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RFK Jr’s Pee Wee Herman moment

4 Apr

This would be funny if Mr. Kennedy weren’t playing games with one of America’s greatest assets: our public health system. What specifically this time, you may ask?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Mr. Kennedy plans to reinstate many fired employees (RFK Jr. Plans to Reinstate Some Federal Workers, Programs). Which is a very good thing. Except they (and the rest) should never have been let go in the first place. Per the WSJ:

“Some programs that were cut, they’re being reinstated,” Kennedy said Thursday. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut. We’re reinstating them.”

But here’s where it becomes a Pee Wee Herman moment: he meant to do that. No, seriously, he’s saying he always meant to make mistakes and bring people back:

“That was always the plan,” he said, referring to fixing mistakes and the Department of Government Efficiency’s approach to making federal cuts. “Part of the DOGE—we talked about this from the beginning—is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes.”

Because that’s what a good manager does. Fire a whole lot of people and then ask the good ones to come back and not be pissed off and spend their time looking for a new job. Right?

Seriously, these are people’s lives you are dealing with, Mr. Kennedy. You don’t just tell someone, “pack your desk. We didn’t even give you the respect you deserve” and then, “please come back. We meant to do that to you. But don’t be disgruntled or anything.”

I didn’t go to management school, or business school, but even I can tell this is a bad management and bad business move. We don’t need amateurs running billions of dollars of America’s assets. Especially ones who can’t even admit mistakes.

This is a Pee Wee Herman “I meant to do that moment”. Don’t do it again.

By Matt Carey

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Operation Dork Speed (RFK Jr’s lack of publicity skills)

3 Apr

Axios has an article (White House fed up with RFK Jr.’s sluggish press shop) about how Robert Kennedy’s mismanagement of press events is frustrating White House staff. The story is worth a read and I don’t want to just copy it here. But here’s one anecdote:

On March 11, HHS held its first “MAHA Moms” event behind closed doors with Kennedy, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. No press was notified. No professional photographer was there. Fumed one attendee: “Stefanie was in charge and created a perfect press opportunity with no press, a perfect photo op with no photos.”

A perfect press opportunity with no press. For a president who lives on the press cycle, this has to be infuriating.

I will quote one more bit from the Axios article as it’s amusing in the irony. They got an official White House statement:

“The White House has a great relationship with Stefanie and HHS. We work closely day in and day out to Make America Healthy Again. It’s disappointing that bitter, anonymous sources are attempting to create conflict where none exists.”

Read the article and count how many times those “bitter, anonymous sources” are inside the White House.

Publicly they are backing Kennedy up, but those leaks don’t sound like “bitter anonymous” sources. Or, if they are, they are bitter at Mr. Kennedy’s lack of skill at handling the job he has been given.

By Matt Carey

If you read the Axios article you will see where I got the title for this piece.

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Robert Kennedy and Radical Transparency? My ass.

2 Apr

I wonder what the Kennedy clan think now. I wonder what people in his father’s generation would think of a Kennedy actively working to hide information from American citizens. I can’t say. I can say this is not the type of act I think of when I admire the Kennedy family. Not even close.

Robert Kennedy promised to be a good guy. An outsider who wasn’t tainted by Washington. Someone who fought for the little guy and wouldn’t let big government get away with things like making decisions in secret without any transparency.

Big surprise: it was a lie.

His catchphrase was “radical transparency” Sounds really cool, don’t it? This will be a new era when Government works for the people! Like this press release:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are committed to promoting radical transparency to make sure all Americans know what is in their food.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Kennedy planned to be radically transparent. That the government would be radically transparent. Let’s be clear Radical transparency is for other people. Not Mr. Kennedy. Who is now consolidating his position as a DC power broker.

One of the backbones of transparency in the U.S. government is the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA. This allows people outside the government, people like Mr. Kennedy only a few months ago, to ask the government to provide information on what it is doing. It’s based on the idea that we the people are the government and the information they generate belongs to us.

That was when FOIA served Mr. Kennedy’s purpose. Those days are now gone. FOIA will stand in the way of Mr. Kennedy, so it’s being gutted. Per Rolling Stone (Health Secretary RFK Jr. Promised Radical Transparency. Now He’s Closing FOIA Offices)

Or they did until Tuesday, anyway. Officials at the FDA and NIH have confirmed that many civil servants who work on FOIA in those offices have been let go, while the CDC’s FOIA desk has been completely eradicated, according to the agency’s chief operating officer. An email from Rolling Stone to foiarequests@cdc.gov returned an auto-reply that read, “Hello, the FOIA office has been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.” Emails to several other addresses for FOIA requests at HHS agencies – to check whether they are still active – did not receive immediate replies.

