By Toby Rogers at Brownstone dot org.
For the last several decades, the official autism narrative was that 'autism is genetic, a GIFT, and anyone who says otherwise is a NUTTER who must be banned from polite society.' The mainstream media pounded this message into the public consciousness every chance they got, and this narrative was enforced through censorship and blacklisting of anyone who proposed other theories of the case.
Then this past weekend, a curious thing happened. On Saturday (October 18, 2025), the New York Times published "A Furious Debate Over Autism's Causes Leaves Parents Grasping for Answers."

The story follows two families dealing with autism, interspersed with quotes from various mainstream autism "experts." It conforms to the standard paint-by-numbers script - 'autism a mystery; it couldn't possibly be caused by vaccines, Tylenol, or food dyes; Robert Kennedy Jr. is terrible;' etc. And then, out of nowhere, the NY Times reporters (Gina Kolata and Azeen Ghorayshi) demolished the official genetic narrative:
But genetic mutations still only explain about 30 percent of cases, typically those with the most severe forms of the disorder.
So, not 100%, not half, not even a third of autism cases are genetic. That's a MASSIVE paradigm shift. Next:
Dr. Audrey Brumback, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Texas at Austin, said she offers genetic testing to most of the patients she diagnoses with autism even though, as she cautions the parents, a relevant genetic mutation will be found in only one out of four cases.
One out of four is 25%, so they're already backing away from the 30% claim. And THEN:
A landmark publication in 2007 showed that children with autism were much more likely to have so-called de novo mutations, spontaneous mutations that were not present in their mother's or father's genome.
Oh, so these children are NOT inheriting these genes from their parents (heritability is always what's been implied by the multibillion-dollar search for the mythical 'genes for autism'). Instead, these are de novo genetic mutations that are only found in the child with autism.
Do you know what else causes de novo genetic mutations? TOXICANTS.
That narrows the possibilities down considerably. Autism is not genetic - that's not me talking now, that's the NY Times. The most likely toxic exposures are from vaccines, SSRIs, Tylenol, pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, fire retardants, chemicals in plastics, EMF/RFR, and pollutants in our air, water, soil, and food - all the toxicants that I reviewed in my 2019 doctoral thesis.
So I figured out and published the definitive systematic review of the autism causation literature six years ago. My reward was to be hunted, censored, and economically blacklisted. The Washington Post, Guardian, BMJ, Springer/Nature, USA Today, Reuters, AP, Vice, and Politico have all published hit pieces on me. They never engage with my actual work, they never present contrary data, and all are engaged in racketeering on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. I stood my ground and fought back by telling the truth and citing the relevant data. Now the paper of record has abandoned the genetic narrative, which opens the door for a thorough examination of the role of toxicants in autism causation.
We are winning this debate. The official narrative is crumbling before our eyes.
I doubt the NY Times reporters even realize what they've done. When a paradigm shifts, it's not even necessarily a conscious choice; people just feel the overwhelming gravitational pull of the new narrative.
The people at the Simons Foundation, even though they are quoted favorably in the article, will be none too happy with this development. They won't be able to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine once everyone realizes that autism is not genetic. Presumably, their staff are on the phone right now calling for the retraction of all of the evidence that reveals the multibillion-dollar autism genetics research grift.
And the...