Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Eric Kevin Stern, Professor of Political Science, Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, University at Albany, State University of New York

Hurricane Katrina looms large in the history of American emergency management, both for what went wrong as the disaster unfolded and for the policy changes it triggered.

As the nation looks back on the disaster 20 years later, I believe as a crisis and emergency management specialist that it is more important than ever to remember Katrina’s lessons to avoid repeating past mistakes.

When Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, its storm surge broke through levees protecting the city. Water quickly poured into low-lying neighborhoods, flooding houses up to their rooftops and inundating an estimated 80% of the city. People who could not evacuate before the storm and were lucky enough to escape to their roofs were stranded for days in some cases.

Once the water had receded and the death toll counted, it became clear that nearly 1,400 people had died as a result of this devastating storm. The hurricane did more than $100 billion in damage, equivalent to about US$170 billion today when adjusted for inflation.

While there were many unsung heroes during Katrina, the tragic missteps and missed opportunities at all levels of government emergency management are what no emergency manager ever wants to repeat. The response failed in many areas, from broken communications among federal, state and local agencies to the reported horrors in the Superdome as 16,000 evacuees faced failed generators, poor security, dwindling supplies and overflowing toilets.

Three lessons from Katrina stand out today as the Trump administration talks about dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency and putting more responsibility for disaster management on local and state agencies.

1. Emergency response is only as strong as the weakest links

FEMA took the brunt of the criticism after Hurricane Katrina. However, serious analyses of what went wrong recognize that good disaster response requires effective governance at all levels.

Before FEMA could spend significant money to deploy people and aid, the state of Louisiana had to request a presidential disaster declaration. However, tensions between the state and federal governments reportedly delayed President George W. Bush’s approval, according to a Senate committee report assessing the response. The committee also found that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s decision to first issue a voluntary evacuation and not issue a mandatory order until a day before the storm cost precious time.

Once the storm hit, communication and coordination fell apart.

Vehicles badly needed for the disaster response were damaged by the storm. Problems with communication systems and a breakdown in situation reporting from local law enforcement and rescue services left state and federal government decision-makers flying blind, without up-to-date reports of conditions on the ground. Media reports of a “war zone” in New Orleans exaggerated the extent of public disorder and threats to responders. That further delayed the arrival of federal military and National Guard assistance – and hindered some local efforts – because it required additional precautions for coping with a hostile security environment.

As challenging as the information environment was during Hurricane Katrina, it is more difficult now. Social media, hyper-partisanship and deliberate misinformation attempts complicate emergency response and recovery efforts.

If the federal government now proposes to push more responsibility for disaster relief to the state and local levels, emergency managers at those levels will be taking on highly complex disasters in a potentially toxic information environment with less support.

States, counties and cities vary greatly in their readiness to shoulder this responsibility.

2. Leave no one behind

An enduring image of Hurricane Katrina was the plight of residents who lacked transportation and took shelter at the New Orleans Superdome, where conditions quickly deteriorated.

Another was the harrowing tales of gravely ill patients and exhausted medical staff stranded at Memorial Medical Center for five days without power as temperatures rose and the lower floors flooded.

These extreme predicaments and the deaths of people trapped in flooding homes in the Lower Ninth Ward were powerful reminders of the vulnerability of many low-income, elderly and ill residents who were unable to get out ahead of the disaster.

A few years after Katrina, Obama administration FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate and his team placed a new focus on forging a “whole community” emergency management strategy. It is designed to include marginalized populations in emergency planning and ensure that those who aren’t able to evacuate due to disability or financial limitations are not forgotten during disasters.

Government guidance now states that emergency mass care shelters be in buildings that people who have trouble walking can navigate easily. Emergency information is typically distributed in multiple languages, accessible for people with impaired hearing or vision, and written in ways adapted to the cultures and circumstances of minority groups.

However, many of these advances are in jeopardy today as the Trump administration seeks to eliminate initiatives that might be considered DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion. The misery and death caused by Hurricane Katrina should serve as vivid reminders of why many existing emergency management programs emphasize the needs of socially vulnerable populations.

3. Professional emergency management is essential

The face of the federal government’s shortcomings in responding to Hurricane Katrina was then-FEMA Administrator Michael Brown. Initially, he was publicly praised by President Bush, who declared: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!”

But Brown was not a professional emergency manager. His prior on-the-job experience in the role did not prove sufficient in this extreme situation. As the problems with the response to Katrina became increasingly evident, Brown proved unable to provide effective leadership in the crisis and was forced out.

