Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we get into it now. Let's get into it now,
all right. So RFK Junior, I sent you. I sent
you some clips that I want to play here of
RFK Junior yesterday talking about autism. And you know, I'm
no expert on this stuff, but the idea is that
the United States is dealing with an epidemic, if you will,
(00:21):
of autism, and there are going to be more studies
that are going to be coming out in the next
week's months, according to RFK Junior about this, And here's
him speaking yesterday to the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And within three weeks and probably we're hoping in two weeks,
we're going to announce a series of new studies to
identify precisely what the environmental toxins are that are causing it.
This has not been done before, and we're going to
do it in a thorough and comprehensive way, and we're
going to get back to it with an answer to
(00:58):
the American people very quickly.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So there's the gist of what he's talking about here.
He speaks on this also about how the United States
is kind of on the hook to help pay for
this and the people of this country and how autism
is creating more costs for families and for people in
the United States. So here's RFK Junior speaking further on
(01:24):
the effects of autism in America.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
There's a recent study by blackxail at All and a
team of other researchers said that the cause of treating
autism in this country by twenty thirty five, so within
ten years, will be a trillion dollars a year. This
is added to already astronomical health care costs. And then
there's an individual injury. These are kids that this is
(01:49):
a preventable disease. We know it's an environmental exposure. It
has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. They can
provide a vulnerability you needed environmental toxin. And herber Hertz
Pachoda pointed out that the that because of this mythology,
(02:11):
ten to the the amount of money and resources put
into studying genetic causes, which is a dead end, has
been historically ten to twenty times the amount to spent
by NIH and other agencies to study environmental factors, to
(02:31):
study exposures, to study external factors. And that's where we're
going to find the answer.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
That's you know, you talk about cost of treating autism
by twenty thirty five. Based on this, with one and
every thirty one children affected in America at least to
this point, would be a trillion dollars a year. Now,
I'm not a mathematician or a scientist, so I don't know.
But based on the trends that he is reporting on here,
that's a lot of money. A trillion here, a trillion there,
(02:59):
that's a lot a lot of money. Now when he
talks about the next piece of this, right, I think
all of us would be curious to know. Okay, you're
telling me an environmental toxin in our area of the
world is creating this. This is something that's been introduced
to people. Is it through the vaccines that they have?
Is it through the water that they drink? Is this
(03:21):
you know done? Like, how does this happen?
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Well?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
This is where RFK Junior went a little bit further
to try to illustrate his point, and this has not
gone over so well with some people in the United States.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
We just take a listen.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
These are children who should not be who should not
be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them,
were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure
into autism when they're two years old. And these are
kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job,
(03:58):
they'll never play bass. Oh, they'll never write a poem,
they'll never go out on a date. Many of them
will never use a toilet unassistant, and we have to
recognize we are doing this to our children and we
need to put an end to it.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And I don't think that he means anything badly at
all by this, by the way. I think he's got
a good heart for the issue itself and he wants
everyone to be as healthy as they possibly can be. However,
I know many people along the entire spectrum of autism.
There's a pretty famous autistic guy who leans into his
(04:36):
autism right now. Who's the most famous guy with autism
that you can think of? Well, there's a pretty easy
answer that's working in the White House pretty frequently these days.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Ah, the weirdo Elon Musk. He's a weirdo.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You know why because he loves being a weirdo and
he talks about his dealings with autism himself. His guy's
in his fifties. He's used it to great advantage. It's
almost a superpower. For him that he's found something he loves.
I mean multiple things that he loves, and he's got
a lot of drive and ambition. He's definitely paying taxes.
(05:07):
He certainly could have played baseball if he wanted to
at some level. You and me, we may not be
very good at baseball, but you know, we play baseball
if you know you have the ability to. They'll never
hold a job that doesn't seem to be entirely accurate.
