May 15, 2025 • 42 mins
The head of Health and Human Services RFK Junior made some questionable statements on Autism earlier this year. So, Eddie and Justin decided to do another episode on autism spectrum disorder to evaluate his claims, and examine some of the science and evidence around autism and vaccines. Plus, you get to hear Dr. Justin's excellent RFK Jr impression.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, I know I had like a prepared question of like,
did you know anyone with autism growing up?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
But really I want to hear your best.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
RFK Junior, Welcome to MMHC, your go to mental health podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm Eddie Cooreo, a licensed professional counselor.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And I'm Justin Romano, a Board certified Child and Adolescent psychiatrist.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We created MMHC to give listeners evidence based information directly
from professionals who work in mental health.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're not influencers, we're not trying to sell you anything.
We just want to bring love, empathy, and understanding of
mental health into this world.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And we really think that learning about mental health should
be fun, interesting, and most importantly honest.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So thanks for tuning in. This is a show by
two millennials, but it is intended to be for everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
MMHC is a production of Speaker from iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I Heart I'm not God. Fuck No, you can't make
me do that's a fool plead the fifth I'll go
back to your I'll go to your Oh wow, I'm
throwing Okay, Okay, we're okay. In terms of your presard question,
(01:15):
did I know anyone with autism growing up. That's that's
a great question. I've been thinking about this today probably,
But did I know it at the time. No, And
I think that's a perfect seguae to today we're talking
about autism and r f K and why are we
talking about them because RFK has said a bunch of
stupid shit, among other things over the last however many years,
(01:36):
but recently he kind of had an attack on people
with autism and then the diagnosis of autism.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it was just kind of weird. It was out
of left field.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
It's like, why is he it just he clearly didn't
really seem to know much about autism. And yes, people
with severe autism can have some of the deficits that
he mentioned, and we'll talk about his specific quote exactly,
but man, the vast people with autism do not have
severe deficits and live totally in completely normal lives. Obviously,
(02:06):
he's never seen love on the spectrum.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Him saying everything that he said and everything that this
new administration has said, is it just feels like common courtesy,
common sense, Like a lot of these things are just
out the window, and we're just kind of saying whatever
because We don't think there's any consequence. We think we
can they can accept their own what they think is
the truth, has absolute truth. It's just so much bs
(02:30):
out there, and it attacks on a bunch of different
marginalized groups of people. It feels like constantly, we got
people with disabilities being shipped on, we got people with autism,
we immigrants, we got people of color just daily. So
I'm not surprised at all that he went on on
his ramble or whatever. Never mind, I'm not gonna say, so, yeah,
(02:51):
let's keep going.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Let's do it, because I really do like that he
wants to make America healthy again, But targeting people with
autism seems like the least low hanging fruit, Like it's
not really gonna help much.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
But so we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
With all the news about autism, we wanted to do
another episode because we did do a whole episode on
autism in the past years ago. Now because we're gotten
old and.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
We're got old, our show can almost go to kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Wow, that is kind of wild to think about. It's
been a whole five years. Crazy, so, but it seems
like with a lot of things in our country right now.
People can't really agree on this. Like there's a whole
group of people saying that we need to be studying this,
we need to be looking for toxins, and there's a
whole group of people saying, no, this is because we
(03:46):
are getting better at identifying it, I diagnosing it and
treating it, actually not really treating it. We don't have
great treatments for it yet. So yeah, a large part
of these people are on the other side, are saying
that there's a big epidemic, that we need to figure
this out, we need to reverse it. So even as
a psychiatrist, as someone who's trained in this, someone who
went to medical school, it's hard to know what's what,
(04:09):
it's hard to know which argument is good. So we
wanted to dive into this, give you guys a little
bit of the scientific background. So just for the sake
of being thorough, we're going to give you the official
autism diagnosis per the DSM five. Who knows it might
even be the d s M five tr text revision.
We've simplified a little bit of the language just to
(04:30):
make it a little bit more palatable for you listeners
out there.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Really, it's mainly for me.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
But yeah, yeah, thank you, Eddie. I didn't want to normalize, normalized, normalized.
There we go.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So the main diagnostic criteria of autism, there's two main ones.
The number one is persistent deficits in social communication and
social interaction. So some of the examples of this are
deficits and social functioning, so like people not understanding the
back and forth of conversation, so like just stopping the
(05:04):
conversation randomly, not being able to understand other people's emotions,
not engaging or initiating social interactions. Some of the deficits
can be nonverbal communication, like not understanding that like eye
contact's important, not understanding people's gestures in conversation, deficits in developing,
maintaining and understanding relationships, for example, not really being able
(05:28):
to make a lot of friendships. Autism itself means self focus,
so you don't really you're kind of in your own
little world with autism, you don't really care about making
connections with other people a lot of the time. That's
not for everyone, But just to kind of give you
an idea of some of those main social deficits in
communication and interaction.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
I had no idea that autism meant self focus.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, auto self ism focus.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
God damn man, I never stop learning. Baby, let's go.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I love that because it gives you such an idea
of what original researchers and people were seeing of, Like, oh,
this kid's kind of keeping to himself.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Let's call it autoism.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Why not?
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Wow? Okay, wow, Okay. The next diagnostic criteria, we have
restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities of
like repetitive motor movements. I want to say, do you
feel like this falls into the category of when people
have like I think the appropriate term for it is
(06:36):
like special interests or like specific interests, like the kind
of a hyper focus or hyper fixation on on certain things.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I think you're right, so like it's broken down into
a couple of different categories. But yes, the restricted interest
is one of the main symptoms of autism.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I think another piece to it is like the I
want to say rigidity because that sounds so negative, but
like kind of kind of a characteristic we see with
people who diagnosed with autism can be like in an
insistence on like sameness, not wanting to be too too
flexible when it comes to like routines, like keeping those
pretty pretty static, I think is pretty important for some people.
(07:18):
We also have like highly restricted and fixated interests that
are abnormal and intensity or focus and not to make
like I don't like the word to abnormal as much,
but it is kind of part of the diagnostic criteria.
But just yeah, something that's out of outside of normal
limits or expected or typical limits. One of those examples
could be like an adult who's been obsessed with trains
(07:38):
their whole life. That example gets brought up a lot,
like I think on social media of like we didn't
have autism back in the day. It is like, yeah,
uncle Tommy just really fucking love trains. Like I don't
know what to what to tell you, and not to
like trivialize it too much, but yeah, I think it's
the idea that autism is a brand new thing is
such bs. But and then the last part of that
(08:00):
criteria is hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input or
unusual interests. So sensory seeking and sensory avoidance are two
of those parts.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
And I always like to give examples of the stuff
I see in clinic all the time because I work
with quite a bit of young people with autism with
the sensory stuff, it's a lot of certain clothes we
don't like, Like we can only wear certain types of
clothes because tags bother us, the seams and socks bother us.
Certain textures of food we just cannot do. And so
(08:32):
there's this insistence on sameness. We like the things that
we like, and we don't want to try things that
are outside of that. Normal people with autism tend to
really struggle with transitions. They just don't want to transition
from one thing to the next. They want to keep
doing what they're doing. And you know, I certainly don't
blame them. And then yeah, I know we talked about
trains and adults who are like obsessed with trains their
(08:54):
whole life.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But that's a big diagnostic criteria.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Like a lot of people with autism, like my family
that I work with, that's my general screen or question
is like, you know, is your kid just really into
one thing? And the parents of kids with autism are
always just like, yes, he has been talking about Sonic
the Hedgehog and is not interested in anything else for
the past three years. It's like okay, Like most kids
(09:18):
like they'd be into it for a little while, but
they'd have other interests. But sometimes people with autism there
are one thing all the time and it's hard to change.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
You know, another difficulty difficulty with change that sometimes people
will forget about. If you look at a high school setting,
your schedule changes every semester or every trimester, and we
have a number of students who we have to plan
for that, right, whether that's talking with teachers ahead of time,
whether that's talking with the student ahead of time, we
have to plan for that because that is a big thing.