Part of the legislative legacy of Katrina is the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. It requires that FEMA chief administrators have extensive knowledge of emergency management and substantial relevant executive leadership experience. All of the subsequent confirmed heads of FEMA were once state emergency management directors or had been in charge of emergency management in major cities.

However, those requirements do not always apply to acting administrators. In his second term, President Donald Trump has had two acting FEMA administrators – Cameron Hamilton and David Richardson. Both lacked prior experience managing major disasters on a statewide or comparable basis. Hamilton was abruptly fired after suggesting to Congress that FEMA should not be eliminated. Richardson’s leadership was quickly tested during the Texas flash flood tragedy on July 4, 2025, that killed more than 135 people.

The shortcomings of the response to Hurricane Katrina also led to wider adoption of the National Incident Management System, which helps all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector work together in an emergency.

If more responsibility for emergency management devolves to states in the future, they will need to cultivate the ability to coordinate and collaborate effectively to respond to disasters.

Looking ahead

Leaders and organizations such as FEMA have learned from crises such as Hurricane Katrina.

However, political priorities come and go, staff turns over, and generations pass the torch to their successors. Leaders and organizations can forget critical lessons from the past.

As efforts to reform – and possibly rebalance – the U.S. emergency management system continue during the Trump administration, it is essential to remember and heed the costly lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

Eric Stern has recently received funding from DHS Science and Technology for an extreme weather informatics project and from NOAA for work on extreme heat events. He has lectured at the National Emergency Management Executive Academy and many similar programs around the country and the world.

– ref. Hurricane Katrina: 3 painful lessons for emergency management are increasingly important 20 years later – https://theconversation.com/hurricane-katrina-3-painful-lessons-for-emergency-management-are-increasingly-important-20-years-later-260907

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mark Satta, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law, Wayne State University

George Orwell’s dystopian novels “Animal Farm” and “1984” have remained popular in the U.S. ever since their initial publication in the 1940s.

What’s less well known is that in the years before the publication of “Animal Farm” and “1984,” Orwell’s writing often focused primarily on other themes including work, poverty, anti-imperialism and democratic socialism.

In fact, Orwell remained a committed democratic socialist until his death in 1950.

“Animal Farm” tells the tale of a group of farm animals who take ownership of their farm from their human master by means of rebellion, but who eventually end up re-enslaved by the farm’s pigs. “1984” tells the story of one man’s failed attempt to resist totalitarian rule in a hypothetical future dictatorship set in Orwell’s home country of England.

Part of these books’ initial appeal came from their critiques of Soviet communism as the U.S. was entering the Cold War. Part of why the books seem to have remained popular are their anti-totalitarian and pro-freedom messages, which have been praised by people across the U.S. political spectrum.

Orwell, who died of tuberculosis at age 46, is a writer famous for the ideas that preoccupied him in the final years of his life. His journey to those ideas via his thinking about work, poverty and democratic socialism, among other themes, may surprise those familiar with only his dystopian fiction.

Communism and socialism not synonymous

Orwell’s democratic socialism may surprise some Americans for at least two reasons.

First, when many Americans talk about politics, they often treat communism and socialism as interchangeable terms. How could Orwell, the great satirist of Soviet communism, have been a socialist?

The answer is that communism and socialism are not synonymous.

Orwell denied that Soviet communism was a form of socialism. Instead, he saw Soviet communism as totalitarianism merely masquerading as socialism.

Orwell claimed in his 1937 book, “The Road to Wigan Pier,” that “Socialism means justice and common decency” and a commitment to “the overthrow of tyranny.” Elsewhere in the same book, he maligned communism’s anti-democratic behavior as like “sawing off the branch you are sitting on.”

A second reason that Orwell’s commitment to democratic socialism may surprise some is because in the U.S., democratic socialism is often associated with the nation’s most left-leaning political figures, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. And Orwell is often not viewed in popular imagination as a political progressive.

Yet, by American standards, Orwell was very politically progressive. He argued in “The Lion and the Unicorn” that his home country of England ought to nationalize mines, railways, banks and major industries. He also argued for limits on income inequality. Some of these policies run to the left of even most U.S. democratic socialists.

For Orwell, such left-leaning economic policies were not only compatible with, but required, a strong commitment to the central pillars of democracy, such as intellectual freedom, free speech, a free press and genuine rule by the people.

I think the best way to understand how these aspects of Orwell’s political views came together is to look at the evolution of his writing.

