RFK Jr's IACC adopts autism plan critics call 'fringe science'
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- Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee adopted a 336-page autism research plan Thursday after public consultation, with several federal agency representatives on the panel abstaining over concerns they needed more time to review the details.
- The strategic plan proposes nearly doubling federal autism spending to $760m annually, including $270m for research and $15m specifically for folate biology studies on leucovorin.
- Dr Dan Rossignol, an IACC member whose Rossignol Medical Center is a leading prescriber of leucovorin to autistic patients, also serves as unpaid chief clinical adviser to folinic-acid developer Eletala and holds a 1% equity stake in the company.
- Leucovorin prescriptions surged 71% after Trump and Kennedy promoted the drug last September, though the FDA in March approved it only for the rare cerebral folate deficiency — not autism broadly — citing scant evidence of broader benefit.
- Autistic self-advocates including the Autistic Self Advocacy Network argue the plan's call for 'supported-living models' such as farmstead and campus-based communities would reverse decades of progress closing institutional care facilities.
- The plan also endorses rigorous trials of fecal microbiota transplantation for autism-related GI problems, despite a 2019 FDA alert — since removed from the agency's website — warning that a patient died and another was severely infected by drug-resistant bacteria in such trials.
- The independent I-ACC, a counterweight panel of former IACC chairs, objects that the plan's support for 'partner-assisted communication' for non-speaking autistic people ignores evidence that the methods convey the partner's thoughts rather than the autistic person's.
Why it matters: The plan's adoption despite abstentions from multiple federal agency representatives signals internal disagreement within the government itself, while autistic self-advocates say its farmstead housing language directly invites a return to institutional confinement that disability rights groups spent decades dismantling. The $15m folate earmark, championed by an IACC member with financial ties to a leucovorin company, makes the conflict-of-interest dimension especially concrete.
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