Last week, in an interview on Fox News, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services Declares an Epidemic of Immune Dysregulation Yet no one seems to have responded to this monumental announcement. It’s almost as if he never even said it.
Instead, the MSM is going full-bore (and it’s summer!) switching into full denialist mode. Instead, they want to cite better diagnosis, and anything other than pharmaceutical products as the source of the problem.
Public messaging by some pharmaceutical-linked organizations, health authorities, and media outlets has at times tried, and failed to pin parental stress, children’s screen exposure, or home environment as causes of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) – claims not backed by solid science. For example, local news headlines have touted studies suggesting maternal stress in pregnancy “causes” autism, such as a Colorado news report on a study linking prenatal stress (combined with a labor drug) to autism fox4now.com. In reality, large epidemiological studies have not found ordinary stressful life events in pregnancy to increase autism risk thetransmitter.org. A 2012 analysis explicitly concluded that experiencing acute stress (e.g. a family death or illness during pregnancy) did not elevate autism odds – contradicting earlier small studies and casting doubt on stress as a trigger thetransmitter.org.
Similarly, excessive screen time in early childhood has been blamed in media and popular discourse for rising autism rates. The term “virtual autism” was even coined by a Romanian psychologist after he claimed some toddlers’ autism-like symptoms were reversed by removing hours of screen exposure madinamerica.com. This idea – amplified through blogs and even a recent documentary film – warns that young children who spend “more than four hours per day” on screens may develop autism-like behaviors, supposedly curable by cutting off gadgets madinamerica.com. While correlational studies have indeed found that children with ASD tend to have higher screen time on average madinamerica.com, even StatNews cautions this does not prove causation statnews.com. For instance, a 2024 JAMA Pediatrics study of 5,100 kids found >14 hours/week of screen time before age 2 associated with higher autism diagnoses by age 12 – but the authors emphasized underlying factors (e.g. socioeconomic and developmental differences) likely explain the link, not screens themselves statnews.com. Some specialists have even asked: could it be that children who are already autistic gravitate to screens more, rather than screens causing the autism statnews.com? (Does it take a statistician to know this?) Indeed, mainstream pediatric guidance recognizes that too much passive screen use can delay social and language development, but does not label it an ASD cause crossrivertherapy.com. As one overview flatly states: “Television does not cause autism. Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental condition with a genetic and environmental basis – it is not linked to watching TV or any specific media exposure” crossrivertherapy.com.
Hellbound and Down 