I have a family member that has autism. He was
he was pretty hurt by all this. He was pretty
hurt by the way that RFK Junior talks about autism here. Now,
(05:29):
I did go to school with one specific student who
had a form of autism. That he's essentially nonverbal is
not the right way to say it. But he couldn't
communicate with you properly. He could do simple sign language
for a few things, and he would make sounds that
were more attuned to like grunts or kind of like
sometimes he'd you know, scream really loud. You've been around
(05:52):
people that are kind of like this, constantly needing someone
to be with them and to help them around. He
was at school, he was in class with me of course,
he couldn't learn the same way we did, and that's
another challenge for the teachers and for the people that
are helping him. But he's an extreme example on the
spectrum of just not being able to communicate. Now, I
(06:13):
know a lot of people who are on what they
would call the spectrum that can communicate pretty well. They
may have a little bit of awkwardness, they may have aspergers,
and they you know, that is a pretty highly functional
form of what we consider autism. And I just don't
think he articulated the details that he was aiming for
here properly. There are some people, of course, that they
(06:34):
won't be able to hold a job, or they won't
be able to play baseball, or they won't be able
to write a poem because of whatever physical or potential
mental in capabilities they may have based on something they
cannot control. And RFK Junior is pleading with us, saying
that we can control this if we learn about what
causes this. We need to try to retract whatever the
exposure is to our kids so they're not having to
(06:57):
worry about this for future generations. I think that that
is a noble cause. But there are many people in
the autistic community today that have put out their feelings
about the way that this was talked about yesterday by
RFK and said, I don't know who you think I am,
but you don't know me. You obviously don't seem to
(07:18):
know any autistic people, if that's how you feel about
autistic people. And I don't know this. I've been saying
it since the election in November. This administration, more than
any administration in the history of America, needed to control
the narrative on everything it was doing. And I know
that Donald Trump and some of his closest allies enjoy
(07:39):
the trolling. Elon Musk has really fallen into that too,
just love to, you know, kind of rile up the
political opponents that are going out of their way to
laugh about this stuff. And they they are, you know,
Elon's pulling out the chainsaw when everybody's saying he's taken
a hack saw to the government and to people's jobs,
(07:59):
and he come out with the chainsaw. He enjoys the
discourse there, but it's not helpful if you're trying to
build on positive momentum. And I think RFK Junior is
trying to do something good here by trying to figure
out what causes autism, come out with a report, and
see if we can't make some changes to see if
it does help for future generations.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I think that's good.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
But in the same moment, you can't also be like half,
you have this idea of what you're trying to say,
but you insult every person in America with autism across
the entire spectrum in one fell swoop while also trying
to say we need to try to prevent autism for
future generations. It didn't need to necessarily kind of generalize
(08:46):
all people with autism in that same moment. And I
see a lot of people who otherwise would be like,
I think this is good saying I don't know why
you had to say it like that. I feel like
I'm still being a functional member of society right now.
If you've got thoughts, let's open those phone in four
h two five five eight eleven ten. Four oh two
five five eight eleven ten. Do you have somebody in
your family with autism? How did you take this information
(09:07):
from RFK Junior. You can call us at four h
two five five eight eleven ten or email me Emory
at kfab dot com. News Radio eleven ten.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Kfab and Mares Songer.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
We were talking about UH autism and the ability for
us to speak about it, but also what RFK Junior
is hoping to learn about it, and he came out
yesterday and said that within two or three weeks he
hopes to have some answers to the environmental toxins that
he believes are creating the autism issue in America. And
(09:40):
I kind of suggested, you know, RFK Junior has kind
of been one to mention this stuff, and he's been
at war with chemical companies for a long time, as
we had a caller mentioned, but I do think that
it's important, within the proper context to understand what he
probably is also fighting against here. And I mentioned that
it is a way the United States, with our capitalist society,
(10:04):
has made it more beneficial for companies to treat symptoms
than it is for people to cure you. And again
that goes against the oath of the doctor. And I'm
not saying that's happening all over the place, and I
do think there are good people that are working in
the healthcare industry, but it does seem to be a
little bit backwards with how much it costs for us
to continue to take medication and why we need to
(10:26):
stay on medication to keep ourselves as healthy as possible.
Autism is just kind of a more It comes up
in our youth mostly and unfortunately we haven't really pinned
down exactly what creates or causes it, and then it
creates a depending on the kind of autism we're speaking of,
(10:46):
can create a lot of challenges for that individual, that
individual's family and the like, for their you know, childhood,
but also for a lot of them as they enter
high school, college, in adulthood. I'm getting your thoughts on this.
Four hundred to four hundred, four oh two five to
five eight eleven ten is the number four oh two
(11:07):
five five eight eleven ten. Mike is on the line. Hello, Mike,
how you doing today?
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Doing great? Hemory? Thank you. I think a lot of
the conversation is focused on r K Junior's in artful
comments that that hurt a lot of feelings, and you know,
for people to have autism, it's, you know, it's I
guess in some cases it's a very unfortunate thing. But
what our junior is trying to do is find what's
causing autism so we can prevent future cases of that,
(11:36):
and I would look hard as a vaccine schedule. They
are vaccinating, you know, newborns for hepatitis B, and my
question is, why do we give newborn babies vaccinations at all?
Why can't we wait till their immune systems are a
little bit more developed. So I think that should be
that and maybe there are other environmental factors, but the
health people are going to really resist any any skepticism
(11:59):
about that vaccines, and they tend to call people anti
vacs if they ask questions. And I think you could
be pro vaccine on some vaccines, but ask questions about
why we get babies vaccines for hepatitis B, which is
really a sexually transmitted or disease.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, needles, needles, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I Mike, to be honest with you, I think you
make an interesting point there. We think especially I think
COVID made this way worse than it was before. But
there was an element of people that were questioning the
vaccine process in the United States, and rightly so, right like,
you want to know what the healthcare industry is doing
for you. You shouldn't just be blindly going in and
(12:42):
doing whatever people say you should be doing. If you
don't understand it or you're not sure about it. But
the difference between being anti vacs and being one hundred
percent VACS, I think most people probably are in the middle.