For those of us who have followed Mr. Kennedy and his anti-vaccine community for decades, his dishonesty comes as no surprise. I didn’t expect his hypocrisy to be so blatant so early.

We’ve already seen the Kennedy family distance themselves from Robert Kennedy on numerous occasions. Here’s a recent quote on that:

No prominent Kennedy has publicly endorsed RFK Jr., and the list of those who have shunned him politically is a Who’s Who of the Kennedy family: Caroline Kennedy, Joe Kennedy III, Victoria Ann Kennedy, Patrick J. Kennedy, Rory Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg, the son of Caroline Kennedy.

I wonder what the Kennedy clan think now. I wonder what people in his father’s generation would think of a Kennedy actively working to hide information from American citizens. I can’t say. I can say this is not the type of act I think of when I admire the Kennedy family. Not even close.

I wonder about the hypocrisy of his supporters. People who decried the lack of transparency in the government. Will they stand against this move by their hero? Smart money says no.

By Matt Carey

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How RFK Jr. could add $100B a year to the debt

31 Mar

If autism were a vaccine injury, i.e. if it was legitimate to add autism to the vaccine injury table, I would say, “change the schedule now and pay however many families deserve it, no matter the cost.” But autism is not a vaccine injury. I will note that if Mr. Kennedy truly believed autism is a vaccine injury, he wouldn’t have hired David Geier to do the studies. Having Mr. Geier run an autism study is the equivalent of using loaded dice in a game of craps. Mr. Kennedy is buying the outcome he wants to see. If he wants to do more autism/vaccine studies, let the science speak, to quote Mr. Kennedy himself. He’s not doing that.

Robert Kennedy is (rightly) getting a lot of attention for his vaccine related actions. Just last week he pushed out the FDA’s top vaccine official (Top US vaccine official forced to resign, reports say). I will suggest it’s past time to stop reacting and start looking ahead–ask ourselves what is going to happen and what will the fallout be? That said, if we’ve learned anything from Mr. Kennedy, it’s that one should be careful and not fall into the conspiracy theory trap. So I’ll be careful and conservative as I predict what I think Mr. Kennedy is planning.

One Kennedy goal that seems obvious to me (and many others): get autism recognized as a vaccine injury. Get autism added to the vaccine injury table* to allow families to obtain compensation from the vaccine program. Perhaps he’s made this statement outright. I wouldn’t be surprised. But even if he hasn’t, I doubt many who have followed Mr. Kennedy’s words and actions would argue that this is a likely goal for him.

Let’s say he’s successful. What would be the result? Specifically, what would this cost? The vaccine court, after all, awards monetary compensation. It’s a pretty simple calculation:

$17B is a lot, but it’s not the $100B in the title of the article. Where did I get that? The support needs for an autistic person vary greatly, but, I would argue, they are higher than the average vaccine injury recipient. Also, we are talking about very young autistic children here, so there will be a lot of uncertainty projecting the lifelong needs and the court may be convinced to provide payouts on the higher end of the scale. Often in the past, I saw payments of about $1m to provide support for a lifelong disability awarded by the court, so I chose that number when I wrote the title of this piece. If we take 104,000 autistic kids being awarded $1m a year, we get $104B a year in vaccine court awards.

Let’s state the obvious: that’s a huge amount of money. That’s about 8 aircraft carriers a year. If Elon Musk found $104B a year in savings, believe me, we’d be hearing about it.

To put this more in context, the vaccine program has a trust fund of about $4.3B. This would be gone in the first year (potentially the first month) of autism cases being handled as a table injury. Technically, the vaccine court would have no money after that, and the awards should stop. This would put congress in a tight spot: allocate more money, or tell their constituents that that they voted to deny compensation to disabled children. I suspect they would vote to allocate funds. So we are talking about somewhere between $17B and $100B a year added to the budget, which would be directly added to the national debt.

I will admit that this is a very rough estimate of the financial cost. We could argue how much the average award would be. We could argue that not all autistic kids would get awards, even if autism were added as a table injury. So, maybe the total would go down. However, I also would argue that more kids will be diagnosed as autistic should autism be added as a table injury. Many more. How that balances out in the end can be debated, but I think a reasonable person can see that the answer will be billions of dollars a year and very likely many billions of dollars a year.

If autism were a vaccine injury, i.e. if it was legitimate to add autism to the vaccine injury table, I would say, “change the schedule now and pay however many families deserve it, no matter the cost.” But autism is not a vaccine injury. I will note that if Mr. Kennedy truly believed autism is a vaccine injury, he would not have hired David Geier to do the studies. Having Mr. Geier run an autism study is the equivalent of using loaded dice in a game of craps. Mr. Kennedy is buying the outcome he wants to see. If he wants to do more autism/vaccine studies, he would let the science speak. To quote Mr. Kennedy himself. He’s not doing that.

