When “Prevention” Means Erasure: Why Renee Dufault’s Autism Research Crosses a Line
There’s a fine line between promoting public health and promoting eugenics. Renee Dufault’s latest work doesn’t just step over it. It sprints.
Published in a peer-reviewed journal, her study on "nutritional epigenetics" claims to show how reducing prenatal consumption of ultra-processed foods could "prevent" autism and ADHD. That sounds noble on the surface. Who doesn’t want healthier pregnancies and better outcomes for kids?
But let’s be clear: This isn’t science in the service of understanding. This is ideology wrapped in molecular jargon.
Dufault, of the Food Ingredient and Health Research Institute and formerly the FDA, claims that reducing exposure to heavy metals and boosting zinc levels in pregnant women might lower the risk of autism in their offspring. She frames autism as a biological failure — a tragic developmental derailment that can and should be avoided. And in doing so, she falls squarely into the same harmful narrative that animates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s worldview: that autistic people are the collateral damage of industrial poisoning.
Let’s call it what it is: a conspiracy theory dressed up in lab protocol.
This line of research doesn’t ask how to support autistic children. It doesn’t investigate what it means to thrive while autistic. It doesn’t even acknowledge that autistic people exist as stakeholders in this conversation. Instead, it implies that the most effective form of support is nonexistence.
And that’s not public health. That’s erasure.
We know how seductive these messages are to worried parents. No one wants their child to struggle. But Dufault's approach doesn't lead to empowerment. It leads to blame. It suggests that a child’s neurology is a consequence of what their mother ate. That if their child is autistic, something went wrong. Someone failed.
This doesn’t just stigmatize autism. It stigmatizes motherhood.
We understand that some researchers and clinicians may see this kind of critique as dismissive of science or hostile to public health. But this is not a rejection of science — it’s a demand for science that accounts for ethical context and lived reality. It’s possible to study prenatal nutrition, environmental toxins and developmental outcomes without pathologizing neurodivergence or implying that autistic lives are less worth living. Responsible science isn’t just about methodology. It’s about the questions we choose to ask and the assumptions we build into our frameworks.
When a study frames autism as a “preventable outcome,” it quietly reinforces the belief that autistic lives are mistakes — errors to be corrected before they begin. That belief has real consequences. It influences policy, parent decision-making and the types of interventions that receive funding. Good intentions do not erase those impacts. What’s needed is not less science, but better science — science that recognizes the difference between reducing harm and erasing difference and that invites autistic people into the conversation as more than data points.
One cannot partially reject the dehumanizing logic of eugenics while still upholding its core assumptions.
In this case, if a researcher says, “I don’t want to eliminate autistic people — just reduce the incidence of autism through prenatal interventions,” they’re still embracing a worldview where autism is a problem to solve, not a form of human diversity to respect.
This post doesn’t oppose science — it opposes unquestioned assumptions. It doesn’t condemn researchers for exploring prenatal health; it challenges the framing of autism as inherently negative or pathological. The message isn’t “Don’t ask questions,” but “Ask better ones — ones that include autistic voices, that distinguish between difference and harm, and that refuse to treat human diversity as a design flaw.”
If this post feels sweeping, that’s because the stakes are high. The line between reducing suffering and erasing identity is thin — and historically, science has too often crossed it. But AAB’s stance invites collaboration, not exile. Researchers committed to equity and ethics are welcome — not as saviors, but as partners.
Now back to the study at hand. Autism Answers Back rejects this framework entirely. We are not here to parse out the trace metals in your grocery list. We are here to insist on the full humanity of autistic people — before birth, after diagnosis and every moment in between.
The future we’re building is not one where autistic people are filtered out by nutritional interventions. It’s one where they are welcomed, understood and given what they need to flourish.
Autism isn’t a public health crisis.
But the attempt to eliminate us? That just might be.