America in a Microcosm

What the Minnesota autism scandal tells us about America today

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What if America’s autism epidemic wasn’t caused by environmental toxins like mold or artificial colorings in processed food? What if it was actually fake? What if the explosion in cases was actually caused by Somalis and other immigrants gaming the system to collect endless welfare cheques and live off the taxpayer dime for ever?

I’m being serious. These are questions I was asking myself early this morning, as I sipped on my second or third delicious sugary covfefe and began to shake off last night’s sleep. I’d just seen a Twitter post on a crazy scandal involving Somalis and autism clinics in their Midwestern home away from home—Minnesota, where as many as 100,000 of East Africa’s finest now live.

Well, half-serious. Of course America’s autism epidemic is real. One in 31 children really was diagnosed with autism in 2022, according to the CDC’s new statistics, up from a figure of 1 in 1000 in the 1990s, and this is almost certainly due, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed, to growing exposure to environmental toxins like mold and pesticides, as well as food additives, vaccines and maybe even prenatal ultrasound. Some of it is misdiagnosis, sure, and maybe a serving of “social contagion” like with transgenderism—kids aping their friends, and liberal parents seeking the approval of the Big Other—but autism is a real thing and it really is getting worse.

So it’s great that autism is finally being taken seriously by the people in charge of running America. The money cost of the condition is staggering on its own, projected to increase to $1 trillion by 2035, but the most painful cost is emotional and moral: it’s the lives and the potential this terrible condition destroys.

Since his announcement of the “most comprehensive” investigation into the causes of autism, RFK Jr. has caught plenty of flak for saying that autism “destroys families,” but he’s right. Most of the people attacking him loudly in the media and on Twitter—like terrifying den-mother Gwen Walz—are just looking for reasons to say something bad about him, as if they didn’t have enough already.

But the fraud is real too, and it’s big. Last year, The Minnesota Reformer reported on a huge ethnic scam involving Somalis and the state’s ever-growing number of autism centers.

Since 2018, autism centers—which are unlicensed in Minnesota—have expanded prodigiously. Centers in Minnesota increased 700% in the five years between 2018 and 2023—from 41 to 328 providers—with payments from the state ballooning by 3,000% over the same period. In 2018, Minnesota’s autism centers were paid $6 million dollars by the state, but in 2023, they received a whopping $192 million.

A few paragraphs back, I told you 1 in 31 children is now diagnosed with autism in the US. Well, among Somali children aged 3 to 4 in Minnesota, the prevalence of autism is 1 in 16. In 2009, a Minnesota Department of Health study found that the proportion of 3-to-4-year-old Somali children receiving autism services was seven times higher than the rate for non-Somali children. In the intervening 16 years, that gap has only grown.

Somalis set up their own clinics under the pretext of providing “culturally appropriate care” for themselves, but in truth, they’re just using the clinics to steal money from the taxpayer.

Two providers, Smart Therapy in Minneapolis and Star Autism in St Cloud, became the focus of an FBI investigation last year after former employees came forward with evidence of the scale of the fraud taking place. According to an FBI warrant, these clinics were run by “18- or 19-year-old relatives of the owners who had no formal education beyond high school or certification related to the treatment of autism.” Many of the children being “treated” by the clinics showed no signs of autism at all. One witness cited by the FBI said they believed parents were being paid to bring perfectly normal children to the fake clinics as part of the fraud scheme. They also billed the state even when “care providers” were out of the country, including in Somalia.

Both of these providers received millions of dollars a year from the government. During a three-year period, Smart Therapy billed Medicaid $850,000 for services for a single client, and received $438,000 in payment for those services.