“[H]ead-banging, soccer helmet on, non-toilet skilled, nonverbal.”
This is how President Trump’s decide to go the Division of Well being and Human Providers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has described the tens of millions of Individuals who’re on the autism spectrum.
He was speaking to fellow conspiracy trafficker and mega-podcaster Joe Rogan in 2023, when he repeated a line of argument he’s made many, many occasions. “I wager you’ve by no means met anyone with full-blown autism your age,” Kennedy stated to Rogan, and proceeded to explain them with the callous, cartoonish, demeaning, stigmatized, inaccurate and harmful method that he did.
He usually begins this manner, insisting that childhood vaccines should trigger autism as a result of he didn’t know any severely autistic kids when he was rising up, and doesn’t know any now.
To say this quantities to “science,” and specifically the type of science a person in command of our nation’s well being ought to espouse, is clearly a joke.
There are tens of millions of adults with autism now, and all the time had been — most had been misunderstood, misdiagnosed and institutionalized throughout Kennedy’s childhood. Moreover, “full-blown autism” is just not an precise analysis or medical time period.
However as Kennedy tried to reply questions from senators Wednesday at his affirmation listening to about his questionable beliefs on every thing from vaccines to COVID-19 to abortion to meals science, the autism neighborhood specifically watched with a private curiosity.
That’s as a result of Kennedy has harangued and harassed this neighborhood for years, pushing baseless conspiracy theories, harmful lies and degrading rhetoric onto anybody who will hear.
He’s described autism — a spectrum of developmental issues that may manifest in all types of how — as a “catastrophic tragedy…which has now destroyed the lives of over 20 million kids and shattered their households.”
As a mum or dad on this neighborhood, I can inform you we’re not destroyed, nor shattered. Autism is just not an affliction nor a catastrophic tragedy. It’s a tremendous energy. We’re not ashamed of our youngsters — they’re thriving in a world of science-based remedy and training that has them conquering challenges and studying at their very best. They’re killing it.
However the considered an individual who spreads the type of dishonesty, quackery and junk science that Kennedy habitually does — particularly about our treasured kiddos — is nothing in need of abdomen churning.
In fact, I’m not alone in my concern and disgust.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Community urged the Senate to not affirm Kennedy, warning that in pushing pretend “autism cures” and anti-vax pseudo-science, “Autistic folks, the incapacity neighborhood, and the nation’s public well being will all endure.”
In a press release, the group was pointed:
“Kennedy has described autistic folks in insulting methods meant to encourage concern, saying that ‘their mind is gone’ and that the purported results of vaccination are ‘a Holocaust.’ By working to forestall childhood vaccination, he successfully communicates the message that dwelling as an autistic individual is a worse destiny than dying of measles or pertussis.”
Likewise, the president of Autism Science Basis, Alison Singer, stated this:
“I concern that oldsters will assume we don’t have the information that we do — from dozens of research — and can withhold lifesaving vaccines from their kids. Withholding vaccines will do nothing to scale back the possibility {that a} youngster is identified with autism, however will completely improve the possibility {that a} youngster may contract and die from a vaccine-preventable illness. Vaccines save lives, interval.”
Kennedy’s circle of relatives members have begged the Senate to not put him on this place of affect and energy over our well being.
On the eve of his listening to, his doctor niece Kerry Kennedy Meltzer launched a cache of personal emails between the 2, in hopes it will ship a message.
In them, she shares with Kennedy her experiences working within the ICU throughout COVID-19, telling him she watched too many unvaccinated folks needlessly die — to which he responded by difficult her hospital and the CDC’s information.
His cousin, Caroline Kennedy, additionally wrote a scathing letter to senators this week, calling RFK Jr. a “predator” who was hooked on consideration and unfit to be in command of the nation’s well being.
Three different members of the family wrote a letter again in 2019, calling Kennedy an “web doomsayer” who “helped to unfold harmful misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing mistrust of the science behind vaccines.”
That is all scary sufficient — and because the listening to revealed, his bogus theories about AIDS, Lyme illness and a slew of different public well being points clarify Kennedy is not any good friend of info or science, and due to this fact ought to be completely disqualified from HHS secretary.
However particularly with regards to autism and vaccines, it’s completely crucial: Maintain Kennedy away from our youngsters.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
