RFK Jr on Autism
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April is Autism Acceptance Month:
Autism Acceptance Month celebrates and honors the experiences and identities of Autistic individuals. It emphasizes understanding, inclusion, and support, moving beyond awareness towards meaningful acceptance.
On April 16, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. put out this not-very-supportive set of claims about Autism:
[The news conference that this was taken from is here.]
This is an individual tragedy as well.
Autism destroys families.
But more importantly it destroys our greatest resource,
which is our children.
These are children who should not be- who should not be suffering like this.
These are kids who- many of them were fully functional.
And regressed because of some environmental exposure
into autism when there were two years old.
And these are kids who 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.
And we have to recognize
we are doing this to our children.
And we need to put an end to it
There's been considerable pushback. For example, this Mother Jones article quotes "Elizabeth McClellan, an award-winning poet, attorney, and legal educator based in Memphis, Tennessee":
I have been publishing poetry professionally since 2009, on and off. […] Poetry doesn’t generally pay for itself, most poets are not just poets. That’s why I supplement it with my work as an attorney.
I am not only living evidence that someone can be autistic and a poet, I will challenge RFK Jr. to write a poem as good as me any day of the week, because I don’t think he can do it.
What she says about RFK Jr's characterization:
It’s completely dehumanizing. He didn’t lead with “poet.” He led with they’ll never pay taxes, they’ll never have a job. It’s just “useless eaters” rhetoric. And then he fluffs it up with, they’ll never write a poem. They’ll never play baseball. Some people won’t—some people have higher support needs. They are still people. They have a right to live and a right to dignity. And that’s not what he wants for us. He is using the straight-up eugenicist playbook. People who can’t go to the toilet by themselves are still people. People who can’t write a poem are still people. I doubt [Kennedy] can write a poem, but he’s still a person.
You can’t eradicate autism without eradicating autistic people. It’s genocidal rhetoric against us that’s justified by “autism destroys families. It destroys children.” No, it doesn’t. It’s bias against autistic people.
There's a fair amount on the web about {autistic baseball players}, from programs for children to successful grown-ups.
See also Issie Lapowsky, "RFK Jr.’s Autism Quackery is Harrowing", Vanity Fair 4/17/2025:
To back up his point (which scientists involved in the CDC’s report immediately refuted), Kennedy pointed to only the latest cutting-edge research…of the 1960s. In one study conducted between 1959 and 1965, Kennedy said, scientists found rates of autism as low as 4.7 in every 10,000 kids. As of 2022, the CDC’s new report showed the rate of autism in kids under 8 was 1 in 31. “Autism condition characterized by profound impairments in social communication and behavior would have stood out like a neon sign,” Kennedy said as if pointing to a smoking gun.
But the point Kennedy is so obviously eliding is that, in the 1960s, autism was characterized by “profound impairments,” and now, it’s, well, not—hence the CDC’s findings. The definition of autism has changed several times over since the 1980s and now includes kids with Asperger’s Syndrome, a social disorder that Elon Musk himself has said he was diagnosed with, and ADHD.
Emily Yahr, "Elon Musk reveals he has Asperger’s syndrome during SNL monologue", WaPo 5/9/2021:
“I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL,” [Musk] said, to much applause from the audience. “Or at least the first to admit it. So I won’t make a lot of eye contact with the cast tonight. But don’t worry, I’m pretty good at running ‘human’ in emulation mode.”
This announcement — which appears to be the first time Musk has publicly said he is on the autism spectrum — got plenty of pickup online Saturday night. Although many social media users quickly corrected Musk’s assertion that he was the first and pointed out that former SNL cast member Dan Aykroyd, who returned to host in 2003, has spoken out over the years about his Asperger’s diagnosis as a child.
For some further discussion of Elon Musk's joke, see "Intonation in 'human emulation mode'", 5/9/2021, which ends with this observation:
It’s clear that Autism is not a “spectrum”, i.e. a single dimension, but rather a space, with many dimensions. It’s a space that we all live in, with some corners that have been medicalized because they can cause serious life problems.
What RFK Jr. was (mis-)characterizing was the region of this space known as "profound Autism".
The official boundaries of the diagnosis "Autism" have changed substantially several times over the years. For some discussion, see "Translating 'phenotypically diverse'", 5/12/2020, "Grouping-think", 6/9/2022, and "'The psychology of thinking discretely'", 10/20/2022.
If you're not already familiar with the story, it's also worth reading about Hans Asperger.
And for more on RFK Jr's approach to biological science, adjacent to his well-known opposition to vaccines, see "RFK Jr on ethnic allele frequencies", 7/17/2023.
Update — There's lots more to say about (apparent and real) changes over time in Autism prevalence and incidence, proposed theories of causation, etc. I'll pick those questions up in another post. If you're interested, take a look at this book: The Neuroscience of Autism, 2022.
Philip Taylor said,
April 18, 2025 @ 8:38 am
What exactly did he mean by "put an end to it" ? Eradicate autism ? If so, how ?