There's a way to have a nuance of that conversation too,
of like, well, obviously it makes sense to be vaccinated
against the measles. Obviously for a lot of people, getting
the flu vaccine makes a lot of sense for them.
(13:02):
But that doesn't mean that you have to like just
be one hundred percent subscribing to all vaccine science, because
that's not the way that this stuff works.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
It's really actually go ahead.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Actually, Emory alexperience and pointed to a Cleveland clinic study
that was recently done I think with their own healthcare
workers that said that if you had the flu vaccine,
I think you were like twenty percent more likely to
get it than if you didn't have flu vaccine. So
there are some questions about that. I think the obvious
vaccine that everybody agrees is a good one is the
(13:32):
polio vaccine. But for sure, so the other ones are questionable,
and particularly for you know, for the early ages, if
you know, I think that I think that they actually
delay the vaccines until children are older and more more
have developed eco psychologically, and mentally more.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Hey, Mike, really appreciate your thoughts today. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
All right, Thanks all right.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Email is Emory at kfab dot com. Chris sent this
in and said, most doctors and other providers are overscheduled
and overworked and don't need to keep patients in their
practice for monetary reasons. I may have missed the other
part of this conversation, but to insinuate physicians would withhold
some mythical treatment for any diseases ridiculous and profoundly insulting. Yeah,
(14:14):
so Chris missed kind of what the larger conversation of
that was, and it wasn't. This is a conspiracy theory, right,
but it's a question that I think is worth asking.
There are people out there that say I'm not getting
the treatment that I need. I had another person that
sent me in, David I think was his name, sent
me an email and said, usually it takes two hours
to get like an autism pre scan. I got one
(14:35):
that was forty five minutes. We got blowed off by
multiple people who were just not interested in speaking with
us about this. Eighteen months later, my son gets diagnosed
with autism, and he feels like he didn't get the
attention that he just like like he thought he needed,
and for those eighteen months until that diagnosis came through,
(14:57):
he couldn't get the treatment to help his is kid right.
And that's where the conversation came from, is what hurdles
created that problem? What barriers were there. How do you
explain to a person like David that, no, we did
the full scan, we did the screening properly, and everything
that happened had to have occurred after, you know that
(15:21):
eighteen months after that appointment. I don't know how you
tell somebody that. And again, I'm not in a position
to understand that myself because it's a more complicated issue
than that it really is, and I've never had to
be in those conversations. I just know that I do
have family members that are autistic. I did go to
school with kids that are autistic. It's a multitude of people.
I've worked with people that have autism. It's a huge
(15:42):
spectrum of different levels of functionality and also different levels
of what they can do independently. I think there's a
way that we can have that conversation without generalizing everybody
in the same pot. And I'm just fearful that that's
what the people on the political left who are trying
to tear down this administration. Every chance you get an
(16:02):
opportunity to control that narrative, they're going to do it.
And this was an opportunity on a noble cause from
RFK Junior to speak on this, and unfortunately it came
out as if he was generalizing everyone with autism, and
that just didn't come out right. It just it really didn't.
It missed the mark. We will finish this conversation and
again at the bottom of the hour, we are scheduled
(16:23):
to listen to what the police update is down there
in Tallahassee the shooting at Florida State University today. We'll
tell you about that coming up on news Radio eleven
ten kfab Emery sunger our conversation on autism in the
way that RFK Junior spoke about it yesterday. I did
have another email from Sue. It came in and said, hello, Emery,
(16:43):
my son is twenty four and has autism. As a toddler,
he was developing and speaking normally. Then one day stared
into space and didn't answer to his name. Today he
speaks about one hundred and twenty five words and he
needs twenty four to seven care and supervision. To say
it's been very hard is an understatement. It's affecting my marriage, job, friendships, everything.
(17:04):
I love him to death, but he is exactly what
Robert F. Kennedy described. I can only be thankful that
he is happy and doesn't know or understand all the
things in his life. He's missing out on the grief
his father and I experienced, and intense. Is intense, and
I would give just about anything if my son had
a chance at a normal life. No offense taken here
from Robert Kennedy. That's certainly the other side of that coin.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
We talked about how this could be deemed generalization of
people who are dealing with autism. We talked about how
that could be hurtful to somebody who is a fully functioning,
independent individual that has been diagnosed with autism in our
society today. But what about the people that have dealt
with a person on the other end of that, the
person exactly as Sue mentioned that RFK Junior described. I
(17:50):
couldn't imagine what that's like, and I am sorry to
hear of all of the things that it is created
for Sue and her family, and I just couldn't imagine
what it would be like to have to try to
come to terms with that on a day to day basis.
