"Autism Tsunami" republished in the journal Science, Public Health Policy, & the Law

The truth routes around censorship

I. The backstory

As many of you know, from 2019 to 2021, Mark Blaxill, Cynthia Nevison, and I built the best societal cost of autism model ever developed. Previous societal cost of autism models assumed constant prevalence. But the one thing we know about autism is that the rates are increasing over time. So with Mark’s best-in-class prevalence history and Cynthia’s computer programming genius we built a model showing how much autism will likely cost the United States over the next 40 years. Titled, “Autism Tsunami: The Impact of Rising Prevalence on the Societal Cost of Autism in the United States” our manuscript sailed through peer review. It quickly became one of the most downloaded articles on the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (JADD) website.

Then (apparently) the Simons Foundation freaked out. Since 2003, the Simons Foundation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars searching for “the gene for autism.” They are the second largest funder of autism research in the U.S. (after the NIH) and they have almost nothing to show for their efforts because there is no “gene for autism” — autism is caused by environmental factors (mostly vaccines).

The sharply rising autism prevalence that we documented in our study suggests that:

1.) the search for “the gene for autism” was a total boondoggle; and

2.) the soaring cost of autism will cause the political and economic collapse of the United States in our lifetime (so we should probably do something to stop children from being poisoned in the first place).

Apparently this was embarrassing to the Simons Foundation because it falsified their approach to autism. The Simons Foundation has largely captured the field of autism research and they have hundreds of academics who are dependent on their largesse. Rather than change direction based on new information the Simons Foundation doubled down on their wrongheaded strategy and they put the word out that ‘this article needs to get got.’ Some well-placed hit pieces soon followed from defenders of the status quo.

The Editor-in-Chief of JADD, Fred Volkmar, dutifully organized a witch trial. We brought on the best lawyers in the country, Siri Glimstad LLP, to defend us. Late one night in preparing a letter to send to JADD, I discovered that Fred Volkmar took millions of dollars from the Simons Foundation over the years. At a minimum I thought he would have to recuse himself. It underscored the whole point we were making — JADD’s attack on us was in service of a wealthy benefactor and contrary to scientific best practices.

But the facts did not matter at all to JADD, their attorneys at Springer/Nature, nor the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) that we later appealed to. JADD and COPE were riddled with financial conflicts of interest (see explanation here) but the conflicted parties carried on regardless. There were never any independent findings of fact — JADD just made up accusations whole cloth, ignored our responses, and that was that. JADD had some witches that needed burning (us!) on behalf of the people who have been wrong for decades (the Simons Foundation and really the entire academic autism industry) and they were not going to let the facts get in their way.

We battled them for two years but the fix was in from the beginning. So over the summer they disappeared our article and attached a digital scarlet letter for eternity, “RETRACTED!” The next day the Simons Foundation put out a hit piece on us just for good measure with an image of a trash can and the caption, “Case closed.” It was all so cartoonish and over the top — these are not serious scholars.

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II. A new day

Thankfully, that’s not the end of the story. The truth always routes around censorship. Last week our article was republished in Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law. It went through independent peer review once again and we added two new paragraphs so this version is even better than what was published in JADD.

Founded in 2019, Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law has quickly become one of the best journals in the country because they publish without fear or favor and follow the data wherever it leads. It’s one of the last scientific journals that still does actual science. It’s the journal we should have published with in the first place.

You can download “Autism Tsunami” (here).

The facts remain: autism prevalence has been increasing for fifty years, the costs of autism are astronomical and growing (soon to hit a trillion dollars a year in the U.S.), and the U.S. will collapse in our lifetime if we don’t stop the mass poisoning of our children.

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III. The Simons Foundation’s strange retreat from the autism conversation

In writing this article I went over to Spectrum News (the wholly-owned blog of the Simons Foundation that put out the hit pieces on us) and discovered this notice:

Wait, what!? Spectrum News is no more and now it’s just a column within the Transmitter, a generic neuroscience blog.

Then I went over the website of the Simons Foundation. And they are in the midst of a massive rebranding.

The President is an astrophysicist — so clearly, autism is not their top priority.

Okay but what about the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI)?

Well, it’s still funded (to the tune of millions of dollars) but they are in the midst of a six-month “strategic planning process.” They no longer announce that they are searching for ‘the gene(s) for autism.’ Instead their mission consists of generalities:

SFARI’s mission is to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders by funding innovative research of the highest quality and relevance.

I imagine some of this is a function of having more money than they know what to do with. Of course rebranding and periodic reassessment of mission are essential in any large organization. But it’s still wild to watch the largest private funder of autism research flounder like this after twenty years of futility.

I cannot help but reflect on the tragedy of it all. Just imagine how different the world would be today if Bernard Rimland, Sallie Bernard, Mark Blaxill, or Lyn Redwood had been invited to those initial planning meetings in 2003 for the Simons Foundation’s autism research effort. Putting $200 million into political strategies to stop regulatory capture would have stopped the autism epidemic whereas the search for the “autism gene” allowed the epidemic to continue to surge.

It’s beyond infuriating that even as the Simons Foundation retreats from the front lines of the autism conversation they also went to great lengths to try to prevent anyone else (us!) from explaining how to stop the autism epidemic.