Work and poverty

Two of the most important themes in Orwell’s first decade as a professional writer, the 1930s, are work and poverty.

These are what he focused on most in his first book, the autobiographical “Down and Out in Paris and London,” published in 1933. There he recounts his experiences living among the poor and unemployed in France and England in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The book is full of pithy insights, such as “poverty frees people from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work,” and “the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.”

The latter quote highlights one of the key ethical and political messages of “Down and Out”: It is primarily social and political circumstances, and not moral character, that separates the rich from the poor.

Another key theme in “Down and Out” is that without a certain amount of leisure, people are incapable of doing certain kinds of thinking.

For example, Orwell argued that the reason the kitchen staff in French restaurants had not gone on strike or formed a union was because “they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.”

Orwell blamed the owners of such establishments for exploiting their workers. As he saw it, at most upscale restaurants “the staff work more and the customers pay more” and “no one benefits except the proprietor.”

In multiple novels and works of nonfiction in the 1930s, Orwell continued to explore the idea that social and political circumstances robbed people of the time they needed to engage in tasks like serious thinking and writing.

Imperialism and democratic socialism

One of Orwell’s earliest and most enduring political commitments was anti-imperialism – opposition to extending national power by means of colonialization or military force.

Orwell was of English and French descent. He was raised in England, but born in India in 1903. His father worked for the British Civil Service, which at the time exercised administrative control over India as a British colony.

Following his father’s footsteps, he spent five years working for the Imperial Police in Burma, now Myanmar. He came away from that experience with a deep hatred of imperialism. He drew upon this in his novel “Burmese Days” and his essays “A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant.”

In “The Road to Wigan Pier,” he wrote, “I hated the imperialism I was serving with a bitterness which I probably cannot make clear.”

“Wigan Pier” also displays Orwell’s commitment to democratic socialism. In the book’s first half, he reports on the dismal working and living conditions of the poor and unemployed in northern England. In the second half, he uses that material to make a case for democratic socialism.

In Orwell’s view, in deciding whether to embrace democratic socialism one had “to decide whether things at present are tolerable or not tolerable.” He concluded that present conditions were not tolerable and that democratic socialism was the way to make things better.

Propaganda and totalitarianism

Orwell developed into a sharp critic of Soviet Russia after witnessing how they used propaganda to mislead much of Europe about the Spanish Civil War. He discussed this in his book “Homage to Catalonia,” which recounts his time during the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer soldier fighting with the Spanish left against Gen. Francisco Franco, who would go on to become the country’s longtime dictator.

From Orwell’s perspective, communism highlighted the risks of how socialist revolution could go wrong. He thought that, without care, attempts at socialist revolution could create opportunities for a new form of oppression through totalitarianism.

He saw that totalitarianism was not limited to either the political left or right. Soviet communism represented left-wing totalitarianism, while Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy represented right-wing totalitarianism.

Thus, a major preoccupation in his final years was trying to warn people about the risks of falling into totalitarianism during times of political upheaval. Orwell wanted radical political change, but the change he wanted was in the service of increasing freedom and democracy, not decreasing it.

“Animal Farm” is a story about falling into autocracy. “1984” is a story about just how much autocracy can take from us.

But the things Orwell wanted to preserve, such as freedom of the mind, were also things that he thought were at risk from circumstances like poverty, oppressive working conditions and imperialism.

Research for this article was supported by a faculty fellowship from the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues at Wayne State University.

– ref. Orwell’s opposition to totalitarianism was rooted in his support for freeing workers from poverty and exploitation – https://theconversation.com/orwells-opposition-to-totalitarianism-was-rooted-in-his-support-for-freeing-workers-from-poverty-and-exploitation-261121

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Pintu Kumar Mahla, Research Associate at the Water Resources Research Institute, University of Arizona

Farmers in South Asia rely on the summer monsoon’s rainfall, but extreme monsoon rains in recent years have been destructive and deadly.

Since July, flooding during the 2025 summer monsoon has killed more than 700 people in Pakistan as water and mud swept through settlements and ancient towns. Streets in Karachi, a vital port city of about 20 million people, were inundated.

The damage has been reminiscent of 2022, when monsoon flooding stretched for miles across the country and displaced more than 8 million people.

Pakistan has a long history of natural disasters, from lethal heat waves to flash flooding. As global temperatures rise, the risks from powerful downpours, flash floods and melting glaciers are increasing.

I work on issues of water security and grew up in South Asia. I see how climate change is raising the risks and creating an urgent need for a dangerously unprepared region to invest in disaster preparedness.