(09:47):
Sometimes there could be things that could be done through
an individualized education plan, like trying to keep similar teachers
or the same teacher for the same subjects. So if
it's part two of algebra one, you're taken the second section,
try to keep the same teacher, same thing with English,
those kinds of things. You know that that does come
up a good amount, and it's something I probably didn't
think about a whole lot until I got into a school.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, great point.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So with autism there also has to be these symptoms
have to cause impairment, so like changes to your life,
the negative things, the symptoms cannot be better explained by
something like an intellectual disability or a medical issue. There
are a lot of other non diagnostic symptoms of autism,
like things that go along with people and autism like
(10:32):
typically but aren't put into the diagnosis. So like things
like stacking. So a lot of times kids with autism
will like stack their toys by color or by size.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
They kind of.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Line them all up and they'll do it over and
over and over again. So just like take everything down,
put them all, stack them all up in a row again.
Toe walking is a big one. Rocking back and forth
is a big one.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Something else to consider. We didn't even talk about this.
The name of the diagnosis has changed over the years,
right like it was, it was different before they had
like the like Asperger's was included previously, but now we've
kind of gone away from that. But something that I
think was different with the DSM five and continued with
the DSM five tr is it's called autism spectrum disorder
(11:14):
now kind of really highlighting that it's it's not just
a one size fits all, it's it's a spectrum. Something
that I think RFK completely didn't pay attention to or
consider when when given his ramble. So it's I think
that's a good thing and something that helps to make
the diagnosis maybe more. You mentioned it earlier, like, yes,
(11:38):
there are examples of people who have the diagnosis of
autism who are severely impacted, Like there's a lot of
behavior things or maybe developmental things or intellectual things that
really impact somebody, but there's also a lot of cases
where it's pretty minor impact. It's pretty minimal impact. And
I think it's important to be able to say that
(11:58):
it is a spectrum to because it's not this like
end all be all, like this diagnosis is your life's
not over because of it, not like RFK was saying
the other day, Right, So I think that's a super
important thing that the DSM five took into consideration.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
What I've seen most of the time is that people
will break it down into a couple of different categories,
usually autism level one, two, three, three needing the most support.
So that's typically how psychologists diagnose it.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
High functioning versus low functioning. Do you hear that in
the psychiatry world, Is that like diagnostic or is that
more just like terms that have been brought in like
through society and culture.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, mostly just as a generic descriptor if you're trying
to just describe someone with autism, be like, oh, they're
high functioning, low functioning in terms of but yeah, usually
we do the level one, two, three to get a
little bit more specific, because it is based on how
much support they need to get through their daily activities.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Good to know.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So, one really important thing that I remember learning in
residency about autism because I kind of assumed when I
was younger, and I was making an ass out of
you and me, I assumed that people with autism always
had some cognitive deficits or always had some sort of
intellectual disability.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
And I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So according to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia CHOP, one
of the best hospitals in the country, about one percent
of the general population has an intellectual disability and about
thirty eight percent of children with autism have an actual
intellectual disability. So the majority of people with autism don't
have any intellectual disability. They have absolutely normal IQ. And
(13:47):
I think that's a really important point to make because
a lot of people assume, oh, autism, they're not going
to be as intelligent, but that is absolutely not true.
And in a lot of times you see people with
autism being incredibly intelligent.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Their cap is super high.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Another important note to add is at the National Institute
of Health and the researchers Carbone or Carboni at all
one of those twenty twenty four, they found that about
ten percent of autism is rated as severe. So again
it's not everybody, not like people are assuming or or think,
and that people would say severe autism were more likely
(14:23):
to have an intellectual disability at around forty five percent,
So there is Again, that's why it's important we categorize
it as a spectrum. There there are a group of
people with the diagnosis that are more heavily impacted than others.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
So let's get to RFK Junior. So in his speech,
he said, and.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
These kids will never say taxes, they'll never hold a job,
they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll
never go out on a date.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Sorry, I'm gonna keep going because I've been really working
on this.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Many of them will never use a toilet.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
On this, he said, autism destroys families, and it's an
individual tragedy as well.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So sorry, but I just noticed that. You know, Saturday
Night Live has tried multiple times now to have people
impersonate RFK Junior, and no one's been able to get
that laryngeal spasm that he's got going on the real
in and out of the voice, and I feel like
I've got it.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Can I tell you something?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I didn't know he sounded like that until he was
being like sworn in of like director of Health and
Human Services. I had no clue. Can you imagine how
surprised I was, Like, what the fuck is happening?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Is?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
What is going on with that?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
So what happened to him?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Like what is the You know, I don't know exactly,
this is something that just happens. I don't know if
there was any sort of trauma that caused it. But
sometimes the muscles in your larynx that control your voice
just spasm randomly. And so if your voice, if your larynx,
your voice box is constantly like going in and out
of spasming, it's.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Really hard and there's kind of that vibration that's actual
muscles spasming in there.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah. I mean not to like shit on people, but man,
if you're gonna sit up here and shit on on
people that have autism, then I think we can fairly
shit on you for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
So no, Eddie, we got to take the high ground
too late.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Man, you know what I've said about ted cruz bro
don't even Teddy's been safe for a little bit.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Don't get me started.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
I'm surprised that like he hasn't taken more of a
prominent role in this administration.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Either way, we don't want to get too here.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Something that is a political is stats in facts. I
guess they they typically would be a political but that's
gone down the shit or too. But anyway, from the CDC,
so as of April twenty twenty five, about one in
thirty one so three point two percent of children aged
eight years old have been identified with autism spectrum disorder.
(17:05):
This is according to estimates from the CDC's ADDM network.
Autism spectrum disorders were reported to occur in all racial, ethnic,
and socioeconomic groups, ASD is over three times more common
among boys than among girls. And then according to the CDC,
the prevalence of autism in society has gone up from
one in one hundred and fifty in the year two
(17:26):
thousand to now one and thirty one. Like we talked
about just a second ago, so I think to your
point I don't know if it's it's not an epidemic.
I think we're just better at understanding that this is
a diagnosis. I don't know. I don't It doesn't have
to be not everything has to be a conspiracy theory
(17:47):
or like you know, tinfoil hat moment. Sometimes things just are,
and I think this is one of those.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
It's really tricky because you do have people on both
sides making arguments for either it's an epidemic or it's
just we're getting better at identifying it and diagnosing it officially.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But it seems like.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Most of like the epidemiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, they're the ones
who think, like, yes, we're getting better at identifying it,
we're getting more people tested, and we're getting access to
the specific types of tests to be able to get
this diagnosed officially.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
So it's hard to know.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I tend to lead more towards the medical experts on
this thing, but we wanted to try and take somewhat
of an objective look at it. But I think one
of the things we really wanted to dive in is
do vaccines cause autism? Because people like OURFK in the
past have blamed vaccines for autism for a long time.
(18:48):
That was essentially like how he got famous was he
was a big leader in the anti vax movement. And
we know that that was incredibly false and it has
been proven false multiple times. We want to give you
a little bit of the history.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
You got a point for me?
Speaker 5 (19:04):
No, I I cannot shake my head anymore, like I
don't like what kind of workmen's comp can I get
for hurting my neck with how much.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I'm fucking shaking it this episode. I just.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah, So do vaccines cause autism? We know this is
a hot button issue, and we certainly do not want
to alienate people for their views, because boy is some
of the stuff online very convincing, and boy is propaganda powerful.
But because this is such a hot button issue, there
have been multiple studies that show that there is no
(19:41):
link between vaccines and autism. There have been, in fact,
two two small studies that tried to claim that there
was a link between autism and vaccines, and these studies
have been deeply debunked and they've found to be deeply flawed.
The first one was Wakefield nineteen ninety eight. He suggested
(20:05):
that the MMR, the measles mumps rubella, which especially with
the measles outbreak right now, this is also a hoton issue.
The MMR vaccine was linked to autism. This was a
study of twelve children, incredibly small. Eight of them had
twelve oveh okay, so it was a very small study.
(20:29):
Eight of them had autism, so it was relatively small.
There was a time correlation between when they got their
MMR vaccine and when they were diagnosed with autism. But
usually in a typical vaccine schedule and when kids are
diagnosed with autism, they happen around the same time. So
if we go back to our scientific foundations class, we
(20:52):
understand that correlation does not equal causation.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
You beat me to it. I was saying, let's go
back to intro to bio or let's go to bio
ninth grade. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
So this paper was eventually retracted, so they actually took
it out of the medical record because it was founded
on scientific misconduct and they said it had misrepresented the data.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So that was what started it all, was Wakefield nineteen
ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
So the second study was Wakefield two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Try together.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
He's like, you know what, they're going to retract my article.
