IACC Cancels Meeting

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee and research priorities.

RFK Jr. has stacked it with his own type of people.

 Allison Parshall at Scientific American:

The government’s advisory board on autism research has cancelled a public meeting scheduled for March 19. This would have been the first public meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a group that guides federally funded autism research, since health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., entirely overhauled the group’s membership in January. He appointed 21 new members, some of whom are vaccine skeptics.

The news of the cancellation broke on March 7, the same week that a group of autism experts formed an independent group to counter misinformation. This outside group, which calls itself the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee (I-ACC), scheduled a meeting on the same day as the federal IACC meeting. The rival group includes several former members of the federal advisory board.

Fraud

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families.   Scams plague the world of autism. Some involve shady or abusive providers.

Wall Street Journal editorial:

Federal investigators are uncovering new layers of fraud in government programs, with a Minnesota man pleading guilty last week to bilking Medicaid by setting up a sham autism center. Meantime, a federal audit last week revealed how Medicaid autism treatment has become an open vault for fraud and abuse.

...

Minnesota is far from alone, judging by audits by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Inspector General of Medicaid autism spending in other states. An IG audit released last week estimated that 99% of Colorado’s Medicaid payments in 2022 and 2023 for autism treatment were improper or likely improper, totalling $285.2 million.

Nearly all providers failed to submit the required documentation for at least some claims, and a quarter billed the state for treatment provided by staff without appropriate credentials. Many autism centers billed Medicaid at more than $50 an hour for autism “treatment” when children were playing games, napping or eating. Many provided little more than glorified day care.
...

The IG notes that the state failed to do a “postpayment review of payments” to verify compliance with state and federal requirements. Recent IG audits of autism treatment providers in Maine, Wisconsin and Indiana have turned up similar problems. Providers frequently billed for more hours of treatment than they provided, charging Medicaid as much as $256 an hour in Indiana.

Autism treatment was often “provided by staff who did not have the appropriate credentials” and “to children who did not receive the required diagnostic evaluations or treatment referrals,” the IG reported in its Indiana review. In Wisconsin, records from 19 of 22 audited providers showed that Medicaid was billed for time spent in recreational activities.

Maine Medicaid pays for clinical specialists to work with autistic children in their homes. Yet the IG found that roughly half of children lacked documentation of an autism diagnosis or evaluation, and some 20% of providers didn’t substantiate their credentials to provide therapy. Questionable autism payments totaled $68 million in 2023 alone.

Inclusion: It's Complicated

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about special education and inclusion.

Dwyer, P., Nosova, E., Kermond, C., & Leadbitter, K. (2026). Inclusion, but not necessarily integration: Centring student perspectives and needs in education. Autism, 0(0).

The concept of inclusion is central to educational research and policy, with international conventions recognising disabled children’s right to inclusive education (United Nations, 2006, art. 24). However, inclusion is defined and understood in many different ways (Cigman, 2007; Dwyer, 2023; Winzer, 2009). Sometimes, educational inclusion is a synonym for integration: physical placement of disabled and neurodivergent students alongside non-disabled and neurotypical students (e.g. Dalgaard et al., 2022), although this could involve autistic people merely being tolerated, or having to adapt to the majority’s preferences (Weaver et al., 2021). Today, the dominant definition of inclusion – especially in the Global North – could be called ‘integration plus’: integration with supports so that all students can fully participate in diverse school communities and experiences (e.g. Ferguson, 1995; Pellicano et al., 2018). However, making an environment work well for everyone is not easy, and some autistic young people have articulated the basis of a radically different understanding of inclusion that one might call ‘integration-agnostic’. They suggested that inclusion is about belonging, being supported and feeling valued, regardless of whether one’s peers are neurotypical/non-disabled or neurodivergent/disabled (Goodall, 2020). We argue that a similar integration-agnostic understanding has the potential to transform education systems by increasing meaningful inclusiveness.

Trump Got Pregnant Women to Take Less Tylenol

 A number of posts have discussed Trump's support for discredited notions about autism The Sept 22 White House news conference was a firehose of lies. The next month, he posted an unfounded warning about Tylenol.  RFK then tiptoed away from the idea that it definitely causes autism.  A BMJ lit review debunked the idea. A Lancet review did likewise.

Sydney Lupkin at NPR:

President Trump told pregnant women in September 2025 to avoid Tylenol because taking it would increase their babies' risk of autism: "Taking Tylenol is not good — I'll say it: It's not good."

Doctors and scientists quickly said the data didn't support the president's claim, but emergency room orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, for pregnant patients went down 10% in the months that followed, according to a new study in The Lancet. There was no change in the acetaminophen orders for comparable women who weren't pregnant.

