RFK Jr.’s New Autism Committee Issues First Proposals

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal committee remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on April 28 published proposals to revamp diagnosing and treating people with autism spectrum disorder.

The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee said in one proposal that a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should make clear that doctors should be prepared to recognize and treat new issues that occur in autistic people, such as seizures and difficulty sleeping.

The committee said that despite evidence showing new symptoms require treatment, “clinical care remains inconsistent and fragmented across settings.” The symptoms “can be overlooked, deferred, treated as secondary to behavior, or not systematically elicited at all,” it said.

Among the specific recommended changes is treating observations from caregivers of autistic people who are unable to speak, or speak well, as medically relevant information, rather than anecdotal context.

The Health Resources and Services Administration should develop training for doctors to identify and address gastrointestinal changes and sleep disturbances, among other problems, in autistic people, the committee said.

Another proposal suggested that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, another CMS component, clarify that when screening, diagnosing, and treating children with autism, doctors should seriously evaluate conditions such as developmental regression and allergic disease.

“When such triggers are present, further evaluation should be pursued or arranged as clinically indicated,” the proposal said, adding that the evaluation “should not permit these signals to be dismissed solely on the basis of an autism diagnosis.”

The committee said that there is much clinical evidence describing medical conditions that occur among autistic people, but “this evidence is not consistently integrated into clinical assessment, resulting in gaps in recognition, evaluation, and follow-through, especially when these conditions present atypically.”

It added later: “The result has been delayed identification, fragmented care, and preventable morbidity—reflecting a translational gap rather than an absence of evidence.”

The proposals were published as the committee met in Washington to discuss them. It was the first meeting since Kennedy removed existing committee members and selected new ones in January, including some who said vaccines cause autism.

The committee could end up changing the proposals during the meeting.

Dr. Sylvia Fogel, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School and the committee’s chair, said at the opening of the meeting that focusing on treating autistic individuals is imperative because many of the individuals suffer from undiagnosed psychiatric and pain-causing conditions.

“It is unacceptable,” said Fogel, who said her son has what she described as profound autism.

A third proposal would recommend that officials adopt the term profound autism as a reference for autistic people “with the highest and most persistent support needs.”

Fogel said the proposals aim to “address clear and correctable gaps in safety and policy.”