I'm going to go right back at it again. So
he was studying if there was measles virus present in
samples of intestinal tissue in people with autism. And yes,
he did find that people with autism were more likely
to have that measles vaccine and that deactivated tissue in
(21:53):
the intestines. But with the MMR is a live vaccine
and can end up in your intestinal tissue. It didn't
really prove or call or prove anything. But he was
just trying to make more connections between autism and the
MMR vaccine. And on the other hand, there have been
(22:22):
multiple large, well done studies, highly powered that show that
there is no correlation between vaccine and autism. Two of
the main ones were Taylor at All nineteen ninety nine
Madsen at All in the New England Journal of Medicine,
which examined five hundred and thirty seven thousand, three hundred
and three different individuals. So it was much larger, much
(22:45):
more power and a much better performed study which showed
that there is no link. So when you look at
the studies, it just is so obvious that there is
no connection between vaccines and autism.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's just so hard man. I just like what feels
to be an epidemic is the attack on like science
and numbers and facts. You know. I think of you know,
Fouch Poppy, how much he's you had to deal with.
Just you spend your whole life becoming an expert in something.
(23:26):
You're a medical professional. You study, you work, you pass boards,
you continue in education. You try to be at the
top of your game. You don't have to be the
top of your field, just you try to just be
at the top of your community where you live, where
you work, where you serve, And there's always gonna be
someone that says, no, I don't believe you.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
It's kind of like the classic meme you see all
the time of like someone sitting on their toilet with
a high school diploma is telling like a PhD researcher,
like you don't know what you're talking about anyway.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I mean, yeah, that stuff's hard man. I feel for
I feel for a community. I feel for the people
who either who have autism spectrum disorder themselves or they
have someone in their life. I mean three percent of
the population or one in thirty one children. That's you
look at a typical elementary school classroom. How many kids
you got in there? Twenty five, twenty six, thirty, yeah,
(24:21):
thirty one.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
One of them probably has autism.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
One probably does. Yeah, and it impacts a lot of people.
So Yeahah, to see stuff like that is frustrating, and
I'm glad we can try to just provide some factual
information because it's important.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And I will admit that when RFK speaks, he's very convincing.
He throws out numbers, he throws out data, he mentioned studies.
He sounds like he knows what he's talking about. But
in researching this episode, I was kind of diving into
the different people, picking apart his arguments and trying to
(24:57):
figure out if what he was saying is legitimate or not.
And honestly, a lot of times he just he completely
misrepresents the data. Sometimes he'll just make things up, you know.
I was even watching I think it was John Oliver's
piece where he really went and dove into the RFK
thing recently, and he makes wild claims out there, like
(25:19):
half the people in China have been diagnosed with diabetes.
Like he'll just throw out random numbers that are just
completely wrong and off the wall. He's trying to be
a sensationalist, right, He's trying to get people to join
his cause. He's trying to tell people that hey, I'm
the one who's really right, and I'm going to sell
all this merch that says like, hey, hey, my baby's
(25:41):
an anti vaxer and all this stuff. So he's not
a medical professional.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
He's not a doctor. He's a lawyer. And do you
trust lawyers.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
As far as I could throw them? I'm just kidding.
There's there's definitely some good lawyers out there. Probably I've
seen suit, so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, there's good lawyers out there. But it just
seems like he's trying to do what he can to
further his agenda and further his propaganda. And he's not
doing this to be a medical professional by any means.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
You know. And I think people like him and other
people with similar agendas to the administration, they unfortunately like
pray on people that just don't know better. And I
think that's where it's hard. I think that's where it's
really hard, because we can sit here and make fun
of him, and we can just be like, how how
do people believe this? How do we even get to
(26:35):
this point? But if we take back, take a step back,
and try to think like you only know what you know.
So if you don't know any better when it comes
to statistics and science and p values and studies and
all that stuff, if you don't know any better, you
don't want to read the whole thing, well why not
have someone tell it to you.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
So, yeah, I always like to make the comparison of like,
you know, I went to medical school. I know this
stuff kind of. I mean, I'm still not perfect, but
I always like to compare it to if a diesel
mechanic came up to me and started talking about like
how a diesel engine works, I would have the basic concepts,
(27:14):
but he could make up pretty much anything, and I
would say, sounds good to me, makes sense, it's logical.
So a lot of people, who I mean the vast
majority of people, don't have a solid scientific education. And
the education system in America has really gone downhill in
terms of scientific education as well too, so people are
(27:35):
not equipped to be able to pick apart his arguments.
And it's easy to listen to him because he is
very charismatic. He does sound like he knows what he's
talking about. So I could see why people could be
convinced pretty easily. So to end this episode, we wanted
to do something. Just give RFK some suggestions because you
know he wants to make the AH the America, make
(27:57):
America healthy again, you know, America American Health Administration or whatever.
So we want to give some suggestions for RFK. If
you really want to make America healthy again. Here are
some suggestions from two mental health professionals. So stop just
targeting people with autism. Like, I know this is how
(28:19):
you got famous.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I know this is kind of.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Your bread and butter issue, but boy, there are so
many other things that you could do that you could
actually do that is going to help large swaths of
Americans be healthier. Some of these may not totally be
under his control, but apparently he's got a lot of
influence and the President's got he's got the president's ear,
so like, yeah, make it happen, well.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
At least part of his ear, right then.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Wow Butler Pennsylvania callback joke. Wow, But I do like
that RFK Junior is into health fear, foods for kids,
and less food dies because there actually have been some
pretty big meta analyzes that show too much processed food
(29:08):
and especially food dies can lead to ADHD symptoms and
attentiveness and behavior problems. So I think it's totally reasonable, Like,
if you really want to make a healthier America, go
down that route. Number one, get rid of processed foods
and added sugars in school, but also fund the school
lunch programs that the school doesn't taste like garbage.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Some other things would be like to ban advertisements directed
at kids for processed foods. We've already kind of tried
to do this with like trying to ban specific flavors
of like vapes that are directly geared towards kids, like
cotton candy and watermelon sunshine. Yeah, we don't need that, man,
Just they're geared towards the kids. Can't be doing that.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Sounds delicious, it does.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
But we can make that choice. We can make that
choice a young kid. They get addicted, they're not really
making that choice anymore. Else is making the choice for them,
and it's big vape.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, big tobacco, which is still has a big, strong hold,
big nicotine on our country. Yeah, we could be subsidizing
whole foods, whole healthy foods instead of highly processed foods,
because you'd be surprised at how many highly processed foods
like get government subsidies to be absolutely cheaper for people
to buy. So if you're giving people more of an
(30:25):
incentive to buy highly processed bad foods for kids, which
we know that about seventy percent of the calories that
kids consume these days are from highly processed foods, Like,
we could completely change the diet of children.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah, some bigger things could be things like banning social
media for anyone under eighteen and then trying to set
limits to four hours a day of video games for
anyone under eighteen and the caveast because this has been
this has been a kind of fun thing to see
in real time. I'd like to think that Justin was
kind of at the forefront with his ted talk. It
has a fuck ton of views. We always going to
(31:00):
bring it up, but I know this has been something
that you're passionate about it and I have thought about
a lot in terms of the Internet and social media
use and screen time with our kids, and it's been
kind of interesting to see the discussion and discourse around
it recently. Remember we talked about the Anxious Generation book
not too long ago, and that came out last year,
so it's fairly new. But there's a lot of states
(31:23):
right now. I probably shouldn't say a lot because I don't
know for sure. Let me just speak on Oregon specifically.
There's a piece of legislation that's moving through, that's cleared
whatever hurdle it's at, and it looks like it's going
to be put into place that's basically mandating that school
districts have to have some type of cell phone policy
or cell phone ban in place. And that book the
(31:45):
Anxious Generation is kind of steamrolling it. It's kind of
like got us to the point where a lot of
people are like jumping on board. And I want to
say this with the caveat of those those last two items,
when it comes to social media and video games, I
think in an ideal world, we can do something like that.