And I'm sure it would be families like Sues who
(18:11):
are cheering for our FK Junior to come up with
an answer as to how we can potentially avoid this
from happening in the future. And I couldn't imagine if
we find out that this is something related to some
sort of environmental toxins, as our FK Junior put it,
as far as would that mean vaccines? Is that something
in our water? Is that something in our air? What
(18:32):
exactly does that mean? Is it something that we're eating.
Is it something that a mother would be eating or
drinking while pregnant. I don't know, But he says we're
going to get down to the bottom of this in
the coming weeks and months, and I couldn't imagine the
pain that it probably will feel for a lot of
families who have someone who is dealing with autism and
really needs help, has no chance to live an independent life,
(18:55):
and what could have been prevented based on things that
happened before they were born or in the early developmental
years of their life.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
It's just it's crazy to me. It's like the worst.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Fear of my life is knowing I made any kind
of mistake that would have really inhibited all my entire future,
like one of those things that happened that It's just like,
if that wouldn't have happened, how different is my life?
That is like the nightmare fuel for me on a
day to day basis. So I am hopeful. I am
very hopeful that whatever comes out of this, the people
(19:31):
who have children with autism, people who have maybe unknowingly
exposed their family members or anything like that to harmful
vaccines or substances or air quality or whatever it ends
up being, can come to some sort of piece of
understanding that the education just didn't exist in that same way.
And we've done this throughout history as science has made
(19:53):
its progress over the last one hundred years especially, So
that's my hope is we can only hope that people
can come to terms with whatever this is and we
can make the proper adjustments for future generations. Yeah, it
is pretty difficult. So AJ sent me this and said,
aren't maybe's immediately forced me back the first day or two. Yeah,
(20:14):
there are some vaccinations that babies are given. But he
also sent me this list of since nineteen ninety, the
increase of diagnoses on certain things. And I put this
into a bit of a like, it's kind of difficult
to describe this and why this happens. Yes, we could
say that we are diagnosed lately, this is a diagnosis issue,
(20:36):
but we also say it's just we have better science
to diagnose this stuff. Right. I believe I had COVID
nineteen in like December of twenty nineteen. This was before
we had a test in North America for COVID. But
I got really sick about a month or so before
the first true positive test of COVID nineteen occurred. And
(20:58):
then as we got into you know, February, March, and
April and May of twenty twenty, what did those numbers
of positive tests do? They skyrocketed? Well, how many of
those positive tests were even available in January? Who's to
say a lot of people who got sick in January
didn't have COVID, but instead they had COVID and just
didn't get diagnosed with it because they didn't have a
(21:19):
proper test for it. Right, I wonder how much of
what this list is and that includes diabetes, depression, Alzheimer's,
things that have been around for decades, but also some
things like you know, lupus and for Celiac disease and ADHD,
which I know that we have kind of an adjustment
of definitions on some of that stuff for him. And
(21:39):
again I'm not a doctor, and I'm not going to
pretend like I'm some sort of expert on this stuff.
But bipolar disorder in youth, he says, the disease in
or disorder increased in this case for bipolar disorder an
increase of ten thousand and eighty one hundred and thirty
three percent and diagnosed bipolar disorder in youth, and an
eight hundred and nineteen percent increase in diagnosis of ADHD.
(22:02):
So what's changed. It could be just the way that
we're identifying issues and how we're labeling these things. You know,
maybe somebody who was like me when I was growing up,
you know, I wasn't diagnosed with anything, but there's a
chance that with my behavior and how I behave, there's
a chance that I landed in one of these. But
there was no need to test for it. Well, nowadays
(22:23):
we have tests for everything there. Doctors are very quick
to you know, give a diagnosis or a label to
something even if it doesn't necessarily need a lot of
intense treatment. So that would be kind of the question
where does that land here? That's the one thing that
I'd be very curious to find out. But we're gonna
(22:43):
we'll take our time with this, RFK Junior said, within
two to three weeks, you know what, I'm going to
be sitting here two or three weeks from now, and
when that information comes out, we can sit here and
we can talk about it. We can talk about what
we think of the findings. We can talk about what
we can do in the future to help lower the
rate of autism and any of these other disorders by
potential exposure of different things for our youth or maybe
(23:04):
even before they're born. How do we do that. We
have to be attentive to it, we have to have
open minds, and I'm not gonna get overtly political by it.