Why Pakistan gets such extreme floods

The effects of climate change have wide-ranging implications for ecosystems, human communities and the physical environment.

Rising temperatures increase both evaporation and the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold, leading to powerful downpours.

At the same time, warming in the mountains speeds up the melting of snowpack and glaciers. Melting glaciers increase both runoff into rivers and the risk of glacial lake outburst floods. Glacial lake outburst floods occur when depressions dammed by glacier ice or rock fill with meltwater and overflow or burst through their dams.

A glacial lake outburst in Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan region on Aug. 22, 2025, showed the cascading dangers. The resulting flood damaged dozens of houses and pushed up debris that temporarily blocked a river. With the river blocked, water built up, creating a broad lake that threatened more flooding for communities downstream. Dozens of schools were evacuated as a precaution.

Torrential rains in the same region a few weeks earlier had triggered landslides and flooding that stranded 200 people.

Earth’s cryosphere – its glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice and snow cover – is a key part of the planet’s climate system. Snow- and ice-covered surfaces can reflect up to 80% or 90% of sunlight, keeping temperatures cooler. The loss of reflective snow and ice cover as temperatures rise helps to further accelerate warming.

Temperatures have been rising faster in the Himalayan region in recent decades, from increasing at about 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit (0.10 Celsius) per decade in the early 20th century to rising at about 0.58 F (0.32 C) per decade by the early 21st century.

In July, Pakistan saw record-breaking heat, with temperatures in Chilas, in the mountains, reaching 119 F (48.5 C), which may have contributed to the flooding that followed. When heat waves hit, faster melting can trigger major flooding, particularly in the Indus River Basin’s lower reaches, where agriculture fields are common in the flood plains.

Deforestation, homes in flood plains add to risks

Pakistan’s challenges include having a fast-growing population that has more than tripled since 1980 to over 250 million people.

A large part of that population, about 96 million, live along riverbanks and in dried riverbeds. Those areas provide flat, available land but also high flood risks.

More people has also led to more deforestation, removing both a source of cooling and increasing the risk of faster flooding and mudslides. From 2001 to 2024, Pakistan lost about 8% of its tree cover, primarily to logging. Some of that has gone into building large dams for hydropower.

Preparing for future disasters

Pakistan is among the countries hit hardest by weather-related disasters over the past two decades, yet it ranks 150th globally out of 192 countries when it comes to being ready to deal with disasters, according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative’s assessments.

The Pakistan National Disaster Management Authority’s recent National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy (2025-2030) discusses improvement in disaster risk management since 2006. But Pakistan’s disasters preparedness is still limited by poor coordination between institutions, too few early warning systems and not enough financial resources.

People’s vulnerability to disasters is made worse by old infrastructure, often poor drainage and urban planning that, in my view, doesn’t do enough to take disaster risk reduction into account. Political instability in Pakistan can also make disaster responses less effective.

The country could improve safety by designing infrastructure to better withstand disasters, expanding early warning networks, making risk reduction a part of education and policy, and improving community training and awareness programs. Those steps will require better governance and funding.

For long-term protection against natural and human-made disasters, nature-based strategies can also help, such as replanting forests to reduce erosion and mudslide risks and improving land-use planning to avoid building in flood-prone areas or creating new flood risks. The world can help by reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.

Pintu Kumar Mahla is affiliated with the Water Resources Research Center, the University of Arizona. He is also a member of the International Association of Water Law (AIDA). Pintu Kumar Mahla has not received funding related to this article.

– ref. Monsoon flooding has killed hundreds in Pakistan – climate change is pushing the rainy season from blessing to looming catastrophe – https://theconversation.com/monsoon-flooding-has-killed-hundreds-in-pakistan-climate-change-is-pushing-the-rainy-season-from-blessing-to-looming-catastrophe-263610

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Patrick Tutka, Clinical Associate Professor of Health and Kinesiology, Purdue University

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

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Why is the object of golf to play the least amount of golf? – Bryleigh, age 12, Chandler, Arizona

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In most sports, the team or player with the highest score wins, and fans celebrate super-high-scoring games. In golf, it’s the opposite – the lowest score is the champion. And since golf scores are the number of strokes each player needs to get around the course, the object is to do it with as few strokes as possible.

I study sport management, which includes training people to manage golf courses, help run associations that set the rules, and create scoring for golf. When I play golf, I find that it’s a great mental test. If I score poorly on one hole, how do I play the next hole? Will I let frustration cause me to play poorly and score high again, or can I recover?