"It happened overnight," says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who led the study. The president's words "had an immediate impact on how much Tylenol or acetaminophen was being ordered in emergency departments."

It's not clear from the study whether patients declined to take Tylenol or doctors prescribed it less. Faust says it's probably some combination of the two.

"This is thousands of women not getting pain control or not getting fever reduction when they need it, when they want it, when they would benefit from it," Faust says.

The study was limited to emergency department visits and didn't account for women considering Tylenol at home. The data came from electronic health records from more than 1,600 hospitals.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the response to Trump's White House announcement didn't surprise him.

"Words matter," he says. "And when they come from someone with as big an audience as the president of the United States, they can change prescriber and patient behavior."

Still, he says it's reassuring that the study found Tylenol use was returning to normal by December. He says it usually takes more than a single event to change prescribing patterns long term.

Although the president and his health team spoke in the fall about updating Tylenol's label, that hasn't happened. Tylenol consumption "improved" in December, Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol, told investors last month.

IDEA Autism Numbers

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

From the Advocacy Institute:

The U.S. Dept. of Education has released new data on students with disabilities (eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA). Section 618 of the IDEA requires that each state annually submit data about the infants and toddlers, birth through age 2, who receive early intervention services under Part C of IDEA, and children with disabilities, ages 3 through 21, who receive special education and related services under Part B of IDEA.

The new data show the number of IDEA-eligible children ages 3-21 in 2024 increased significantly from 2023, which also showed a 3% increase.

...

The distribution across IDEA’s 13 disability categories of school age students (ages 5 (in kindergarten) to 21) in 2024 showed increases in the autism, multiple disabilities and developmental delay categories while other categories remained relatively unchanged. The increase in the autism category accounted for 40% of the total increase in 2024. Autism now accounts for nearly 15% of all school age students with disabilities.

Low Confidence in RFK Jr.

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   

 Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania survey, conducted Feb. 3-17, 2026, among a nationally representative sample of 1,650 U.S. adults. Highlights;

• :Career scientists vs. health agency leaders: Two-thirds of Americans (67%) have confidence in career scientists working at U.S. federal health agencies, compared with just 43% confidence in agency leaders overall.
• RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz: About 4 in 10 U.S. adults are confident Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (38%) and Dr. Mehmet Oz (42%), administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, are providing trustworthy information on public health – lower than the confidence people say they had in Dr. Anthony Fauci (54%), former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when he was in office.
• Confidence in experts outside government: People have greater trust in major health and science associations outside government – such as the American Heart Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and National Academy of Sciences – than in U.S. health agencies.
• AAP vs. CDC: On vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, Americans say they are more likely to accept the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics than the CDC by nearly a 4-1 margin.
• Trust in CDC, FDA, NIH sinking: Year over year in February surveys, public trust in the CDC, FDA, and NIH dropped significantly from 2024 (74%-76%), the final year of the Biden administration, to 2025 (67%), the first year of this Trump administration – and fell again, now, in 2026 (60-62%).

Shadow IACC

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee and research priorities.

RFK Jr. has stacked it with his own type of people.

Lena H. Sun at WP:

A group of prominent scientists launched an independent autism advisory panel Tuesday over fears that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has politicized the key federal autism advisory board he oversees.

The shadow committee will focus on developing a coordinated scientific agenda for autism research and will function as a counterweight to the advisory board Kennedy reshaped in January by appointing new members. Many of those members have echoed his controversial views, including promoting debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and advocating for unproven treatments.

The new independent group will do more than speak out against misinformation, Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation and member of the group, said in a statement Tuesday. The group will create a research agenda that reflects the progress and promise of autism science and report annually on key research advances, including basic research on genes and cells, environmental causes, early detection, therapeutics and services.

The new panel, to be called the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee, includes experienced scientists and advocates who have funded and conducted autism research for many decades, including two past directors of the National Institute of Mental Health, Joshua Gordon and Tom Insel. It is set to hold its first meeting on March 19, the same day as the federal panel.

More College Students Seek Accommodations

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the growing number of college students on the spectrum.  

Mark Arsenault and Steven Rich at NYT:

The number of college students reporting disabilities rose more than 50 percent over the last decade across a wide swath of schools, including at some of the most selective universities in the nation, according to a New York Times analysis of government data.

The rise, which has corresponded with an increase in A.D.H.D., autism and other diagnoses, has also meant an increase in the number of students requiring accommodations, such as more time to take tests. While some colleges and students have embraced the trend, saying it shows schools are opening their doors to students who might previously have been shut out, it has raised worries that some could be gaming the system.

The increases have occurred at all kinds of institutions, from small liberal arts colleges to large research universities commanding global reputations.