I just do ask and hope that our governmental employees
have that wherewithal to be as descriptive and as articulate
about it as possible. So nobody feels like they are
being offended by this. Got more on the way, We'll
(23:24):
give you that up opportunity to hear from the police
department and Tallahassee coming up here on news Radio eleven
ten KFAB and
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Marie Songer on news Radio eleven ten Kfab
So we get into it now. Let's get into it now,
all right. So RFK Junior, I sent you. I sent
you some clips that I want to play here of
RFK Junior yesterday talking about autism. And you know, I'm
no expert on this stuff, but the idea is that
the United States is dealing with an epidemic, if you will,
(00:21):
of autism, and there are going to be more studies
that are going to be coming out in the next
week's months, according to RFK Junior about this, And here's
him speaking yesterday to the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And within three weeks and probably we're hoping in two weeks,
we're going to announce a series of new studies to
identify precisely what the environmental toxins are that are causing it.
This has not been done before, and we're going to
do it in a thorough and comprehensive way, and we're
going to get back to it with an answer to
(00:58):
the American people very quickly.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So there's the gist of what he's talking about here.
He speaks on this also about how the United States
is kind of on the hook to help pay for
this and the people of this country and how autism
is creating more costs for families and for people in
the United States. So here's RFK Junior speaking further on
(01:24):
the effects of autism in America.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
There's a recent study by blackxail at All and a
team of other researchers said that the cause of treating
autism in this country by twenty thirty five, so within
ten years, will be a trillion dollars a year. This
is added to already astronomical health care costs. And then
there's an individual injury. These are kids that this is
(01:49):
a preventable disease. We know it's an environmental exposure. It
has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. They can
provide a vulnerability you needed environmental toxin. And herber Hertz
Pachoda pointed out that the that because of this mythology,
(02:11):
ten to the the amount of money and resources put
into studying genetic causes, which is a dead end, has
been historically ten to twenty times the amount to spent
by NIH and other agencies to study environmental factors, to
(02:31):
study exposures, to study external factors. And that's where we're
going to find the answer.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
That's you know, you talk about cost of treating autism
by twenty thirty five. Based on this, with one and
every thirty one children affected in America at least to
this point, would be a trillion dollars a year. Now,
I'm not a mathematician or a scientist, so I don't know.
But based on the trends that he is reporting on here,
that's a lot of money. A trillion here, a trillion there,
(02:59):
that's a lot a lot of money. Now when he
talks about the next piece of this, right, I think
all of us would be curious to know. Okay, you're
telling me an environmental toxin in our area of the
world is creating this. This is something that's been introduced
to people. Is it through the vaccines that they have?
Is it through the water that they drink? Is this
(03:21):
you know done? Like, how does this happen?
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Well?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
This is where RFK Junior went a little bit further
to try to illustrate his point, and this has not
gone over so well with some people in the United States.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
We just take a listen.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
These are children who should not be who should not
be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them,
were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure
into autism when they're two years old. And these are
kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job,
(03:58):
they'll never play bass. Oh, they'll never write a poem,
they'll never go out on a date. Many of them
will never use a toilet unassistant, and we have to
recognize we are doing this to our children and we
need to put an end to it.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And I don't think that he means anything badly at
all by this, by the way. I think he's got
a good heart for the issue itself and he wants
everyone to be as healthy as they possibly can be. However,
I know many people along the entire spectrum of autism.
There's a pretty famous autistic guy who leans into his
(04:36):
autism right now. Who's the most famous guy with autism
that you can think of? Well, there's a pretty easy
answer that's working in the White House pretty frequently these days.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Ah, the weirdo Elon Musk. He's a weirdo.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You know why because he loves being a weirdo and
he talks about his dealings with autism himself. His guy's
in his fifties. He's used it to great advantage. It's
almost a superpower. For him that he's found something he loves.
I mean multiple things that he loves, and he's got
a lot of drive and ambition. He's definitely paying taxes.
(05:07):
He certainly could have played baseball if he wanted to
at some level. You and me, we may not be
very good at baseball, but you know, we play baseball
if you know you have the ability to. They'll never
hold a job that doesn't seem to be entirely accurate.