Skilled players are able to manage each shot, finding the best place to hit the ball so that they leverage the strengths of their game and work with conditions (weather, wind) at the hole they are playing. This allows them to limit the score they get on the hole.

In golf every shot is a stroke, and you play each hole only once. There are no do-overs or second chances, so each move is extremely important for scoring. That’s different from a game like basketball, where you may get a rebound or a second chance to make a particular shot.

Par for the course

Each hole on a golf course is assigned a par score, which is the number of shots the designer believes it will take to play that hole. Almost all golf courses are made up of par 3, par 4 and par 5 shots.

On a par 3, a person is expected to take three shots to put the ball in the hole. That usually begins with a tee shot from the starting point of the hole and then two shots around or on the green area where the hole is cut. Par 4s expect two shots, covering more ground, before they get to the green area; par 5s expect three shots.

Par is designed for each hole and then added up for the course. Most golf courses have 18 holes and a par between 70 and 72.

There also are par 3 courses, where every hole is a par 3, so they can be spaced more closely and players don’t have to hit long drives. And there are short courses with fewer than 18 holes and total pars as low as 27, usually set on smaller properties.

Golfers want their score to be at par, or even lower, for each course. A decent golfer would probably shoot around 90 on an 18-hole, par 72 course. Coming in close to par lets people play together and compete against each other. Imagine that they were all trying to use as many shots as possible: They would never finish a hole, let alone a full round of the course.

Each score is given a name in comparison to par for a given hole. A score two strokes under par is called an eagle, and a score of one under par is called a birdie. When players go over par, it’s a bogey for one stroke over, a double bogey for two strokes over, and so on. There also are less-known terms, such as a snowman, which is shooting an 8 on a hole.

Every shot matters

Other sports that reward the lowest scores or the fewest attempts include darts and pool. For example, in 8-ball or 9-ball pool, the winner is the first person who sinks all of their colors and either the 8 or 9 ball into pockets with the fewest shots. Similarly, both swimming and track and field are won with low scores, although these are based on competitors’ times, not strokes or shots.

Golf requires great concentration and a good understanding of how your shot may move in the air. Players also need strategies for getting around objects in front of them on the course, such as trees, ponds and sand traps, which are also known as bunkers.

Good golfers are able to control relatively closely where their ball lands. But one of my favorite statistics is that the very best professional golfers land their ball within 10 feet of the hole just 1 in 4 times when they hit from 100 yards away.

A sense of humor helps. Baseball great Hank Aaron once said, “It took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.”

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Patrick Tutka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why is the object of golf to play as little golf as possible? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-object-of-golf-to-play-as-little-golf-as-possible-256170

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Megan Donelson, Lecturer in Health Rhetorics, University of Dayton

The Make America Healthy Again movement has generated a lot of discussion about public health. But the language MAHA proponents use to describe health and disease has also raised concerns among the disability and chronic illness communities.

I’m a researcher studying the rhetoric of health and medicine – and, specifically, the rhetoric of risk. This means I analyze the language used by public officials, institutions, health care providers and other groups in discussing health risks to decode the underlying beliefs and assumptions that can affect both policy and public sentiment about health issues.

As a scholar of rhetoric and the mother of an autistic child, in the language of MAHA I hear a disregard for the humanity of people with disabilities and a shift from supporting them to blaming them for their needs.

Such language goes all the way up to the MAHA movement’s highest-level leader, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It is clearly evident in the report on children’s health published in May 2025 by the MAHA Commission, which was established by President Donald Trump and is led by Kennedy, as well as in the MAHA Commission’s follow-up draft recommendations, leaked on Aug. 15, 2025.

Like many people, I worry that the MAHA Commission’s rhetoric may signal a coming shift in how the federal government views the needs of people with disabilities – and its responsibilities for meeting them.

Personal choice in health

One key concept for understanding the MAHA movement’s rhetoric, introduced by a prominent sociologist named Ulrich Beck, is what sociologists now call individualization of risk. Beck argued that modern societies and governments frame almost all health risks as being about personal choice and responsibility. That approach obscures how policies made by large institutions – such as governments, for example – constrain the choices that people are able to make.

In other words, governments and other institutions tend to focus on the choices that individuals make to intentionally deflect from their own responsibility for the other risk factors. The consequence, in many cases, is that the institution is off the hook for any responsibility for negative outcomes.

