I write poetry for a living. This may surprise Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., because I am also autistic. On April 16, the Health and Human Services Secretary called autism an “individual tragedy” that “destroys families, and … children,”[i] citing a number of things autistic people supposedly cannot do, including write poetry, play baseball, date, or use a toilet. And at the top of the multimillionaire’s list: autistic people will “never pay taxes.”[ii]
These comments came as he announced an investigation into the cause of autism, despite the fact that study after study has demonstrated that autism genetic, and connected to other forms of neurodiversity such as dyslexia and ADHD. RFK and the president he serves do not believe these scientific studies, instead repeatedly suggesting that vaccines make people autistic, despite robust scientific evidence to the contrary.
To establish a link between vaccines and autism, RFK has entrusted his autism task force to David Geier, a Maryland man with a Bachelor of Arts degree, charges for practicing medicine without a license (or indeed any medical training), and a history of publishing vaccine conspiracy theories.[iii] RFK has stated that his team will announce their “discoveries” by September, although frankly I’m surprised it will take that long since they seem to have already made up their minds.
I am tempted to present you with the mountain of research demonstrating the heredity of autism.[iv] I want to spend several thousand words detailing the changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that have over time expanded the diagnostic criteria for autism, first with a significant revision of the DSM-III in 1987[v], shortly before Kennedy alleges an “autism epidemic” began,[vi] and again with the DSM-5 in 2013 which included people with above average IQs and allowing people with other neurodivergent diagnoses to also be diagnosed with autism.[vii] I want to scream that while the overwhelming majority of diagnoses used to be white boys, now white boys are in the minority of diagnoses as awareness has expanded to include those traits that are more typical in other genders or races, allowing missed diagnoses to catch up over the past few years.[viii]
But I will leave the statistic-screaming to the doctors and scientists. As a humanities person (with a higher degree than David Geier, not that RFK cares), I want to focus on RFK’s rhetoric. His comments demonstrate his ignorance about the breadth and diversity of the autistic community.[ix] (Yes, some of us write poetry. One of my autistic children demonstrates exceptional athleticism while the other is gifted at art and music. Both of my autistic children exhibited autistic traits before receiving a dose of the MMR vaccine. Everyone in my family uses a toilet, and we always pay our taxes.) But I am less troubled by Kennedy’s ignorance than by his dehumanizing view of disability. Are we to understand from his comments that a human being’s ability to hold a job and pay taxes is what makes them a “great resource”?
Disability in Industrial Society
This perception of human value as economic value isn’t new, and has been especially prevalent since the Industrial Revolution. While there has been stigma attached to disability recorded even in some ancient societies, when Europe and the United States had agrarian economies, communities were better positioned to come together to care for all of their members, disabled or otherwise. With a variety of tasks needing completion in households, villages, or on farms—and a slower pace of life during which to complete them—people did not assume that disabled community members with higher support needs couldn’t contribute in some way or another to community operations.[x]
But the rise of factory work commodified human bodies, tying the value of a person to their output in specific tasks—often tasks that favored able bodies and high speeds of movement and thought.[xi] During this period, jobs began to dry up for people with particular disabilities, especially those with higher support needs. And—as “idle hands are the devil’s workshop”—people who were out of work or less productive at work were also viewed as morally deficient. In the legal system, having an intellectual disability or diagnosis of “insanity” made conviction more likely. [xii] Prisons and psychiatric institutions became convenient ways to shunt away those who weren’t contributing materially to the economy or who were seen as overly reliant on social supports. [xiii]
When Kennedy talks about autism it’s clear that he’s picturing autistic people with high support needs, and in doing so is heavily leaning into this historical mindset that disabled people have less monetary value in society. This is the crux of the problem with his beliefs, and the assumptions that follow are deeply disturbing.
The importance of language
Let’s follow his line of inquiry to its conclusion. What if the MMR vaccine did cause people to become autistic. Is it better to get measles, which causes death in 0.3% of cases (and disabilities such as deafness and IDD in an additional 0.1%)? Or to get a vaccine, which even using RFK’s numbers could result in at most 0.9% risk of ASD Level 3, the diagnosis signaling the highest tier of support needs in the community—and which is not fatal? Kennedy’s rhetoric implies that death is preferable to disability—that life is not meaningful without the ability to perform specific tasks such as writing poetry or playing baseball at a certain level of proficiency.