~flow said,
April 18, 2025 @ 9:59 am
Asking someone to believe what Musk said seems preposterous at this point, all the more when he talked about himself, and all the more when he is obviously not telling the truth, knows shit about what he's talking about (as usual), packages the whole thing as another cringe "joke" (as he's wont to do) and tries to curry favor with his audience. Personally I couldn't care less whether he's autistic, a certified Asperger's, or whether he had a cruel childhood. I just want to see this guy removed from any and all offices, taken to court and held responsible like all the other goons that have usurped government and are gleefully destroying the USA. As for RFK Jr that guy's a human brainworm and as much a parasite as Elon Musk that must be removed. Quick, who's the bigger creep: the one who's just texted a woman he never met asking her to insert his semen and carry his child so he can build a 'legion' (his words)? Or the one who drove from New York to a Massachusetts beach so he can saw off the head of a stranded whale so he can strap it to the roof of his car to have… more fun with the severed head back home?
Peter B. Golden said,
April 18, 2025 @ 10:22 am
#~flow said
Amen! Two self-absorbed sickos (I am being polite…which is more than they deserve).
Mark Liberman said,
April 18, 2025 @ 10:40 am
@Philip Taylor: "What exactly did he mean by "put an end to it" ? Eradicate autism ? If so, how ?"
He has said many times that Autism is caused by vaccines — he now seems open to other environmental causes — in any case the future he sees at is one where the "cause" is eliminated and this will "put an end" to the disorder.
Passerby said,
April 18, 2025 @ 10:52 am
Thank you for bringing attention to this, Mark, and the thoughtful collection of articles. I would not have gotten interested in linguistics if it weren't for a high school friend on the spectrum who noticed how much I loved learning languages and told me about NACLO. I am forever grateful to him.
Even if RFK Jr were right on every patently false autistic stereotype that he pushes, a person's right to exist in peace shouldn't be predicated on their ability to materially contribute to society. The man is pushing eugenics, plain and simple, and should be relegated to the same dark corner of history as Asperger.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
April 18, 2025 @ 1:16 pm
RFK Jr. continues to insist that children diagnosed with autism “regress” at around age 2, when they are toddlers. I have very limited exposure to children with autism diagnoses, but in my experience, there were signs of problems beginning much earlier. The symptoms became more obvious as the children got older.
In the case of one child I know, one of the most noticeable issues is that the child can understand verbal communications, but can’t replicate that style of communication in verbal replies. Problems with spoken language aren’t the only issues, but they interested me the most because of the noticeable difference between inbound language processing and outbound limitations on verbal expression. It isn’t clear to me exactly how the inbound processing is working, either — there is communication, but the way I organize language and interpret sentences may not be at all relevant to the way the child perceives language.
David Marjanović said,
April 18, 2025 @ 1:35 pm
Oh, as a biologist, I understand that one in principle; he just went about it extremely incompetently… and, uh, he isn't in charge of a public collection and never was. It belongs in a museum!
CCH said,
April 18, 2025 @ 9:38 pm
I have autism and this is horrifying. I don't live in America, I'm not American, but this bodes extremely poorly for the autistic people who are American and live in America. Autism enabled me to be passionate about language by it being my special interest and finding massive enjoyment and comfort in devoting my time to it. It has affected me in many ways, but those ways don't make me a less valuable member of society, which is something I spent a very long time struggling with. Autism is neutral, it's good and bad. It's other people's perceptions that make it even worse
Andrew Usher said,
April 19, 2025 @ 7:33 am
I don't see what's so terrible about his message. Given his probable beliefs, it makes sense and does not seem evil. He believes – though it's almost certainly wrong – that autism is caused by vaccines or other environmental influences, in which case 'ending autism' would be just a matter of eradicating a disease, normally not thought of as a bad thing.
Of course it's questionable whether autism is a 'disease', but people of his generation (and even my immediate reaction) is to associate the term 'autism' only with the cases of profound impairment for which his description is not so far off, and considering that a pathological condition seems not unreasonable. What we now know about the 'autism spectrum' – and I think the word 'spectrum' was meant to imply a continuum, not necessarily one-dimensionality – quite strongly seems to show that the same sort of mental process that causes the profound cases also causes cases that are not obviously pathological. So he's likely wrong in that way also, but he's still thinking from the right place and it's not clear what he could implement that would be so terrifying to anyone.
It should be remember always that 'mental illness' is inherently subjective in a way that physical illnesses are not – it's harder to define what is normal, or what deviations from normal are pathological, and that that is not only because of our ignorance but because of the complexity and necessary diversity of the human mind.
Also, I do not at all doubt that Elon Musk really does have Asperger's syndrome – that is not the kind of thing you'd expect someone in his position to lie about, and some of his behavior seems consistent with it. I certainly agree that he has shown objectionable private and public behavior, but the reaction from ~flow seems to be based on 'well, [my current favorite minority] couldn't be like that!', which is nonsense. Being a member of some such group may not normally make one evil, but I'm not aware of any that makes one a saint.
But as there's no linguistic content here, and I don't see that going any farther into philosophical issues would suit here, I would rather stop.
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