We we can fix that. I think because these things
are so intertwined, and not specifically video games, not everybody
(32:07):
plays video games, but social media. It's it's not a
it's not so much an if, but when thing now
with our kids, right and it's it's super integrated into
our kids' lives, and it's it's one of those things
where what do you mean you don't have Snapchat. What
do you mean you don't have Instagram. I don't agree
with it at all that the kids are, you know,
blowing each other for not having these things, but it's
intertwined in their life, right, So it's one of those
(32:29):
I don't want to call it evil, but it's one
of those things that just it is. It just is right.
Same with screens. They just are going to any high school,
elementary school, middle school. They have chromebooks, they have computers,
they have iPads right that are being used that the
school district is providing. So I think, in an ideal world, yeah,
we can start to limit, we can limit things like that.
(32:50):
Then unfortunately we're not in any ideal world. It's got
to be some type of learning to live with. I
think is going to be the happy medium that we
get to at some point. And I do think something
like these cell phone bands and eliminating phones in schools
is kind of a step in the right direction. I
think taking those away and making it so kids got
(33:11):
to focus on school. I don't know, it seems pretty good,
so I'll just add those caveats. And I've been thinking
about it a lot because of the book The anxious
generation because of your expertise, just because things are coming
out news wise that directly impact me in my work.
I've had a lot of thoughts on it, and it's
been kind of cool to like think about it and
(33:31):
share thoughts and ideas and just have some type of
I don't know, I feel in the know about things,
and that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, it is nice.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
And more and more countries are starting to do these
types of things. They're taking the steps, like Australia just
to prove to ban on social media for anyone under sixteen. China,
I know, we've talked about it in the past, has
banned like more than one hour or two hours of
video games on weeknights for kids. Like, people are finally
starting to realize that if they really want to put
(34:01):
the mental health of kids as a priority, they need
to make big systemic changes.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Absolutely so a couple other suggestions, RFK, if you're listening,
which you know, go ahead, everyone out there, we're probably
going to turn this into Instagram videos, tiktoks, go ahead
and spread it like it. Make sure our FK junior
sees this. Make sure he also hears my awesome impression
of him because I'm.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Sure he would love it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
But provide free daycare and early childhood education for everyone,
because socially supported families are healthy families, and so many
people in this country are struggling for money, they're working
multiple jobs, they're not able to spend as much time
with their kids as they would like, and it is
just so much pressure on families and it's hard on
(34:45):
kid's brain. And then finally, actually fund Medicaid so that
kids and kids with autism can get the health care
that they need. The current Republican budget plan would cut
Medicaid funding, so it actually would mean less resource for
kids with autism. So ay, they're villainizing autism and saying like, oh,
you know, these kids are they can't function in society
(35:08):
the way they should. They can't pay their taxes, and
then they're also going to cut their funding so that
they don't get the resources that they need to actually
work on these things to be functional members of society.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
So double edged sword.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
What do you think the majority of people are kids
families that get Medicare and Medicaid services.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
We're in the country largely Republican states.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Oh yeah, I know, yeah, ironic, right, it's just I.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Saw TikTok, and obviously TikTok is super sensationalized and stuff,
but I saw a TikTok of a lady being interviewed
by their like kind of trolls and stuff, and like
I saw one where the guy was like, do you
think the government trying to control if people can have
guns is overstepping And he's like, yeah, constitution right to
bare arms. And then the guy goes, what about like
(35:57):
the government saying that like federal agents can go into
someone's without a warrant and taking them out, And he's
like well, he's like, well that's you know, that's kind
of what this administration is doing. And the guy's like
oh whatever, and just like walked away like that, Yeah,
dissonance with it, same kind of idea that this lady
was being interviewed and she lost her job, she lost
her federal job because of cuts being made, and she
(36:18):
was like, yeah, I'd still vote for him, Like okay,
well sounds good.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah. Yeah. People got strong beliefs.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It's hard to change people's opinions, and people have a
confirmation bias. They want to believe what they want to believe,
and even if you present them with data against it,
They're still like, I don't care. Yeah, So, final points,
is there really an autism epidemic? It kind of depends
on who you believe right now, which reality you choose
to live in, which news sources you choose to get.
(36:50):
One side, which is largely made up of people like RFK,
anti vaxxers, politics, politicians, skeptics, they say, yes, this is
a huge epidemic, there's maybe oxen's out there that might
be contributing to it, even though there doesn't really is,
it's not really backed up by the data and evidence.
And on the other side, made up of like medical professionals,
researchers and scientists, say no, there's no significant autism epidemic,
(37:15):
that this is largely the result of us being better
able to identify it and diagnose it.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
And Justin and I we tend to lead towards the scientists,
the researchers, the medical professionals, but I think we try
to still keep an open mind to the possibility that
maybe we're missing something. I'll say it too, I think
numbers are great. Data is great. Sometimes when it comes
to people, you can't necessarily explain something with a number.
There's more to it right, you quantitative research is super important,
(37:42):
but so it's qualitative research, so it's important to we
try to understand other possibilities and we just try to
be open. I think that's important. We try to be
open and not shut everything out without thinking of all
the possibilities.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, I'm an eternal optimist. Maybe all of this conversation
will get more funding to studying autism, Like, maybe it
will lead to something positive. Maybe we will identify something
some sort of environmental factors.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That we just don't know yet.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
There's still a lot and I know that I said
that it's kind of a black and white. You know,
whose side are you on, and there are people on
both sides. There are scientists that are on the side
of RFK two, so it's not always so just cut
and dry. We had a really good quote that I
wanted to share from Kristin Roth, who is the chief
marketing officer for the Autism Society of America. She told
(38:31):
NPR in an interview that her organization and other leading
disability groups agree that there is a need for more
autism research. However, it has to be rooted in science,
in fact, and to definitively say that autism is caused
by an environmental factor or toxin is not rooted in
known science right now. Boom, Yeah, I thought that was
(38:54):
a really good way to.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Sum it all up.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yeah, agreed. What about take home points. Let's wrap it
up with some thoughts we have.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Take on point for me is that, yes, we can
always study autism more, and yes we should be studying
autism more. But it seems like this new wave of
this epidemic of autism, this belief that this is an epidemic,
it doesn't really seem to be rooted in science and fact,
(39:24):
and it seems to be pushed by people who have
somewhat of an agenda.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I think my take home point is going to be
I'm gonna ramble for a little bit and hopefully it
makes sense. Even if let's just say vaccines did cause autism,
let's just say they did. Someone being diagnosed with autism
is not the end of the world. People with autism
are not broken, they're not incapable, they're not they're not
done living their life, and autism diagnosis does not mean
(39:52):
that you cannot live a happy, healthy, fulfilling life. So
even if they did cause autism, which they don't, having
the diagnosis is not the end of the world. And
I hate that this diagnosis gets villainized so much by
people that don't fully have an understanding of what people
with ASD go through on a daily basis and how
(40:14):
they live their life.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I work with a lot of young people with autism,
and they are wonderful people. And I've got some kids
who are on the severe spectrum. And what I noticed
that even if they're nonverbal, even if they can't communicate,
even if they need significant help, their families still really
love them and care about them and wouldn't trade them
for the world. And I think that says a lot
(40:35):
about the human nature and a lot about people and
the goodness in people that still exists in this world.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
And one last thing, since we're still here and recording,
let's just stop. Let's stop assuming that everyone that's like
a little quirky or a little different has autism. Okay,
not everything's a fucking diagnosis. I hear that way too
much of like, oh, that person's definitely on the spectrum.
You don't know, I don't know, none of us know.
(41:03):
We're not here to diagnose. So let's just not assume
that's someone that has different characteristics than what you're used to,
means that they have an autism diagnosis. Well, on that note, uh,
we hope you appreciated our one on one exclusive interview
with RFK.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
You're welcome, Eddie.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
What seriously man? Thank y'all for listening. We appreciate it.
On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, feel
for you to like subscribe, leave us a five star review.
You can leave a common as well on social media
at Millennial MHC and MILLENNIALIMAHC dot com. We appreciate y'all.
We'll see you next time, and remember take care of
(41:42):
all mentals.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
The content provider in this podcast is for informational purposes
only and does not constitute legal, medical, or professional advice.