I have a family member that has autism. He was
he was pretty hurt by all this. He was pretty
hurt by the way that RFK Junior talks about autism here. Now,
(05:29):
I did go to school with one specific student who
had a form of autism. That he's essentially nonverbal is
not the right way to say it. But he couldn't
communicate with you properly. He could do simple sign language
for a few things, and he would make sounds that
were more attuned to like grunts or kind of like
sometimes he'd you know, scream really loud. You've been around
(05:52):
people that are kind of like this, constantly needing someone
to be with them and to help them around. He
was at school, he was in class with me of course,
he couldn't learn the same way we did, and that's
another challenge for the teachers and for the people that
are helping him. But he's an extreme example on the
spectrum of just not being able to communicate. Now, I
(06:13):
know a lot of people who are on what they
would call the spectrum that can communicate pretty well. They
may have a little bit of awkwardness, they may have aspergers,
and they you know, that is a pretty highly functional
form of what we consider autism. And I just don't
think he articulated the details that he was aiming for
here properly. There are some people, of course, that they
(06:34):
won't be able to hold a job, or they won't
be able to play baseball, or they won't be able
to write a poem because of whatever physical or potential
mental in capabilities they may have based on something they
cannot control. And RFK Junior is pleading with us, saying
that we can control this if we learn about what
causes this. We need to try to retract whatever the
exposure is to our kids so they're not having to
(06:57):
worry about this for future generations. I think that that
is a noble cause. But there are many people in
the autistic community today that have put out their feelings
about the way that this was talked about yesterday by
RFK and said, I don't know who you think I am,
but you don't know me. You obviously don't seem to
(07:18):
know any autistic people, if that's how you feel about
autistic people. And I don't know this. I've been saying
it since the election in November. This administration, more than
any administration in the history of America, needed to control
the narrative on everything it was doing. And I know
that Donald Trump and some of his closest allies enjoy
(07:39):
the trolling. Elon Musk has really fallen into that too,
just love to, you know, kind of rile up the
political opponents that are going out of their way to
laugh about this stuff. And they they are, you know,
Elon's pulling out the chainsaw when everybody's saying he's taken
a hack saw to the government and to people's jobs,
(07:59):
and he come out with the chainsaw. He enjoys the
discourse there, but it's not helpful if you're trying to
build on positive momentum. And I think RFK Junior is
trying to do something good here by trying to figure
out what causes autism, come out with a report, and
see if we can't make some changes to see if
it does help for future generations.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I think that's good.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
But in the same moment, you can't also be like half,
you have this idea of what you're trying to say,
but you insult every person in America with autism across
the entire spectrum in one fell swoop while also trying
to say we need to try to prevent autism for
future generations. It didn't need to necessarily kind of generalize
(08:46):
all people with autism in that same moment. And I
see a lot of people who otherwise would be like,
I think this is good saying I don't know why
you had to say it like that. I feel like
I'm still being a functional member of society right now.
If you've got thoughts, let's open those phone in four
h two five five eight eleven ten. Four oh two
five five eight eleven ten. Do you have somebody in
your family with autism? How did you take this information
(09:07):
from RFK Junior. You can call us at four h
two five five eight eleven ten or email me Emory
at kfab dot com. News Radio eleven ten.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Kfab and Mares Songer.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
We were talking about UH autism and the ability for
us to speak about it, but also what RFK Junior
is hoping to learn about it, and he came out
yesterday and said that within two or three weeks he
hopes to have some answers to the environmental toxins that
he believes are creating the autism issue in America. And
(09:40):
I kind of suggested, you know, RFK Junior has kind
of been one to mention this stuff, and he's been
at war with chemical companies for a long time, as
we had a caller mentioned, but I do think that
it's important, within the proper context to understand what he
probably is also fighting against here. And I mentioned that
it is a way the United States, with our capitalist society,
(10:04):
has made it more beneficial for companies to treat symptoms
than it is for people to cure you. And again
that goes against the oath of the doctor. And I'm
not saying that's happening all over the place, and I
do think there are good people that are working in
the healthcare industry, but it does seem to be a
little bit backwards with how much it costs for us
to continue to take medication and why we need to
(10:26):
stay on medication to keep ourselves as healthy as possible.
Autism is just kind of a more It comes up
in our youth mostly and unfortunately we haven't really pinned
down exactly what creates or causes it, and then it
creates a depending on the kind of autism we're speaking of,
(10:46):
can create a lot of challenges for that individual, that
individual's family and the like, for their you know, childhood,
but also for a lot of them as they enter
high school, college, in adulthood. I'm getting your thoughts on this.
Four hundred to four hundred, four oh two five to
five eight eleven ten is the number four oh two
(11:07):
five five eight eleven ten. Mike is on the line. Hello, Mike,
how you doing today?
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Doing great? Hemory? Thank you. I think a lot of
the conversation is focused on r K Junior's in artful
comments that that hurt a lot of feelings, and you know,
for people to have autism, it's, you know, it's I
guess in some cases it's a very unfortunate thing. But
what our junior is trying to do is find what's
causing autism so we can prevent future cases of that,
(11:36):
and I would look hard as a vaccine schedule. They
are vaccinating, you know, newborns for hepatitis B, and my
question is, why do we give newborn babies vaccinations at all?
Why can't we wait till their immune systems are a
little bit more developed. So I think that should be
that and maybe there are other environmental factors, but the
health people are going to really resist any any skepticism
(11:59):
about that vaccines, and they tend to call people anti
vacs if they ask questions. And I think you could
be pro vaccine on some vaccines, but ask questions about
why we get babies vaccines for hepatitis B, which is
really a sexually transmitted or disease.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, needles, needles, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I Mike, to be honest with you, I think you
make an interesting point there. We think especially I think
COVID made this way worse than it was before. But
there was an element of people that were questioning the
vaccine process in the United States, and rightly so, right like,
you want to know what the healthcare industry is doing
for you. You shouldn't just be blindly going in and
(12:42):
doing whatever people say you should be doing. If you
don't understand it or you're not sure about it. But
the difference between being anti vacs and being one hundred
percent VACS, I think most people probably are in the middle.