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IV. Lessons learned

I want to take a moment to share my “lessons learned” from this process. It’s obviously painful to be publicly lynched by a bunch of grifter clowns for two years. But I think we learned some really important things about the current state of the autism epidemic as a result of this long ordeal:

1. Retraction has been weaponized. It’s now just a tool for powerful interests to censor evidence they don’t like. During my Ph.D. I read and liked, Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives by Vinayak Prasad and Adam Cifu. They make the case that not nearly enough papers are retracted. I imagine that’s true. But it is also true that retraction has been weaponized to serve powerful interests and far too many good papers that challenge the status quo are retracted to serve the interests of powerful corporations and benefactors.

2. Censorship is a confession of guilt. There was a time, not too long ago, when the mainstream crowd was certain that they could win a debate about vaccines and autism. But that’s over now. They don’t have any RCTs. They refuse to have any discussion about the evidence. All they have left is censorship. Their position is untenable.

3. The other side is unable to have a conversation about the cost of autism. This is stunning. There are eight good societal cost of autism studies that built the foundation for our study. But once we accurately modeled the rising wave of costs (as the prevalence continues to increase) the causes and the urgent need to stop the poisoning of our kids becomes crystal clear. So the gatekeepers threw the chessboard across the room and announced that we cannot have a conversation about the costs of autism ever again. Thankfully Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law rectified this unjust situation.

4. Ignoring, suppressing, and denying evidence about rising autism prevalence and cost consigns the growing autism population to a life of misery and early death. If we cannot have a conversation about the cost of autism then government will never provide the necessary revenue and facilities to make sure that adults with autism have a place to live after their parents die. That’s what’s at stake. That’s why we wrote the article (to get government to step up now to provide more support for the growing wave of adults on the spectrum). If our society refuses to plan for what’s ahead, hospitals, homeless shelters, and the streets will be where millions of autistic adults live and die. Increasingly this will be the story in every town across America:

This is what 50 years of academics lying about autism in order to enrich themselves has done to this country.

Our study is an important first step in finally telling the truth about the full scope of the autism epidemic. Congress should immediately convene hearings on the rising prevalence and cost of autism in the U.S.

5. It’s not just Pharma that wants to cover up the autism epidemic — the trillion dollar a year Autism Industry wants to cover up what is happening as well. In my Ph.D. (2014-2019) I showed that the autism epidemic stems from the political economy problem of regulatory capture (that’s Pharma). But what I learned from fighting to get the truth out about the cost of the autism epidemic is that the trillion dollar a year AUTISM INDUSTRY does not want anyone to know why autism rates keep increasing either (they want to keep that gravy train rolling). It was the geneticists (the Simons Foundation) who called for our heads and Fred Volkmar then enlisted the help of handpicked Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) supporters to attack our paper.

6. It seems clear to me that Fred Volkmar and many of the so-called academic autism experts are committing research fraud. The federal government funds genetics research as a make-work program to keep scientists from studying the harms of toxicants. Jim Simons funds genetics research to cover up the guilt that he may have harmed his own child with vaccines. In the 1970s, perhaps it was reasonable to think that autism might be genetic — yet even then, people who actually worked with children on the spectrum, including Bernard Rimland, knew autism was caused by environmental factors.

By 2003, it was already clear that autism is NOT primarily a genetic condition (see my earlier discussion in Section IV: here). With the publication of Hallmayer et al. (2011), the genetic theory of autism causation was largely over (see my discussion of that study in my thesis). So anyone who has taken money from the NIH and the Simons Foundation over the last decade to search for something they will never find is arguably committing research fraud; these academics are defrauding the taxpayers, defrauding the universities where they work, and defrauding people on the spectrum who are hurt by this spectacular waste of valuable resources.

Here’s a photo of Fred Volkmar giving a presentation to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Autism Meeting in 2019:

Zoom in on the slide. He wrote:

First twin study (1978) suggested strong genetics.

Subsequent studies have confirmed

Autism is a complex genetic disorder…

The first sentence is true and the next two sentences are lies. Fred Volkmar is lying to everyone in this room because it is profitable to do so. That’s the definition of fraud.

All of the evidence suggests that autism is caused by toxicants and those who deny this are engaged in a criminal cover up.

7. Because they have committed crimes against humanity, the current gatekeepers will never change their ways. So it’s on us to replace the current system with something better. Mainstream allopathic medicine; the NIH, FDA, and CDC; and the Autism Industry can only produce poison, disability, death, and ruin. There is no point in engaging with them anymore. We have to build our own, better, knowledge production system, medical system, political system, and economic system. Above all else we must keep toxic chemicals out of people’s bodies. Lots of these efforts have begun already. If we can elect Robert Kennedy, Jr. or Ron DeSantis as President, this process will accelerate. But as our systems thrive while the current system collapses, the mainstream will launch wave after wave of attacks on us, so we have to be ready to prevail in those confrontations as well.

*The views in this article are my own and do not represent the opinions of my co-authors.

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Blessings to the warriors. 🙌

Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏

Huzzah for everyone building the parallel economy our hearts know is possible. ✊

In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.

As always, I welcome any corrections.

Please share “Autism Tsunami” with your family, friends, and legislative representatives.

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