At some colleges, more than a third of students have registered physical or mental disabilities, signed off on by doctors. For those students, the schools generally provide the students legally required accommodations that others may not receive, such as special testing rooms and note-taking services.

The proliferation in accommodation plans, known as 504 plans after a section of federal law that prohibits discrimination based on disability, has made even the most academically rigorous universities more welcoming to students with disabilities. Among the top 100 schools that saw the biggest increases in students with disabilities are several in the group known as “Ivy Plus,” some of the most difficult schools in the nation for a student to get into, including Harvard, Cornell and the University of Chicago.

At all three of those schools, 21 percent of students registered as having disabilities in 2024, according to government data. Harvard and the University of Chicago reported less than 3 percent in 2015, the data show. Cornell University increased from 6 percent.

...

Most of the top 100 schools showing the biggest increases over the past decade are not the country’s most famous, selective or exclusive universities.

Among the top 10, Pace University in New York reported that 37 percent of students had a registered disability in 2024; in 2015 the school reported 5 percent. Hampshire College, a liberal arts school in Massachusetts, reported that its percentage climbed to 38 percent from 10 percent in a decade. Scripps College, a women’s liberal arts school in Claremont, Calif., saw increases from 11 percent to 36 percent.

The Cost of Declining MMR Coverage

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   

 Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

The health and economic repercussions of declining MMR coverage in the United States
Chad R. Wells, Abhishek Pandey, Yang Ye, Carolyn Bawden, Rebecca Giglio, Charlene Wong, Velda Wang, Chelsea Cipriano, Lamia Ayaz, Gergely Röst, Seyed M. Moghadas, Meagan C. Fitzpatrick, Burton H. Singer, Alison P. Galvani
medRxiv 2026.02.19.26346619; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.19.26346619

From the abstract:

 The United States is experiencing a resurgence of measles amid recent declines in childhood MMR vaccination. Using mathematical modeling informed by spatially resolved data on vaccination coverage, incidence, and associated economic costs, we quantified both the current and projected financial burden of measles in the United States under continued declines in coverage. For 2025, we estimated that measles imposes a cost of $244.2 million nationwide, with substantial heterogeneity in cost per case across counties driven by gaps in population immunity. Even modest annual reductions in vaccine coverage among young children generate a nonlinear increase in cases and hospitalizations, with costs totaling $7.77 billion over a five-year period.

From the article:

In summary, the resurgence of measles in 2025 reflects the combined effects of declining vaccination coverage and increased importation pressure. Between 1994 and 2023, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 104 million cases and 85,000 deaths in the US (51). Continued erosion of MMR coverage threatens to reverse these gains, imposing substantial and rapidly escalating health and economic costs. Sustained investment in vaccination policy, public health infrastructure, and global immunization efforts is therefore paramount to protect population health and alleviate the socioeconomic impact of measles.

Deidre McPhillips  at CNN:

Three people died from measles last year: two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico, all of whom were unvaccinated.

“That’s in that range of one to three deaths per 1,000 (cases). So, can we expect another death? Yes, I think we’re getting there where we can expect another death,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “And it is unconscionable.”

“When more people are choosing not to vaccinate their children, you’re going to see more disease, more suffering, more hospitalization and more death,” he said. “Children are dying from a vaccine-preventable disease because their parents are choosing not to vaccinate them, and they’re choosing not to vaccinate them because they fear the vaccine more than they fear the disease.”

More than half of US states have reported a measles case so far this year, and there are at least three large outbreaks happening across the country that continue to grow.

RFK Jr's Global Disinformation Virus

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   

 Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Hannah Harris Green at The Guardian:

Measles vaccination in the UK has fallen especially dramatically, with only 84% of five-year-olds receiving both recommended doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as of 2024. The UK is also “ground zero”, for vaccine hesitancy, according to Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. Andrew Wakefield, a former physician, was based in the UK when he linked the MMR vaccine to autism in a 1998 Lancet study that has since been retracted. He subsequently lost his medical credentials. This is the second time the UK has lost its measles elimination status in less than a decade.

Even though it’s been more than 15 years since Wakefield’s study was retracted, the idea that vaccines and autism are linked is gaining new traction around the world, with the help of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary.

“The rhetoric that happens in the United States spills over across borders to other countries,” Nuzzo said, “We live in a global ecosystem, so when they hear, well, [the vaccine is] not good enough for the Americans, maybe it’s not good for us either.”

Kennedy is known for his work with the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, which continues to promote Wakefield’s debunked talking points about vaccines and autism.