There's a way to have a nuance of that conversation too,
of like, well, obviously it makes sense to be vaccinated
against the measles. Obviously for a lot of people, getting
the flu vaccine makes a lot of sense for them.
(13:02):
But that doesn't mean that you have to like just
be one hundred percent subscribing to all vaccine science, because
that's not the way that this stuff works.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
It's really actually go ahead.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Actually, Emory alexperience and pointed to a Cleveland clinic study
that was recently done I think with their own healthcare
workers that said that if you had the flu vaccine,
I think you were like twenty percent more likely to
get it than if you didn't have flu vaccine. So
there are some questions about that. I think the obvious
vaccine that everybody agrees is a good one is the
(13:32):
polio vaccine. But for sure, so the other ones are questionable,
and particularly for you know, for the early ages, if
you know, I think that I think that they actually
delay the vaccines until children are older and more more
have developed eco psychologically, and mentally more.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Hey, Mike, really appreciate your thoughts today. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
All right, Thanks all right.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Email is Emory at kfab dot com. Chris sent this
in and said, most doctors and other providers are overscheduled
and overworked and don't need to keep patients in their
practice for monetary reasons. I may have missed the other
part of this conversation, but to insinuate physicians would withhold
some mythical treatment for any diseases ridiculous and profoundly insulting. Yeah,
(14:14):
so Chris missed kind of what the larger conversation of
that was, and it wasn't. This is a conspiracy theory, right,
but it's a question that I think is worth asking.
There are people out there that say I'm not getting
the treatment that I need. I had another person that
sent me in, David I think was his name, sent
me an email and said, usually it takes two hours
to get like an autism pre scan. I got one
(14:35):
that was forty five minutes. We got blowed off by
multiple people who were just not interested in speaking with
us about this. Eighteen months later, my son gets diagnosed
with autism, and he feels like he didn't get the
attention that he just like like he thought he needed,
and for those eighteen months until that diagnosis came through,
(14:57):
he couldn't get the treatment to help his is kid right.
And that's where the conversation came from, is what hurdles
created that problem? What barriers were there. How do you
explain to a person like David that, no, we did
the full scan, we did the screening properly, and everything
that happened had to have occurred after, you know that
(15:21):
eighteen months after that appointment. I don't know how you
tell somebody that. And again, I'm not in a position
to understand that myself because it's a more complicated issue
than that it really is, and I've never had to
be in those conversations. I just know that I do
have family members that are autistic. I did go to
school with kids that are autistic. It's a multitude of people.
I've worked with people that have autism. It's a huge
(15:42):
spectrum of different levels of functionality and also different levels
of what they can do independently. I think there's a
way that we can have that conversation without generalizing everybody
in the same pot. And I'm just fearful that that's
what the people on the political left who are trying
to tear down this administration. Every chance you get an
(16:02):
opportunity to control that narrative, they're going to do it.
And this was an opportunity on a noble cause from
RFK Junior to speak on this, and unfortunately it came
out as if he was generalizing everyone with autism, and
that just didn't come out right. It just it really didn't.
It missed the mark. We will finish this conversation and
again at the bottom of the hour, we are scheduled
(16:23):
to listen to what the police update is down there
in Tallahassee the shooting at Florida State University today. We'll
tell you about that coming up on news Radio eleven
ten kfab Emery sunger our conversation on autism in the
way that RFK Junior spoke about it yesterday. I did
have another email from Sue. It came in and said, hello, Emery,
(16:43):
my son is twenty four and has autism. As a toddler,
he was developing and speaking normally. Then one day stared
into space and didn't answer to his name. Today he
speaks about one hundred and twenty five words and he
needs twenty four to seven care and supervision. To say
it's been very hard is an understatement. It's affecting my marriage, job, friendships, everything.
(17:04):
I love him to death, but he is exactly what
Robert F. Kennedy described. I can only be thankful that
he is happy and doesn't know or understand all the
things in his life. He's missing out on the grief
his father and I experienced, and intense. Is intense, and
I would give just about anything if my son had
a chance at a normal life. No offense taken here
from Robert Kennedy. That's certainly the other side of that coin.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
We talked about how this could be deemed generalization of
people who are dealing with autism. We talked about how
that could be hurtful to somebody who is a fully functioning,
independent individual that has been diagnosed with autism in our
society today. But what about the people that have dealt
with a person on the other end of that, the
person exactly as Sue mentioned that RFK Junior described. I
(17:50):
couldn't imagine what that's like, and I am sorry to
hear of all of the things that it is created
for Sue and her family, and I just couldn't imagine
what it would be like to have to try to
come to terms with that on a day to day basis.
