Back in April, I wrote about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the boob whom the squatter currently occupying the White House picked to be his Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). I mentioned his bombastic claim that by September, HHS would “know what has caused the autism epidemic” and “be able to eliminate those exposures.”
The squatter, of course, crowed with delight, telling Kennedy in a Cabinet meeting that “there will be no bigger news conference than that.”
I didn’t know at the time what Kennedy’s conclusion would be. But I did know that whatever it was, it would be idiotic, because his quest to identify the cause of autism is inspired by a view of autism and disability that is idiotic. Autism is a complex neurological and developmental condition that is most certainly not caused by any one factor—and certainly not caused by childhood vaccinations, as Kennedy and members of the anti-vaccination movement have long claimed.
As September drew to a close, the squatter announced that exposure to the painkiller Tylenol in utero may cause children to develop autism, and advised that pregnant women should not take it. “Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it,” he said. “There’s no downside in not taking it.”
It’s true that autism diagnosis rates in children have risen, from one out of 150 children in 2000 to one out of thirty-one in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), says that reported rates of autism in childhood are increasing because there are now “broader diagnostic criteria,” and that clinicians “do a better job detecting it”—a claim RFK has rejected as “myth of epidemic denial.”
“It is high time,” Killick told The Los Angeles Times in September, “that this administration stops spreading misinformation about autism, and starts enacting policies that would actually benefit our community.”
I doubt that anything along the lines of what Killick suggests will be implemented so long as the squatter and RFK remain in charge. They’re too busy rejecting the medical consensus on autism, falsely tying vaccines to autism by trying to add it to the list of conditions covered by the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and describing autism and its impact on families with dehumanizing rhetoric.
Autism, in Kennedy’s cruel estimation, is something that “destroys families.” Children with autism, he’s said, “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
All of these statements are untrue for the vast majority of people with autism. And they suggest that those who do live with these significant support needs don’t live worthwhile lives or bring joy and value to those around them. ASAN, in contrast, says that as an organization, it “works to make our society more inclusive for autistic people,” and “seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism.”
That sounds like the kind of commie talk that is completely at odds with the most sacred tenets of the MAGA movement—which wants, above all else, to drag us all back to the American glory days of the 1950s and before. Back then, people with disabilities were nice and polite. They knew their place. They didn’t go around demanding their civil rights. They didn’t worry their pretty little heads about things like political power, because it was ridiculous to think that they ever would, or ever should, have any.
And in the squatter’s book, inclusion is a dirty word.