RFK Jr. Spews Even More Nonsense on Autism, Covid in Latest Interview

Another day, different accidental for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to enactment his ft successful his mouth. In an interrogation connected Sunday, RFK Jr. continued to dispersed misinformation astir autism spectrum disorder, portion besides taking the accidental to insult the representation of covid-19 victims.

On Sunday morning, RFK Jr. was a impermanent of the WABC 770 AM vigor amusement The Cats Roundtable, hosted by John Catsimatidis. Kennedy erstwhile again falsely claimed that autism is an epidemic, adding that its harms dwarfed the “COVID epidemic and the impacts connected our state due to the fact that COVID killed aged people.” It’s lone the latest spot of autism-related nonsense spewed by RFK Jr. successful caller weeks.

RFK Jr., the existent Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been connected a whirlwind circuit of autism misinformation.

In aboriginal April, during a furniture gathering with President Donald Trump, Kennedy stated that helium would uncover the “cause” of autism by September. At a property league past Wednesday, helium announced the merchandise of a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recovered that rates of diagnosed autism had somewhat accrued betwixt 2020 and 2022. In nonstop contradiction to the CDC report and different studies, Kennedy claimed that autism was a rapidly increasing “epidemic” and that his HHS would soon motorboat studies to place the “environmental toxin” down this rise.

At the aforesaid conference, helium further claimed that children with autism were irrevocably damaged by their condition, stating that they’ll “never wage taxes. They’ll ne'er clasp a job. They’ll ne'er play baseball. They’ll ne'er constitute a poem.” These comments sparked an contiguous backlash from members of the autism assemblage and their families, not to notation autism researchers.

It’s existent that the complaint of diagnosed autism has importantly accrued implicit time. It’s besides imaginable that definite biology factors, specified arsenic radical having children astatine an older age, could beryllium contributing to a genuine summation successful autism cases. But experts person mostly argued that astir of this emergence is tied to an accrued consciousness of autism symptoms arsenic good arsenic broader criteria successful however autism is diagnosed. And contempt what RFK Jr. has repeatedly insisted implicit the years, there’s perfectly no beardown evidence linking vaccines to autism.

As its ceremonial sanction indicates, autism is simply a spectrum, and immoderate children (around 40%, per the CDC’s caller report) bash acquisition intelligence disability, sometimes profoundly so. But galore radical with autism, including those with disability, are inactive capable to unrecorded fulfilling lives, and yes, are adjacent writing poetry.

RFK’s latest diatribe isn’t conscionable demeaning to radical with autism, it’s besides an insult to radical who mislaid loved ones to covid-19. Covid-19 was the deadliest pandemic seen successful implicit a century, claiming implicit a cardinal lives successful the U.S. alone. And portion it’s existent that older adults were the astir apt to dice from it, nary demographic was near unscathed.

In the archetypal years of the pandemic, for instance, it was a apical 5 (and astatine times first) starring origin of decease among adults betwixt their 30s and 50s, and it was inactive the eighth starring origin of death among children and teens. More than 10 cardinal children worldwide are besides estimated to person mislaid a genitor oregon caregiver to the pandemic, including implicit 140,000 successful the U.S.

There’s thing affirmative to instrumentality distant from RFK’s latest ramblings. He doesn’t recognize autism, and it’s highly improbable that his plans to find its “cause”—as if there’s lone a azygous underlying origin down this analyzable neurodevelopmental disorder—will output thing useful.