And I'm sure it would be families like Sues who
(18:11):
are cheering for our FK Junior to come up with
an answer as to how we can potentially avoid this
from happening in the future. And I couldn't imagine if
we find out that this is something related to some
sort of environmental toxins, as our FK Junior put it,
as far as would that mean vaccines? Is that something
in our water? Is that something in our air? What
(18:32):
exactly does that mean? Is it something that we're eating.
Is it something that a mother would be eating or
drinking while pregnant. I don't know, But he says we're
going to get down to the bottom of this in
the coming weeks and months, and I couldn't imagine the
pain that it probably will feel for a lot of
families who have someone who is dealing with autism and
really needs help, has no chance to live an independent life,
(18:55):
and what could have been prevented based on things that
happened before they were born or in the early developmental
years of their life.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
It's just it's crazy to me. It's like the worst.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Fear of my life is knowing I made any kind
of mistake that would have really inhibited all my entire future,
like one of those things that happened that It's just like,
if that wouldn't have happened, how different is my life?
That is like the nightmare fuel for me on a
day to day basis. So I am hopeful. I am
very hopeful that whatever comes out of this, the people
(19:31):
who have children with autism, people who have maybe unknowingly
exposed their family members or anything like that to harmful
vaccines or substances or air quality or whatever it ends
up being, can come to some sort of piece of
understanding that the education just didn't exist in that same way.
And we've done this throughout history as science has made
(19:53):
its progress over the last one hundred years especially, So
that's my hope is we can only hope that people
can come to terms with whatever this is and we
can make the proper adjustments for future generations. Yeah, it
is pretty difficult. So AJ sent me this and said,
aren't maybe's immediately forced me back the first day or two. Yeah,
(20:14):
there are some vaccinations that babies are given. But he
also sent me this list of since nineteen ninety, the
increase of diagnoses on certain things. And I put this
into a bit of a like, it's kind of difficult
to describe this and why this happens. Yes, we could
say that we are diagnosed lately, this is a diagnosis issue,
(20:36):
but we also say it's just we have better science
to diagnose this stuff. Right. I believe I had COVID
nineteen in like December of twenty nineteen. This was before
we had a test in North America for COVID. But
I got really sick about a month or so before
the first true positive test of COVID nineteen occurred. And
(20:58):
then as we got into you know, February, March, and
April and May of twenty twenty, what did those numbers
of positive tests do? They skyrocketed? Well, how many of
those positive tests were even available in January? Who's to
say a lot of people who got sick in January
didn't have COVID, but instead they had COVID and just
didn't get diagnosed with it because they didn't have a
(21:19):
proper test for it. Right, I wonder how much of
what this list is and that includes diabetes, depression, Alzheimer's,
things that have been around for decades, but also some
things like you know, lupus and for Celiac disease and ADHD,
which I know that we have kind of an adjustment
of definitions on some of that stuff for him. And
(21:39):
again I'm not a doctor, and I'm not going to
pretend like I'm some sort of expert on this stuff.
But bipolar disorder in youth, he says, the disease in
or disorder increased in this case for bipolar disorder an
increase of ten thousand and eighty one hundred and thirty
three percent and diagnosed bipolar disorder in youth, and an
eight hundred and nineteen percent increase in diagnosis of ADHD.
(22:02):
So what's changed. It could be just the way that
we're identifying issues and how we're labeling these things. You know,
maybe somebody who was like me when I was growing up,
you know, I wasn't diagnosed with anything, but there's a
chance that with my behavior and how I behave, there's
a chance that I landed in one of these. But
there was no need to test for it. Well, nowadays
(22:23):
we have tests for everything there. Doctors are very quick
to you know, give a diagnosis or a label to
something even if it doesn't necessarily need a lot of
intense treatment. So that would be kind of the question
where does that land here? That's the one thing that
I'd be very curious to find out. But we're gonna
(22:43):
we'll take our time with this, RFK Junior said, within
two to three weeks, you know what, I'm going to
be sitting here two or three weeks from now, and
when that information comes out, we can sit here and
we can talk about it. We can talk about what
we think of the findings. We can talk about what
we can do in the future to help lower the
rate of autism and any of these other disorders by
potential exposure of different things for our youth or maybe
(23:04):
even before they're born. How do we do that. We
have to be attentive to it, we have to have
open minds, and I'm not gonna get overtly political by it.
I just do ask and hope that our governmental employees
have that wherewithal to be as descriptive and as articulate
about it as possible. So nobody feels like they are
being offended by this. Got more on the way, We'll
(23:24):
give you that up opportunity to hear from the police
department and Tallahassee coming up here on news Radio eleven
ten KFAB and
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Marie Songer on news Radio eleven ten Kfab
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!