Organizations like Children’s Health Defense and influencers who promote their rhetoric often bill themselves as activists, but Nuzzo is quick to point out that there is an industry with a profit motive behind their work. A report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the “Anti-Vaxx industry” brings in at least $36m a year. Before becoming health secretary, in 2024, Kennedy himself received millions of dollars in combined income from Children’s Health Defense and various law firms that go after vaccine manufacturers.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, the US is now also on the brink of losing its measles elimination status. Measles often spreads through international transmission, and the two nations that border the US, Canada and Mexico, have also seen a rise in measles outbreaks. Canada lost its elimination.

CDC : 1,136 Measles Cases So Far This Year

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   

 Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

 CDC:

As of February 26, 2026, 1,136 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 1,130 measles cases were reported by 28 jurisdictions: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. A total of 6 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 10 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 90% of confirmed cases (1,023 of 1,136) are outbreak-associated (152 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 871 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

Casey Means Evades Questions on Vaccines and Autism

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   

 Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He recommended Casey Means as Trump's pick for surgeon general.  At her confirmation hearings, she sidestepped questions about vaccines and autism.

 From PBS:

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA): Do you believe that vaccines, whether individually or collectively, contribute to autism?

Dr. Casey Means:  Until we have a clear understanding of why kids are developing this at higher rates, I think we should not leave any stones unturned.

Sen. Bill Cassidy: There's been a lot of evidence showing that they're not implicated. Do you not accept that evidence?

Dr. Casey Means:  I do accept that evidence. I also think that science is never settled.

At USA Today, Sara Moniuszko reports on Bernie Sanders's questions:

In response to Sanders' questions on vaccines and autism, Means said, "anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of my message."

"I am not here to complicate the issue on vaccines," she said. "I think it's important to just keep it on the table."

The idea of restudying potential links between vaccines and autism aligns with long-held sentiments from Kennedy, who has ordered HHS to determine the cause of autism.

On Joe Rogan, however, she seemed to give credit to the debunked "too many too soon' theory: 

Casey Means on How the “Cult of ‘The Science’” Doesn’t Allow Certain Questions to Be Asked

“I bet that one vaccine probably isn’t causing autism but what about the 20 that they’re getting before 18 months?”@CaseyMeansMD @joerogan @calleymeans pic.twitter.com/CY5YN9SShg

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) October 8, 2024

Bogus.  See: Increasing Exposure to Antibody-Stimulating Proteins and Polysaccharides in Vaccines Is Not Associated with Risk of Autism DeStefano, Frank et al. The Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 163, Issue 2, 561 - 567

 

Del Bigtree

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

Antivaxxer Del Bigtree -- a key ally of RFK Jr. -- thinks that's okay.

Tom Bartlett at The Atlantic:

Bigtree makes two core claims about vaccination, both of which are demonstrably false. The first is one that other anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy, have been making for decades: that the apparent rise in autism cases in the U.S. since the 1990s can be blamed on immunizations, rather than, as is the consensus among experts, largely on broader diagnostic criteria and better surveillance. Bigtree believes that the dozens of studies that have found no evidence of a connection between autism and vaccines are flawed, and that immunizations have never been properly tested for safety. “Why can’t we find a double-blind placebo trial in any of the childhood vaccines?” he asked me. In fact, many early versions of vaccines, like ones for polio and measles, were tested against unvaccinated groups or a placebo. (Bigtree and others in the anti-vaccine movement object to trials that didn’t use a saline-only placebo, or weren’t double-blind.) New vaccines, however, are usually compared with older vaccines because it’s considered unethical, not to mention unwise, to put children at risk of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease.

That brings us to Bigtree’s second, arguably more outrageous claim: Vaccine-preventable illnesses simply aren’t so bad. He wants children, including his own, to get infected so that they can avoid the dangers of vaccination and develop more robust immunity. They will have, as he put it, the “Ferrari of immunity,” while the rest of us will be driving around in Ford Pintos. He told me he would prefer to live in an entirely unvaccinated country, one where the diseases that sickened millions in the first half of the 20th century could spread freely. That’s a frankly ridiculous notion, as I told him later. But Bigtree is committed to it. “I genuinely am upset that your kids are vaccinated, because it’s keeping my kids from getting chickenpox. It’s keeping my kids from getting measles,” he told me. “I believe their health depends on them catching those live viruses.” I asked him if he wanted his kids to catch all of the illnesses against which American children are routinely vaccinated. “Yes,” he said.

...

After getting to know Bigtree and watching his show, I’m not sure that the label fully captures his philosophy. He’s more than anti-vaccine: He’s pro-infection. And even though Kennedy hasn’t come out so strongly on the side of diseases since becoming health secretary, he has done so previously, suggesting, for example, that contracting measles could bolster the immune system later in life. Bigtree, for one, thinks his former boss shares his views. Kennedy “recognizes the same thing I do,” he told me. “We would be healthier if we were catching these illnesses.”