.

    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2025/10/13

    a.) Many people don't like to think that bad things happen to good people.
    b.) Many people yearn to believe that they can control every aspect of their own lives.
    c.) Many people are very interested in blaming other people when something goes wrong for them.

    I think Secretary Brainworm's declarations about autism (and many other conditions) reflect all of those points. Folks want to believe that they can control what's going to happen to them and their children, and they're quick to blame somebody else for problems if they can. Genetics be damned, it's the makers of Tylenol who are to blame. I did my own research! Now its been validated by that long-time crank with no medical training, RFK, Jr.!

    The world is a very complicated place, and the Secretary is interested in simple solutions, primarily ones that align with his conspiracy theories.

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    1. " I believe that, if there weren't a very well-funded, decades-long enterprise dedicated to spreading one-sided, often false information, we would not be in the situation we find ourselves.

      https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2025/10/13

      a.) Many people don't like to think that bad things happen to good people.
      b.) Many people yearn to believe that they can control every aspect of their own lives.
      c.) Many people are very interested in blaming other people when something goes wrong for them."

      I think you just described religion.

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    2. Random events. People can't seem to grasp that concept. There must be a reason. It HAS to be a simple reason. It must be Tylenol or circumcision. Or vaccines. We have invented countless religions to explain random events. All because we can't understand it, so we invent the reason so we can control it.

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  11. And I just this morning I fell into listening to BeSmart molecular biologist Joe Hanson discuss genetics in "Why Everyone Suddenly Has Autism".

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  12. Isn't this how science works?:

    Using acetaminophen during pregnancy may increase children’s autism and ADHD risk | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health https://share.google/X8saaGsbK31GcZeVI

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  13. That study showed correlation not causation. Why did study subjects used acetaminophen? For body pain? Or fever? Both reasons, but especially fever alone or with body pain is an indicator of infection. Even low grade infections can increase fetal risk of genetetic mutation of all sorts. Include complex triggers...

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