All we seek the advice of a qualified professional for
any legal, medical, or mental health concern. The hosts and
the producers disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential,
or specific damages arising from the use of this pests
or any information contained therein. Opinions expressed by the hosts
(42:03):
and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect
the view of their employers or organizations that they may
affiliate with. By accessing and listening to this podcast, you
agree to hold harmless the hosts, guests, and producers from
claims or liabilities arising from your use of, or reliance on,
the information presented
Hey, I know I had like a prepared question of like,
did you know anyone with autism growing up?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
But really I want to hear your best.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
RFK Junior, Welcome to MMHC, your go to mental health podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm Eddie Cooreo, a licensed professional counselor.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And I'm Justin Romano, a Board certified Child and Adolescent psychiatrist.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We created MMHC to give listeners evidence based information directly
from professionals who work in mental health.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're not influencers, we're not trying to sell you anything.
We just want to bring love, empathy, and understanding of
mental health into this world.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And we really think that learning about mental health should
be fun, interesting, and most importantly honest.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So thanks for tuning in. This is a show by
two millennials, but it is intended to be for everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
MMHC is a production of Speaker from iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I Heart I'm not God. Fuck No, you can't make
me do that's a fool plead the fifth I'll go
back to your I'll go to your Oh wow, I'm
throwing Okay, Okay, we're okay. In terms of your presard question,
(01:15):
did I know anyone with autism growing up. That's that's
a great question. I've been thinking about this today probably,
But did I know it at the time. No, And
I think that's a perfect seguae to today we're talking
about autism and r f K and why are we
talking about them because RFK has said a bunch of
stupid shit, among other things over the last however many years,
(01:36):
but recently he kind of had an attack on people
with autism and then the diagnosis of autism.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it was just kind of weird. It was out
of left field.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
It's like, why is he it just he clearly didn't
really seem to know much about autism. And yes, people
with severe autism can have some of the deficits that
he mentioned, and we'll talk about his specific quote exactly,
but man, the vast people with autism do not have
severe deficits and live totally in completely normal lives. Obviously,
(02:06):
he's never seen love on the spectrum.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Him saying everything that he said and everything that this
new administration has said, is it just feels like common courtesy,
common sense, Like a lot of these things are just
out the window, and we're just kind of saying whatever
because We don't think there's any consequence. We think we
can they can accept their own what they think is
the truth, has absolute truth. It's just so much bs
(02:30):
out there, and it attacks on a bunch of different
marginalized groups of people. It feels like constantly, we got
people with disabilities being shipped on, we got people with autism,
we immigrants, we got people of color just daily. So
I'm not surprised at all that he went on on
his ramble or whatever. Never mind, I'm not gonna say, so, yeah,
(02:51):
let's keep going.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Let's do it, because I really do like that he
wants to make America healthy again, But targeting people with
autism seems like the least low hanging fruit, Like it's
not really gonna help much.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
But so we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
With all the news about autism, we wanted to do
another episode because we did do a whole episode on
autism in the past years ago. Now because we're gotten
old and.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
We're got old, our show can almost go to kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Wow, that is kind of wild to think about. It's
been a whole five years. Crazy, so, but it seems
like with a lot of things in our country right now.
People can't really agree on this. Like there's a whole
group of people saying that we need to be studying this,
we need to be looking for toxins, and there's a
whole group of people saying, no, this is because we
(03:46):
are getting better at identifying it, I diagnosing it and
treating it, actually not really treating it. We don't have
great treatments for it yet. So yeah, a large part
of these people are on the other side, are saying
that there's a big epidemic, that we need to figure
this out, we need to reverse it. So even as
a psychiatrist, as someone who's trained in this, someone who
went to medical school, it's hard to know what's what,
(04:09):
it's hard to know which argument is good. So we
wanted to dive into this, give you guys a little
bit of the scientific background. So just for the sake
of being thorough, we're going to give you the official
autism diagnosis per the DSM five. Who knows it might
even be the d s M five tr text revision.
We've simplified a little bit of the language just to
(04:30):
make it a little bit more palatable for you listeners
out there.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Really, it's mainly for me.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
But yeah, yeah, thank you, Eddie. I didn't want to normalize, normalized, normalized.
There we go.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So the main diagnostic criteria of autism, there's two main ones.
The number one is persistent deficits in social communication and
social interaction. So some of the examples of this are
deficits and social functioning, so like people not understanding the
back and forth of conversation, so like just stopping the
(05:04):
conversation randomly, not being able to understand other people's emotions,
not engaging or initiating social interactions. Some of the deficits
can be nonverbal communication, like not understanding that like eye
contact's important, not understanding people's gestures in conversation, deficits in developing,
maintaining and understanding relationships, for example, not really being able
(05:28):
to make a lot of friendships. Autism itself means self focus,
so you don't really you're kind of in your own
little world with autism, you don't really care about making
connections with other people a lot of the time. That's
not for everyone, But just to kind of give you
an idea of some of those main social deficits in
communication and interaction.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
I had no idea that autism meant self focus.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, auto self ism focus.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
God damn man, I never stop learning. Baby, let's go.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I love that because it gives you such an idea
of what original researchers and people were seeing of, Like, oh,
this kid's kind of keeping to himself.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Let's call it autoism.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Why not?
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Wow? Okay, wow, Okay. The next diagnostic criteria, we have
restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities of
like repetitive motor movements. I want to say, do you
feel like this falls into the category of when people
have like I think the appropriate term for it is
(06:36):
like special interests or like specific interests, like the kind
of a hyper focus or hyper fixation on on certain things.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I think you're right, so like it's broken down into
a couple of different categories. But yes, the restricted interest
is one of the main symptoms of autism.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I think another piece to it is like the I
want to say rigidity because that sounds so negative, but
like kind of kind of a characteristic we see with
people who diagnosed with autism can be like in an
insistence on like sameness, not wanting to be too too
flexible when it comes to like routines, like keeping those
pretty pretty static, I think is pretty important for some people.
(07:18):
We also have like highly restricted and fixated interests that
are abnormal and intensity or focus and not to make
like I don't like the word to abnormal as much,
but it is kind of part of the diagnostic criteria.
But just yeah, something that's out of outside of normal
limits or expected or typical limits. One of those examples
could be like an adult who's been obsessed with trains
(07:38):
their whole life. That example gets brought up a lot,
like I think on social media of like we didn't
have autism back in the day. It is like, yeah,
uncle Tommy just really fucking love trains. Like I don't
know what to what to tell you, and not to
like trivialize it too much, but yeah, I think it's
the idea that autism is a brand new thing is
such bs. But and then the last part of that
(08:00):
criteria is hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input or
unusual interests. So sensory seeking and sensory avoidance are two
of those parts.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
And I always like to give examples of the stuff
I see in clinic all the time because I work
with quite a bit of young people with autism with
the sensory stuff, it's a lot of certain clothes we
don't like, Like we can only wear certain types of
clothes because tags bother us, the seams and socks bother us.
Certain textures of food we just cannot do. And so
(08:32):
there's this insistence on sameness. We like the things that
we like, and we don't want to try things that
are outside of that. Normal people with autism tend to
really struggle with transitions. They just don't want to transition
from one thing to the next. They want to keep
doing what they're doing. And you know, I certainly don't
blame them. And then yeah, I know we talked about
trains and adults who are like obsessed with trains their
(08:54):
whole life.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But that's a big diagnostic criteria.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Like a lot of people with autism, like my family
that I work with, that's my general screen or question
is like, you know, is your kid just really into
one thing? And the parents of kids with autism are
always just like, yes, he has been talking about Sonic
the Hedgehog and is not interested in anything else for
the past three years. It's like okay, Like most kids
(09:18):
like they'd be into it for a little while, but
they'd have other interests. But sometimes people with autism there
are one thing all the time and it's hard to change.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
You know, another difficulty difficulty with change that sometimes people
will forget about. If you look at a high school setting,
your schedule changes every semester or every trimester, and we
have a number of students who we have to plan
for that, right, whether that's talking with teachers ahead of time,
whether that's talking with the student ahead of time, we
have to plan for that because that is a big thing.
(09:47):
Sometimes there could be things that could be done through
an individualized education plan, like trying to keep similar teachers
or the same teacher for the same subjects. So if
it's part two of algebra one, you're taken the second section,
try to keep the same teacher, same thing with English,
those kinds of things. You know that that does come
up a good amount, and it's something I probably didn't
think about a whole lot until I got into a school.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, great point.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So with autism there also has to be these symptoms
have to cause impairment, so like changes to your life,
the negative things, the symptoms cannot be better explained by
something like an intellectual disability or a medical issue. There
are a lot of other non diagnostic symptoms of autism,
like things that go along with people and autism like
(10:32):
typically but aren't put into the diagnosis. So like things
like stacking. So a lot of times kids with autism
will like stack their toys by color or by size.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
They kind of.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Line them all up and they'll do it over and
over and over again. So just like take everything down,
put them all, stack them all up in a row again.