His assessment of our monetary value has its own disturbing resonance. When RFK Jr. says that autistic people don’t hold jobs or pay taxes—when his coworker/boss Elon Musk circulates memes calling people who rely on social supports (disproportionately true of disabled Americans) a “parasite class”— they position the disabled community as less important than the economic well-being of less vulnerable populations. The term “parasite” in particular conjures horrific images, as it has historically been used to dehumanize Jewish people, most notably during the Holocaust when ethnic minorities, especially Jews, disabled people, and queer people, especially gay men, were arrested, tortured, and executed in the name of rebuilding the German economy and political dominance.[xiv]
Does RFK Jr. know that by his rhetoric he’s participating in a long history of dehumanizing vulnerable people? I don’t honestly know how much of what he does is deliberate. For example, it seems ludicrous to suggest that he peddled his blatantly unscientific opinions about vaccines and the measles to deliberately create a wave of vitamin A overdoses among ill, unvaccinated children.[xv] Then again, it also seems ludicrous that a man who had his brain partially eaten by a worm contracted from undercooked pork[xvi] turned around and dismantled our Federal food safety system,[xvii] and that was deliberate. It’s surprising he can be so militant about causes of autism and cavalier about the cause of 30% of epilepsy cases.[xviii]
Deliberate or not, his rhetoric reminds many disabled Americans of tragedies that rocked our community in the distant but also more recent past. Institutionalization lingered well into the twentieth century, and its echoes still haunt the autistic community. Through the 1940s and 1950s, parents feared having their children evaluated for autism lest they be taken away. When the practice of institutionalizing autistic people ceased in the 1960s, parents were more willing to have their children evaluated.[xix] Still, some Baby Boomers remained wary of diagnosis. When my daughter was first identified as autistic, people of my parents’ generation urged me to ignore the pediatrician and not get her tested, fearing a diagnosis would lead to discrimination.
Eugenics also affected the disabled community greatly. In the United States, disabled, impoverished, mentally ill, and/or queer people were forcibly sterilized, a practice which continued in some states until 1983.[xx] (No, that’s not a typo. 1983. Forgive us if we’re jumpy when people talk about us as tragic or destroyed.) RFK says he wants to find the “cause” of autism so he can eliminate it. We already know the cause; 80-90% of autistic diagnoses are hereditary, and the remainder caused by genetic mutations.[xxi] For a country with such a dark history with eugenics, talking about eliminating the cause of autism is ominous to say the least.
Even two weeks after his comments, my friends in the neuropsych community are seeing the impact. Parents are cancelling their children’s evaluations. They are asking their therapists if they can have their already diagnosed child’s diagnosis revoked—which would eliminate their access to services but also wouldn’t put them on the government’s radar. Parents are quietly researching their legal rights and resources to protect their children. And a lack of diagnosis means their children will no longer have access to the healthcare, therapies, and accommodations that require diagnosis. That means they (the parents and the kids) will also lose access to the communities that surround these resources. These resources and communities are essential—essential—to parenting disabled children in twenty-first century America.
Do good, and do no harm
Kennedy’s comments about autism didn’t come from a vacuum. Many families with autistic kids struggle and lack support. Whether your children are disabled or non-disabled, twenty-first century parenthood is logistically and materially challenging. The industrial revolution has passed; the villages are gone; and expectations for the amount of supervision, care, and financial investment you are putting into your children have never been higher. This hits parents of disabled kids hard because the more hands-on support your child needs, the more pressure on your time and your wallet.
Looking at that situation and concluding, as Kennedy has done, that life would be better if autistic children didn’t exist, however, overlooks the strengths, beauty, and (I’ll say it again) humanity of our wonderful children. And more infuriatingly, as secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary, Kennedy could materially improve the lives of disabled people and their families if he were only willing to abandon his anti-vax obsession and instead focus on the areas within his purview that fundamentally affect our lives.
First, HHS oversees Federal childcare programs and supports. Childcare is particularly challenging for families with disabled kids. If you need to frequently take your kids to appointments, it’s hard to work full time. It can be harder to find and afford childcare that will meet your child’s needs—and even harder to find care that will help you get them to their appointments. Yet instead of bolstering government support to childcare, HHS has cut funding, staff, and entire programs related to childcare.[xxii]
Then, there’s healthcare. Disabled people, especially disabled children, disproportionately depend on Medicaid for vital care (another program HHS has been quietly gutting). Even if you have employer-sponsored healthcare, if your health insurance company refuses to pay for the types of services or medical equipment that your child’s providers say they need— which has happened to my family and many families we know—you’re left scrambling to find a way to pay out of pocket or else your child loses care, in which case it’s back on your shoulders to become your kid’s physical therapist overnight by watching YouTube videos. We need more HHS support in this area, not more cuts.
What about research and development of better therapies and treatment plans? Better awareness so that families get the right diagnosis so that they can get the support that they need? Studies show that people with neurocognitive disabilities, which includes autism, have adverse outcomes in healthcare because of issues like healthcare bias, lack of diagnosis or late diagnosis, and on occasion, providers’ reluctance learn how to communicate with people who are non-verbal, non-speaking, or use AAC. These negative outcomes should be preventable with reduced stigma and a focus on individualized and affirming care.[xxiii] Unfortunately, RFK is also gutting medical research and trainings while pivoting to pseudoscience that amplifies the stigma we face, leading families to actively avoid diagnosis, which will instead make those negative outcomes more likely.
