How Autism Became Political with Richard Grinker

In the Trump-era, and within the public health narrative shaped by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a debunked but persistent myth has taken hold: that infant vaccinations cause autism. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence disproving this claim, the narrative remains central to anti-vaccine rhetoric. Professor Richard Grinker, a cultural anthropologist and director of The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research, joins WITHpod to discuss how autism has become a political obsession, recent inflection points, what the research says about autism being underdiagnosed or overdiagnosed and more.

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