Toe walking is a big one. Rocking back and forth
is a big one.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Something else to consider. We didn't even talk about this.
The name of the diagnosis has changed over the years,
right like it was, it was different before they had
like the like Asperger's was included previously, but now we've
kind of gone away from that. But something that I
think was different with the DSM five and continued with
the DSM five tr is it's called autism spectrum disorder
(11:14):
now kind of really highlighting that it's it's not just
a one size fits all, it's it's a spectrum. Something
that I think RFK completely didn't pay attention to or
consider when when given his ramble. So it's I think
that's a good thing and something that helps to make
the diagnosis maybe more. You mentioned it earlier, like, yes,
(11:38):
there are examples of people who have the diagnosis of
autism who are severely impacted, Like there's a lot of
behavior things or maybe developmental things or intellectual things that
really impact somebody, but there's also a lot of cases
where it's pretty minor impact. It's pretty minimal impact. And
I think it's important to be able to say that
(11:58):
it is a spectrum to because it's not this like
end all be all, like this diagnosis is your life's
not over because of it, not like RFK was saying
the other day, Right, So I think that's a super
important thing that the DSM five took into consideration.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
What I've seen most of the time is that people
will break it down into a couple of different categories,
usually autism level one, two, three, three needing the most support.
So that's typically how psychologists diagnose it.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
High functioning versus low functioning. Do you hear that in
the psychiatry world, Is that like diagnostic or is that
more just like terms that have been brought in like
through society and culture.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, mostly just as a generic descriptor if you're trying
to just describe someone with autism, be like, oh, they're
high functioning, low functioning in terms of but yeah, usually
we do the level one, two, three to get a
little bit more specific, because it is based on how
much support they need to get through their daily activities.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Good to know.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So, one really important thing that I remember learning in
residency about autism because I kind of assumed when I
was younger, and I was making an ass out of
you and me, I assumed that people with autism always
had some cognitive deficits or always had some sort of
intellectual disability.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
And I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So according to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia CHOP, one
of the best hospitals in the country, about one percent
of the general population has an intellectual disability and about
thirty eight percent of children with autism have an actual
intellectual disability. So the majority of people with autism don't
have any intellectual disability. They have absolutely normal IQ. And
(13:47):
I think that's a really important point to make because
a lot of people assume, oh, autism, they're not going
to be as intelligent, but that is absolutely not true.
And in a lot of times you see people with
autism being incredibly intelligent.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Their cap is super high.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Another important note to add is at the National Institute
of Health and the researchers Carbone or Carboni at all
one of those twenty twenty four, they found that about
ten percent of autism is rated as severe. So again
it's not everybody, not like people are assuming or or think,
and that people would say severe autism were more likely
(14:23):
to have an intellectual disability at around forty five percent,
So there is Again, that's why it's important we categorize
it as a spectrum. There there are a group of
people with the diagnosis that are more heavily impacted than others.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
So let's get to RFK Junior. So in his speech,
he said, and.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
These kids will never say taxes, they'll never hold a job,
they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll
never go out on a date.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Sorry, I'm gonna keep going because I've been really working
on this.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Many of them will never use a toilet.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
On this, he said, autism destroys families, and it's an
individual tragedy as well.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So sorry, but I just noticed that. You know, Saturday
Night Live has tried multiple times now to have people
impersonate RFK Junior, and no one's been able to get
that laryngeal spasm that he's got going on the real
in and out of the voice, and I feel like
I've got it.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Can I tell you something?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I didn't know he sounded like that until he was
being like sworn in of like director of Health and
Human Services. I had no clue. Can you imagine how
surprised I was, Like, what the fuck is happening?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Is?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
What is going on with that?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
So what happened to him?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Like what is the You know, I don't know exactly,
this is something that just happens. I don't know if
there was any sort of trauma that caused it. But
sometimes the muscles in your larynx that control your voice
just spasm randomly. And so if your voice, if your larynx,
your voice box is constantly like going in and out
of spasming, it's.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Really hard and there's kind of that vibration that's actual
muscles spasming in there.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah. I mean not to like shit on people, but man,
if you're gonna sit up here and shit on on
people that have autism, then I think we can fairly
shit on you for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
So no, Eddie, we got to take the high ground
too late.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Man, you know what I've said about ted cruz bro
don't even Teddy's been safe for a little bit.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Don't get me started.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
I'm surprised that like he hasn't taken more of a
prominent role in this administration.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Either way, we don't want to get too here.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Something that is a political is stats in facts. I
guess they they typically would be a political but that's
gone down the shit or too. But anyway, from the CDC,
so as of April twenty twenty five, about one in
thirty one so three point two percent of children aged
eight years old have been identified with autism spectrum disorder.
(17:05):
This is according to estimates from the CDC's ADDM network.
Autism spectrum disorders were reported to occur in all racial, ethnic,
and socioeconomic groups, ASD is over three times more common
among boys than among girls. And then according to the CDC,
the prevalence of autism in society has gone up from
one in one hundred and fifty in the year two
(17:26):
thousand to now one and thirty one. Like we talked
about just a second ago, so I think to your
point I don't know if it's it's not an epidemic.
I think we're just better at understanding that this is
a diagnosis. I don't know. I don't It doesn't have
to be not everything has to be a conspiracy theory
(17:47):
or like you know, tinfoil hat moment. Sometimes things just are,
and I think this is one of those.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
It's really tricky because you do have people on both
sides making arguments for either it's an epidemic or it's
just we're getting better at identifying it and diagnosing it officially.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But it seems like.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Most of like the epidemiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, they're the ones
who think, like, yes, we're getting better at identifying it,
we're getting more people tested, and we're getting access to
the specific types of tests to be able to get
this diagnosed officially.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
So it's hard to know.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I tend to lead more towards the medical experts on
this thing, but we wanted to try and take somewhat
of an objective look at it. But I think one
of the things we really wanted to dive in is
do vaccines cause autism? Because people like OURFK in the
past have blamed vaccines for autism for a long time.
(18:48):
That was essentially like how he got famous was he
was a big leader in the anti vax movement. And
we know that that was incredibly false and it has
been proven false multiple times. We want to give you
a little bit of the history.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
You got a point for me?
Speaker 5 (19:04):
No, I I cannot shake my head anymore, like I
don't like what kind of workmen's comp can I get
for hurting my neck with how much.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I'm fucking shaking it this episode. I just.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah, So do vaccines cause autism? We know this is
a hot button issue, and we certainly do not want
to alienate people for their views, because boy is some
of the stuff online very convincing, and boy is propaganda powerful.
But because this is such a hot button issue, there
have been multiple studies that show that there is no
(19:41):
link between vaccines and autism. There have been, in fact,
two two small studies that tried to claim that there
was a link between autism and vaccines, and these studies
have been deeply debunked and they've found to be deeply flawed.
The first one was Wakefield nineteen ninety eight. He suggested
(20:05):
that the MMR, the measles mumps rubella, which especially with
the measles outbreak right now, this is also a hoton issue.
The MMR vaccine was linked to autism. This was a
study of twelve children, incredibly small. Eight of them had
twelve oveh okay, so it was a very small study.
(20:29):
Eight of them had autism, so it was relatively small.
There was a time correlation between when they got their
MMR vaccine and when they were diagnosed with autism. But
usually in a typical vaccine schedule and when kids are
diagnosed with autism, they happen around the same time. So
if we go back to our scientific foundations class, we
(20:52):
understand that correlation does not equal causation.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
You beat me to it. I was saying, let's go
back to intro to bio or let's go to bio
ninth grade. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
So this paper was eventually retracted, so they actually took
it out of the medical record because it was founded
on scientific misconduct and they said it had misrepresented the data.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So that was what started it all, was Wakefield nineteen
ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
So the second study was Wakefield two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Try together.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
He's like, you know what, they're going to retract my article.