Anti-disability stigma even affects social supports. In my experience, when I have tried to talk to other parents about challenges I’m facing with my kids, they sometimes have the reaction that RFK had, like my family is a tragedy or a horror show. The other moms in a mom-group will enthusiastically brainstorm solutions to a parenting issue, until your child is doing something that’s out of the realm of what they’re expecting to hear, at which point, the jaws drop. When RFK writes off our kids and our families off as “destroyed” and “tragic,” not only does he fail to help us in areas like childcare and healthcare, he also contributes to shrinking the proverbial village for parents of disabled kids. When people view autism as a tragedy, they are more likely to give us bumper stickers that say things like “God chooses the strongest women to be autism moms!” but less likely to give us hands-on, material help caring for our wonderful children who happen to have higher than average support needs.
The support I find from the therapists, doctors, and other parents at my children’s medical practices and inclusive daycare have been life changing. I cannot overstate how important these communities are to parenting disabled kids. We need to laugh at the ridiculous things our kids do. We need to vent at how much they’re annoying us. We need to tell you how clever, and strong-willed, and irrepressible they are. We need to break down after a long, hard day. And we need to do all of those things with people who understand that our families are normal.
Rehumanizing the disabled community
It’s worth mentioning, that everything I’ve talked about above relates to societal shortcomings. It is also true that sometimes a disability itself can cause suffering. RFK is confused about autism; it’s not an illness or a disease, and it doesn’t inherently cause pain. But some disabilities do. While I would never say I “suffer from” being autistic, I have another disability that sometimes causes me physical pain which wouldn’t be eliminated by social supports. And as a parent, when I see my children suffering, whether from disability directly or from a societal shortcoming like discrimination, intolerance, bullying, or lack of access, it is horrible. Of course, I wish that they never suffered. While treatment and prevention options for some disabilities and pushback against ableism and inaccessibility are good and important, however, don’t assume that means I would rather have been born different or would magic away (or “cure”) my disability—or my child’s—if I had the choice.
Disability is inextricably linked to how I experience the world and therefore who I am. If I had a different body, or a different brain, I would be a different person, both in terms of biology and in terms of the life experiences that have shaped me. I’m not ashamed of the person I am, and I don’t want to be anyone else. Like many Millennial women, I was finally diagnosed with my neurodivergences as an adult, and the experience of self-actualization was healing. Connecting to the neurodivergent community—existing alongside people with some of the same traits and challenges as me—I felt normal for the first time and learned relevant coping skills to manage my disabilities. I hope for my children that their diagnoses will allow them a sense of understanding and grace for their bodies and minds and pride at their identities.
It’s time to refute the misconception that disabled equals broken, that challenges equal tragedies, or that it’s better for your child to get the measles than to maybe be bad at baseball. The disabled community has come a long way since the Industrial Revolution, but we’re still waiting for those in power to stop judging us on what we contribute in taxes and start appreciating us for who we are.
[i] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/rfk-jr-lays-new-studies-autism-shuts-diagnoses/story?id=120882735
[ii] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366676/autism-cdc-rates-rfk-research
[iii] https://www.mbp.state.md.us/BPQAPP/orders/GeierCharge05162011.pdf
[iv] https://medschool.ucla.edu/news-article/is-autism-genetic
[v] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8531066/
[vi] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/rfk-jr-autism.html
[vii] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-reasons-autism-rates-are-up-in-the-u-s/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8531066
[viii] https://www.motivity.net/autism-facts
[ix] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366676/autism-cdc-rates-rfk-research
[x] Penny Spikins, “Autism, the Integrations of ‘Difference’ and the Origins of Modern Human Behaviour,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19, no. 2 (2009): 179–201, doi:10.1017/S0959774309000262; Irina Metzler, Fools and Idiots: Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016)
[xi] Sarah R. Rose, No Right to Be Idle: 1840s-1930s, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
[xii] Sarah R. Rose, No Right to Be Idle: 1840s-1930s, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
[xiii] Rebecca Wynter, “Pictures of Peter Pan: Institutions, Local Definitions of ‘Mental Deficiency,’ and the Filtering of Children in Early Twentieth-Century England,” Family & Community History 18, no. 2 (November 2015): 122-138, doi: 10.1179/1463118015Z.00000000045
[xiv] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21567689.2018.1425144#abstract
[xv] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/texas-children-poisoned-rfk-jr-vitamin-a-measles-treatment/
[xvi] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/pork-tapeworms-brain-parasite-infection-rfk-jr-rcna151310
[xvii] https://fortune.com/well/2025/04/18/rfk-jr-fda-food-safety-inspectors-doge-job-cuts/
[xviii] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/pork-tapeworms-brain-parasite-infection-rfk-jr-rcna151310
[xix] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3757918/
[xx] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/eugenic-sterilization-in-virginia/
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/timelines/eugenics
[xxi] https://medschool.ucla.edu/news-article/is-autism-genetic#:~:text=Autism%20is%20hereditary%20and%20therefore,stem%20from%20non%2Dinherited%20mutations.
[xxii] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-trump-budget-cuts-harm-kids-child-care-education-abuse
[xxiii] https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/5/e2023063809/197085/Health-Care-for-Youth-With-Neurodevelopmental?autologincheck=redirected
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