Beck, writing in 1986, pointed to nuclear plants in the Soviet Union as an example. People who lived near them reported health issues that they suspected were caused by radiation. But the government denied the existence of any evidence linking their woes to radiation exposure, implying that lifestyle choices were to blame. Some scholars have identified a similar dynamic in the U.S. today, where the government emphasizes personal responsibility while downplaying the effects of public policy on health outcomes.

A shift in responsibility

Such a shift in responsibility is evident in how MAHA proponents, including Kennedy, discuss chronic illness and disabilities – in particular, autism.

In its May 2025 report on children’s health, the MAHA Commission describes the administration’s views on chronic diseases in children. The report notes that the increased prevalence in “obesity, diabetes, neurodevelopmental disorders, cancer, mental health, autoimmune disorders and allergies” are “preventable trends.” It also frames the “major drivers” of these trends as “the food children are eating, the chemicals they are exposed to, the medications they are taking, and various changes to their lifestyle and behavior, particularly those related to physical activity, sleep and the use of technology.”

Notably, it makes no mention of systemic problems, such as limited access to nutritious food, poor air quality and lack of access to health care, despite strong evidence for the enormous contributions these factors make to children’s health. And regarding neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, it makes no mention of genetics, even though decades of research has found that genetics accounts for most of the risk of developing autism.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with studying the environmental factors that might contribute to autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. In fact, many researchers believe that autism is caused by complex interactions between genes and environmental factors. But here’s where Beck’s concept of individualization becomes revealing: While the government is clearly not responsible for the genetic causes of chronic diseases, this narrow focus on lifestyle and environmental factors implies that autism can be prevented if these factors are altered or eliminated.

While this may sound like great news, there are a couple of problems. First, it’s simply not true. Second, the Trump administration and Kennedy have canceled tens of millions of dollars in research funding for autism – including on environmental causes – replacing it with an initiative with an unclear review process. This is an unusual move if the goal is to identify and mitigate environmental risk factors And finally, the government could use this claim to justify removing federally funded support systems that are essential for the well-being of autistic people and their families – and instead focus all its efforts on eliminating processed foods, toxins and vaccines.

People with autism and their families are already carrying a tremendous financial burden, even with the current sources of available support. Cuts to Medicaid and other funding could transfer the responsibility for therapies and other needs to individual families, leaving many of them to struggle with paying their medical bills. But it could also threaten the existence of an entire network of health care providers that people with disabilities rely on.

Even more worrisome is the implication that autism is a kind of damage caused by the environment rather than one of many normal variations in human neurological diversity – framing people with autism as a problem that society must solve.

How language encodes value judgments

Such logic sets off alarm bells for anyone familiar with the history of eugenics, a movement that began with the idea of improving America by making its people healthier and quickly evolved to make judgments about who is and is not fit to participate in society.

Kennedy has espoused this view of autism throughout his career, even recently claiming that people with autism “will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem.”

Even if organic foods and a toxin-free household were the answer to reducing the prevalence of autism, the leaked MAHA Commission strategy report steers clear of recommending government regulation in industries such as food and agriculture, which would be needed to make these options affordable and widely available.

Instead, MAHA’s supposed interventions would remain lifestyle choices – and expensive ones, at that – left for individual families to make for themselves.

Just asking questions

Kennedy and other MAHA proponents also employ another powerful rhetorical tactic: raising questions about topics that have already reached a scientific consensus. This tactic frames such questions as pursuits of truth, but their purpose is actually to create doubt. This tactic, too, is evident in the MAHA Commission’s reports.

This practice of “just asking questions” while ignoring already established answers is widely referred to as “sealioning.” The tactic, named for a notorious sea lion in an online comic called Wondermark, is considered a form of harassment. Like much of the rhetoric of the anti-vaccine movement, it
serves to undermine public trust in science and medicine. This is partly due to a widespread misunderstanding of scientific research – for example, understanding that scientific disagreement does not necessarily indicate that science as a process is flawed.

MAHA rhetoric thus continues a troubling trend in the anti-vaccine movement of calling all of science and Western medicine into question in order to further a specific agenda, regardless of the risks to public health.

The MAHA Commission’s goals are almost universally appealing – healthier food, healthier kids and a healthier environment for all Americans. But analyzing what is implied, minimized or left out entirely can illuminate a much more complex political and social agenda.

Megan Donelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How federal officials talk about health is shifting in troubling ways – and that change makes me worried for my autistic child – https://theconversation.com/how-federal-officials-talk-about-health-is-shifting-in-troubling-ways-and-that-change-makes-me-worried-for-my-autistic-child-259874