I'm going to go right back at it again. So
he was studying if there was measles virus present in
samples of intestinal tissue in people with autism. And yes,
he did find that people with autism were more likely
to have that measles vaccine and that deactivated tissue in
(21:53):
the intestines. But with the MMR is a live vaccine
and can end up in your intestinal tissue. It didn't
really prove or call or prove anything. But he was
just trying to make more connections between autism and the
MMR vaccine. And on the other hand, there have been
(22:22):
multiple large, well done studies, highly powered that show that
there is no correlation between vaccine and autism. Two of
the main ones were Taylor at All nineteen ninety nine
Madsen at All in the New England Journal of Medicine,
which examined five hundred and thirty seven thousand, three hundred
and three different individuals. So it was much larger, much
(22:45):
more power and a much better performed study which showed
that there is no link. So when you look at
the studies, it just is so obvious that there is
no connection between vaccines and autism.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
It's just so hard man. I just like what feels
to be an epidemic is the attack on like science
and numbers and facts. You know. I think of you know,
Fouch Poppy, how much he's you had to deal with.
Just you spend your whole life becoming an expert in something.
(23:26):
You're a medical professional. You study, you work, you pass boards,
you continue in education. You try to be at the
top of your game. You don't have to be the
top of your field, just you try to just be
at the top of your community where you live, where
you work, where you serve, And there's always gonna be
someone that says, no, I don't believe you.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
It's kind of like the classic meme you see all
the time of like someone sitting on their toilet with
a high school diploma is telling like a PhD researcher,
like you don't know what you're talking about anyway.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I mean, yeah, that stuff's hard man. I feel for
I feel for a community. I feel for the people
who either who have autism spectrum disorder themselves or they
have someone in their life. I mean three percent of
the population or one in thirty one children. That's you
look at a typical elementary school classroom. How many kids
you got in there? Twenty five, twenty six, thirty, yeah,
(24:21):
thirty one.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
One of them probably has autism.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
One probably does. Yeah, and it impacts a lot of people.
So Yeahah, to see stuff like that is frustrating, and
I'm glad we can try to just provide some factual
information because it's important.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And I will admit that when RFK speaks, he's very convincing.
He throws out numbers, he throws out data, he mentioned studies.
He sounds like he knows what he's talking about. But
in researching this episode, I was kind of diving into
the different people, picking apart his arguments and trying to
(24:57):
figure out if what he was saying is legitimate or not.
And honestly, a lot of times he just he completely
misrepresents the data. Sometimes he'll just make things up, you know.
I was even watching I think it was John Oliver's
piece where he really went and dove into the RFK
thing recently, and he makes wild claims out there, like
(25:19):
half the people in China have been diagnosed with diabetes.
Like he'll just throw out random numbers that are just
completely wrong and off the wall. He's trying to be
a sensationalist, right, He's trying to get people to join
his cause. He's trying to tell people that hey, I'm
the one who's really right, and I'm going to sell
all this merch that says like, hey, hey, my baby's
(25:41):
an anti vaxer and all this stuff. So he's not
a medical professional.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
He's not a doctor. He's a lawyer. And do you
trust lawyers.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
As far as I could throw them? I'm just kidding.
There's there's definitely some good lawyers out there. Probably I've
seen suit, so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, there's good lawyers out there. But it just
seems like he's trying to do what he can to
further his agenda and further his propaganda. And he's not
doing this to be a medical professional by any means.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
You know. And I think people like him and other
people with similar agendas to the administration, they unfortunately like
pray on people that just don't know better. And I
think that's where it's hard. I think that's where it's
really hard, because we can sit here and make fun
of him, and we can just be like, how how
do people believe this? How do we even get to
(26:35):
this point? But if we take back, take a step back,
and try to think like you only know what you know.
So if you don't know any better when it comes
to statistics and science and p values and studies and
all that stuff, if you don't know any better, you
don't want to read the whole thing, well why not
have someone tell it to you.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
So, yeah, I always like to make the comparison of like,
you know, I went to medical school. I know this
stuff kind of. I mean, I'm still not perfect, but
I always like to compare it to if a diesel
mechanic came up to me and started talking about like
how a diesel engine works, I would have the basic concepts,
(27:14):
but he could make up pretty much anything, and I
would say, sounds good to me, makes sense, it's logical.
So a lot of people, who I mean the vast
majority of people, don't have a solid scientific education. And
the education system in America has really gone downhill in
terms of scientific education as well too, so people are
(27:35):
not equipped to be able to pick apart his arguments.
And it's easy to listen to him because he is
very charismatic. He does sound like he knows what he's
talking about. So I could see why people could be
convinced pretty easily. So to end this episode, we wanted
to do something. Just give RFK some suggestions because you
know he wants to make the AH the America, make
(27:57):
America healthy again, you know, America American Health Administration or whatever.
So we want to give some suggestions for RFK. If
you really want to make America healthy again. Here are
some suggestions from two mental health professionals. So stop just
targeting people with autism. Like, I know this is how
(28:19):
you got famous.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I know this is kind of.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Your bread and butter issue, but boy, there are so
many other things that you could do that you could
actually do that is going to help large swaths of
Americans be healthier. Some of these may not totally be
under his control, but apparently he's got a lot of
influence and the President's got he's got the president's ear,
so like, yeah, make it happen, well.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
At least part of his ear, right then.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Wow Butler Pennsylvania callback joke. Wow, But I do like
that RFK Junior is into health fear, foods for kids,
and less food dies because there actually have been some
pretty big meta analyzes that show too much processed food
(29:08):
and especially food dies can lead to ADHD symptoms and
attentiveness and behavior problems. So I think it's totally reasonable, Like,
if you really want to make a healthier America, go
down that route. Number one, get rid of processed foods
and added sugars in school, but also fund the school
lunch programs that the school doesn't taste like garbage.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Some other things would be like to ban advertisements directed
at kids for processed foods. We've already kind of tried
to do this with like trying to ban specific flavors
of like vapes that are directly geared towards kids, like
cotton candy and watermelon sunshine. Yeah, we don't need that, man,
Just they're geared towards the kids. Can't be doing that.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Sounds delicious, it does.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
But we can make that choice. We can make that
choice a young kid. They get addicted, they're not really
making that choice anymore. Else is making the choice for them,
and it's big vape.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, big tobacco, which is still has a big, strong hold,
big nicotine on our country. Yeah, we could be subsidizing
whole foods, whole healthy foods instead of highly processed foods,
because you'd be surprised at how many highly processed foods
like get government subsidies to be absolutely cheaper for people
to buy. So if you're giving people more of an
(30:25):
incentive to buy highly processed bad foods for kids, which
we know that about seventy percent of the calories that
kids consume these days are from highly processed foods, Like,
we could completely change the diet of children.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah, some bigger things could be things like banning social
media for anyone under eighteen and then trying to set
limits to four hours a day of video games for
anyone under eighteen and the caveast because this has been
this has been a kind of fun thing to see
in real time. I'd like to think that Justin was
kind of at the forefront with his ted talk. It
has a fuck ton of views. We always going to
(31:00):
bring it up, but I know this has been something
that you're passionate about it and I have thought about
a lot in terms of the Internet and social media
use and screen time with our kids, and it's been
kind of interesting to see the discussion and discourse around
it recently. Remember we talked about the Anxious Generation book
not too long ago, and that came out last year,
so it's fairly new. But there's a lot of states
(31:23):
right now. I probably shouldn't say a lot because I don't
know for sure. Let me just speak on Oregon specifically.
There's a piece of legislation that's moving through, that's cleared
whatever hurdle it's at, and it looks like it's going
to be put into place that's basically mandating that school
districts have to have some type of cell phone policy
or cell phone ban in place. And that book the
(31:45):
Anxious Generation is kind of steamrolling it. It's kind of
like got us to the point where a lot of
people are like jumping on board. And I want to
say this with the caveat of those those last two items,
when it comes to social media and video games, I
think in an ideal world, we can do something like that.
We we can fix that. I think because these things
are so intertwined, and not specifically video games, not everybody
(32:07):
plays video games, but social media. It's it's not a
it's not so much an if, but when thing now
with our kids, right and it's it's super integrated into
our kids' lives, and it's it's one of those things
where what do you mean you don't have Snapchat. What
do you mean you don't have Instagram. I don't agree
with it at all that the kids are, you know,
blowing each other for not having these things, but it's
intertwined in their life, right, So it's one of those
(32:29):
I don't want to call it evil, but it's one
of those things that just it is. It just is right.
