Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of Dealbook. Every year, I interview some of the world's most influential leaders across politics, culture, and business at the Dealbook Summit, a live event in New York City. On this year's podcast, you'll hear my unfiltered conversations with Gavin Newsom, the CEO of Palantir and Anthropic, and Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.
Listen to Dealbook Summit wherever you get your podcasts.
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Chapter 2: How has the perception of autism changed over the years?
has repeatedly cited the skyrocketing autism rates as central to his mission as Health and Human Services Secretary. He's laid the blame at the feet of everything from Tylenol to vaccines, and he recently instructed the CDC to abandon its longstanding position that the latter do not cause autism.
But while the rates of autism have increased in recent decades, the reasons are more complicated than what Kennedy has presented. Today, Azeen Qureshi explains what's really driving the increase in diagnoses.
Chapter 3: What claims does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. make about autism?
It's Monday, November 24th. So Azeen, the Make America Healthy Again movement, and RFK in particular, have really put autism in the spotlight.
Chapter 4: What factors contribute to the rise in autism diagnoses?
RFK Jr., of course, has called autism an epidemic. And I think it is fair to say that he has instilled a lot of fear in people about what the root causes of autism are. And you've spent a lot of time thinking about this as part of your reporting. And so that's where I'd like to start. And in particular, I want to talk about the numbers.
Okay.
Yeah, so autism diagnoses among children in the United States have been rising pretty consistently for decades. In the year 2000, which is the first year that the CDC started collecting data on this question, they found that one in 158-year-olds in the United States had an autism diagnosis.
Chapter 5: How has the definition of autism evolved over time?
That number has risen consistently every year that they have published their report. And the most recent data that they published, which came out this year, found that one in 31 eight-year-olds has an autism diagnosis.
So it goes from one in 150 to one in every 31 children.
Yeah, and I mean, that's a huge increase, right? And RFK really frames this as an epidemic. He says, you know, there's something in our environment that is causing autism to spread like wildfire. But that's misleading.
You know, from all the experts that I've spoken to, they've acknowledged that there are environmental factors that likely interact with our genetics that are contributing to the rise in autism. You know, there's things like pollution, for example, that people choosing to have children later in life. But those are ultimately a really small part of the explanation for this rise.
And the biggest reason that we know of that is driving this increase actually has to do with how we define what autism is. And that definition has been expanding over the last several decades.
So basically you're saying that the tent has gotten bigger, but not necessarily because there is a true fundamental increase in the number of people who have autism.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do families face regarding autism resources?
Even if that's part of it, it's that more people are being captured within this expanding definition.
Yes, but there has been a growing fight over whether this tent has grown too large. These are fights over resources. There are fights over research priorities.
Parents, activists, doctors, scientists who are researching this are starting to really grapple with whether everyone in the community is getting what they need, given that the needs of people under this very broad tent can be very different. And one of the people I've been talking to for a while about these rising tensions is this psychologist named Kathy Lord.
Her career basically tracks our understanding of autism. She is a legendary autism researcher. She has been actively involved in defining criteria for the disorder. So she's really been at the center of a lot of this change.
Chapter 7: How does the neurodiversity movement influence autism perception?
Tell me a little bit about her and sort of her backstory.
So she's a clinical psychologist. Hi, Kathy. Hello. She's at UCLA. She has spent her whole career studying and working with people with autism. What drew you to the field of autism in the first place?
I think I like the kids. I just thought they're so interesting.
Kathy, in the 1970s, as an undergrad, started working with children who had what today we would call autism.
Chapter 8: What are the future implications for autism diagnoses and support?
The kids that I saw then, we assumed they were not verbal. We assumed they couldn't talk. They did not look at us.
The kids that Kathy was seeing, many of them had intellectual disabilities. Some of the kids would be rocking back and forth, avoiding eye contact. Many of them wouldn't talk, couldn't talk, or even would just repeat what was said back to them.
We didn't understand why would a child be moving their fingers in an unusual way like starfish? Or why were they upset when someone put something down in a place that they hadn't expected it to be?
And at the time, psychologists and psychiatrists thought maybe this was a form of schizophrenia.
Originally, it was both considered childhood schizophrenia or infantile psychosis.
Why did they think it fit the profile of schizophrenia or psychosis?
I think part of it is that we use the term psychosis when people do things that we don't understand.
And what were the clinicians telling the families, like telling the parents, and what kind of treatment were they suggesting?
Yeah.
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