Of all the predictable moves being made by the Trump administration, one of the MOST predictable was “Robert Kennedy gets appointed to HHS and spends taxpayers’ resources on his unhinged autism conspiracies.” As soon as Kennedy endorsed Trump, this was always the plan. Kennedy has zero interest in actual science or medicine, so he’s radically altering what Health and Human Services does and does not do. Flu shots? Nah. Encourage parents to give their children the MMR vaccine? Nope. Spread offensive and dangerous conspiracies about how people with autism are burdens on society who never pay taxes? Absolutely. After Kennedy’s offensive statements about autism last week, he’s doubling down. He wants HHS to get their hands on autistic people’s medical records, and he wants the government to monitor those people on a daily and intimate level.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is set to amass the private medical records of Americans for a new autism study.

On April 21, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — director of the National Institutes of Health — announced that the NIH will provide Kennedy with data pulled from a number of federal and commercial databases, CBS News reports. Kennedy — who has previously promoted a scientifically debunked claim that autism is caused by vaccines — is also launching a new registry to track Americans with autism.

Bhattacharya explained that between 10 and 20 outside groups of researchers will have access to these records, and they will be provided with grant funding to carry out Kennedy’s autism studies. He added that this data will allow researchers to study “comprehensive” patient data with “broad coverage” of the U.S. population for the first time.

Bhattacharya said during a presentation that the data will include medical records from pharmacy chains, lab tests, genomics data from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, claims from private insurers, data from smartwatches and fitness trackers and more. The NIH director noted that combining the data could lead to “real-time health monitoring” on Americans.

“What we’re proposing is a transformative real-world data initiative, which aims to provide a robust and secure computational data platform for chronic disease and autism research,” he said, per the outlet.

This news comes on the heels of statements Kennedy made at a press conference on April 16, when he claimed that “autism destroys families…These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

[From People]

Remember during the pandemic when anti-vaxx idiots used to argue that vaccine mandates violated their HIPAA? In America, HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which federally protects Americans from the government (or anyone else) from accessing their medical information without consent. Vaccine mandates are not a violation of HIPAA. A worm-brained nutcase accessing thousands of Americans’ medical records without permission, all to “monitor” them and track them, is a violation of HIPAA. The only thing that will save people in this situation is that Kennedy is too dumb to actually create this monitoring system. All he’s doing right now is a gross violation of medical privacy.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Kennedy’s social media.