Same with screens. They just are going to any high school,
elementary school, middle school. They have chromebooks, they have computers,
they have iPads right that are being used that the
school district is providing. So I think, in an ideal world, yeah,
we can start to limit, we can limit things like that.
(32:50):
Then unfortunately we're not in any ideal world. It's got
to be some type of learning to live with. I
think is going to be the happy medium that we
get to at some point. And I do think something
like these cell phone bands and eliminating phones in schools
is kind of a step in the right direction. I
think taking those away and making it so kids got
(33:11):
to focus on school. I don't know, it seems pretty good,
so I'll just add those caveats. And I've been thinking
about it a lot because of the book The anxious
generation because of your expertise, just because things are coming
out news wise that directly impact me in my work.
I've had a lot of thoughts on it, and it's
been kind of cool to like think about it and
(33:31):
share thoughts and ideas and just have some type of
I don't know, I feel in the know about things,
and that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, it is nice.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
And more and more countries are starting to do these
types of things. They're taking the steps, like Australia just
to prove to ban on social media for anyone under sixteen. China,
I know, we've talked about it in the past, has
banned like more than one hour or two hours of
video games on weeknights for kids. Like, people are finally
starting to realize that if they really want to put
(34:01):
the mental health of kids as a priority, they need
to make big systemic changes.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Absolutely so a couple other suggestions, RFK, if you're listening,
which you know, go ahead, everyone out there, we're probably
going to turn this into Instagram videos, tiktoks, go ahead
and spread it like it. Make sure our FK junior
sees this. Make sure he also hears my awesome impression
of him because I'm.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Sure he would love it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
But provide free daycare and early childhood education for everyone,
because socially supported families are healthy families, and so many
people in this country are struggling for money, they're working
multiple jobs, they're not able to spend as much time
with their kids as they would like, and it is
just so much pressure on families and it's hard on
(34:45):
kid's brain. And then finally, actually fund Medicaid so that
kids and kids with autism can get the health care
that they need. The current Republican budget plan would cut
Medicaid funding, so it actually would mean less resource for
kids with autism. So ay, they're villainizing autism and saying like, oh,
you know, these kids are they can't function in society
(35:08):
the way they should. They can't pay their taxes, and
then they're also going to cut their funding so that
they don't get the resources that they need to actually
work on these things to be functional members of society.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
So double edged sword.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
What do you think the majority of people are kids
families that get Medicare and Medicaid services.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
We're in the country largely Republican states.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Oh yeah, I know, yeah, ironic, right, it's just I.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Saw TikTok, and obviously TikTok is super sensationalized and stuff,
but I saw a TikTok of a lady being interviewed
by their like kind of trolls and stuff, and like
I saw one where the guy was like, do you
think the government trying to control if people can have
guns is overstepping And he's like, yeah, constitution right to
bare arms. And then the guy goes, what about like
(35:57):
the government saying that like federal agents can go into
someone's without a warrant and taking them out, And he's
like well, he's like, well that's you know, that's kind
of what this administration is doing. And the guy's like
oh whatever, and just like walked away like that, Yeah,
dissonance with it, same kind of idea that this lady
was being interviewed and she lost her job, she lost
her federal job because of cuts being made, and she
(36:18):
was like, yeah, I'd still vote for him, Like okay,
well sounds good.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah. Yeah. People got strong beliefs.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It's hard to change people's opinions, and people have a
confirmation bias. They want to believe what they want to believe,
and even if you present them with data against it,
They're still like, I don't care. Yeah, So, final points,
is there really an autism epidemic? It kind of depends
on who you believe right now, which reality you choose
to live in, which news sources you choose to get.
(36:50):
One side, which is largely made up of people like RFK,
anti vaxxers, politics, politicians, skeptics, they say, yes, this is
a huge epidemic, there's maybe oxen's out there that might
be contributing to it, even though there doesn't really is,
it's not really backed up by the data and evidence.
And on the other side, made up of like medical professionals,
researchers and scientists, say no, there's no significant autism epidemic,
(37:15):
that this is largely the result of us being better
able to identify it and diagnose it.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
And Justin and I we tend to lead towards the scientists,
the researchers, the medical professionals, but I think we try
to still keep an open mind to the possibility that
maybe we're missing something. I'll say it too, I think
numbers are great. Data is great. Sometimes when it comes
to people, you can't necessarily explain something with a number.
There's more to it right, you quantitative research is super important,
(37:42):
but so it's qualitative research, so it's important to we
try to understand other possibilities and we just try to
be open. I think that's important. We try to be
open and not shut everything out without thinking of all
the possibilities.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, I'm an eternal optimist. Maybe all of this conversation
will get more funding to studying autism, Like, maybe it
will lead to something positive. Maybe we will identify something
some sort of environmental factors.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That we just don't know yet.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
There's still a lot and I know that I said
that it's kind of a black and white. You know,
whose side are you on, and there are people on
both sides. There are scientists that are on the side
of RFK two, so it's not always so just cut
and dry. We had a really good quote that I
wanted to share from Kristin Roth, who is the chief
marketing officer for the Autism Society of America. She told
(38:31):
NPR in an interview that her organization and other leading
disability groups agree that there is a need for more
autism research. However, it has to be rooted in science,
in fact, and to definitively say that autism is caused
by an environmental factor or toxin is not rooted in
known science right now. Boom, Yeah, I thought that was
(38:54):
a really good way to.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Sum it all up.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yeah, agreed. What about take home points. Let's wrap it
up with some thoughts we have.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Take on point for me is that, yes, we can
always study autism more, and yes we should be studying
autism more. But it seems like this new wave of
this epidemic of autism, this belief that this is an epidemic,
it doesn't really seem to be rooted in science and fact,
(39:24):
and it seems to be pushed by people who have
somewhat of an agenda.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I think my take home point is going to be
I'm gonna ramble for a little bit and hopefully it
makes sense. Even if let's just say vaccines did cause autism,
let's just say they did. Someone being diagnosed with autism
is not the end of the world. People with autism
are not broken, they're not incapable, they're not they're not
done living their life, and autism diagnosis does not mean
(39:52):
that you cannot live a happy, healthy, fulfilling life. So
even if they did cause autism, which they don't, having
the diagnosis is not the end of the world. And
I hate that this diagnosis gets villainized so much by
people that don't fully have an understanding of what people
with ASD go through on a daily basis and how
(40:14):
they live their life.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I work with a lot of young people with autism,
and they are wonderful people. And I've got some kids
who are on the severe spectrum. And what I noticed
that even if they're nonverbal, even if they can't communicate,
even if they need significant help, their families still really
love them and care about them and wouldn't trade them
for the world. And I think that says a lot
(40:35):
about the human nature and a lot about people and
the goodness in people that still exists in this world.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
And one last thing, since we're still here and recording,
let's just stop. Let's stop assuming that everyone that's like
a little quirky or a little different has autism. Okay,
not everything's a fucking diagnosis. I hear that way too
much of like, oh, that person's definitely on the spectrum.
You don't know, I don't know, none of us know.
(41:03):
We're not here to diagnose. So let's just not assume
that's someone that has different characteristics than what you're used to,
means that they have an autism diagnosis. Well, on that note, uh,
we hope you appreciated our one on one exclusive interview
with RFK.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
You're welcome, Eddie.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
What seriously man? Thank y'all for listening. We appreciate it.
On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, feel
for you to like subscribe, leave us a five star review.
You can leave a common as well on social media
at Millennial MHC and MILLENNIALIMAHC dot com. We appreciate y'all.
We'll see you next time, and remember take care of
(41:42):
all mentals.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
The content provider in this podcast is for informational purposes
only and does not constitute legal, medical, or professional advice.
All we seek the advice of a qualified professional for
any legal, medical, or mental health concern. The hosts and
the producers disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential,
or specific damages arising from the use of this pests
or any information contained therein. Opinions expressed by the hosts
(42:03):
and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect
the view of their employers or organizations that they may
affiliate with. By accessing and listening to this podcast, you
agree to hold harmless the hosts, guests, and producers from
claims or liabilities arising from your use of, or reliance on,
the information presented
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