As I stated at the outset, one has to be careful of relying upon conspiracy theories. I believe I’ve stayed away from that here. I’ve made assumptions of what I think Mr. Kennedy wants to accomplish, but I think those are valid assumptions. And the cost analysis is very simple and I’ve laid it out very clearly. No chance to hide some trick in the math. I could be off by a factor of 10 and the conclusion would be the same.

One could and should ask why I am focusing on the financial cost and not the human cost. First, because autism is not a vaccine injury, we aren’t talking about a real human cost. Second, the financial cost is what will get the attention of Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk and congress. Sad to say, but I believe that to be the case.

The most logical outcome of adding autism to the vaccine injury table, in my opinion, is that congress and the president would be forced to choose between keeping autism on the vaccine injury table and ending the infant vaccine program. End the infant vaccine program and many people in Mr. Kennedy’s community (possibly including Mr. Kennedy himself), will say “mission accomplished.”** Pull autism off the table and the net effect is pretty much the same. The idea that vaccines cause autism will be accepted and vaccine uptake will drop. Many states will stop mandating infant vaccines. The infant vaccine program would be effectively dead.

Either way, Mr. Kennedy will be able to say, “See, I’m not anti-vaccine. I didn’t direct the infant vaccine program to end. They just followed the “science” (that I directed be created when I hired David Geier).”

By Matt Carey

* The vaccine injury table lays out injuries that are presumed to be caused by a vaccine. For example, if one develops paralytic polio within 30 days of getting the oral polio vaccine, it is assumed to be caused by the vaccine. If you haven’t heard of this, that’s because the U.S. doesn’t use the oral polio vaccine anymore.

** Recall that one of the people at Mr. Kennedy’s “Children’s Health Defense” is JB Handley (Vice Chair in 2018). Recall that Mr. Handley once wrote: “With less than a half-dozen full-time activists, annual budgets of six figures or less, and umpteen thousand courageous, undaunted, and selfless volunteer parents, our community, held together with duct tape and bailing wire, is in the early to middle stages of bringing the U.S. vaccine program to its knees.”

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David Geier now works for HHS. He’s supposedly going to do autism/vaccine studies

27 Mar

I’ve been waiting for an announcement like this since Robert Kennedy was named Secretary of HHS. Someone from his community, someone known for pushing out bad and very biased studies, would be named to do vaccine/autism research. I’ll admit, my money was on someone else. But, in general, this announcement does not surprise me.

I first saw this in a link someone sent to me from the Washington Post: Vaccine skeptic hired to head federal study of immunizations and autism. The story is by Lena H. Sun and Fenit Nirappil. I will admit, I have cancelled my Washington Post subscription, but Lena Sun is one of the authors I will miss supporting.

David Geier is part of the father/son team that brought us the “Lupron Protocol“. You can read up on the details here and elsewhere, but I will just say flat out the opinions I’ve made clear many times: it was junk science of the worst sort and, even more, it was abusive to disabled children. In addition to that, the Geiers have a long and story career of junk science and bad medicine. It takes a lot to lose your medical license. Mark Geier (David’s father) did.

Unless he has gone back to school, David Geier holds a B.A.. He’s never held a real research position that I am aware of. He doesn’t have the background to be an assistant to the people who have done studies he apparently will be re-investigating, much less lead a project on his own. And, I think the record shows clearly, he is clearly and terribly biased.

Given news of this sort, I’d expect Science Based Medicine to have an article out quickly. Steven Novella did just that in David Geier Hired to Study Vaccines and Autism. It’s a good read and I don’t want to duplicate too much of what he says. But here’s one key paragraph:

Tapping David Geier tells us everything we need to know – this is a hit job. In my opinion, Geier has zero credibility in the scientific community due to his long history of crankery in this area. He is not qualified as is evidenced by a long history of shoddy science and discredited conclusions.

David Gorski at Respectful Insolence has also chimed in, with great detail and his own flair in David Geier: A blast from the antivax past hired to “prove” vaccines cause autism. Worth reading to get more details on the history of the Geier team.

So allow me to add a few secondary observations on what is happening. Per the Washington Post:

The information that the CDC has turned over to NIH includes the underlying data from four studies on vaccines and autism published in the 2000s, three current officials said. None of the papers found any link.

Step back and think about what this means. My opinion: the goal is not just to show that vaccines cause autism, but to discredit the previous studies and, with that, the CDC researchers who did that work. And, in general, public health researchers in general.

My next point has to do with Mr. Geier’s position at HHS. He’s listed as a senior data analyst* with the organization listed as HHS/OS/ASFR. AFSR is the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources. A strange place to place an epidemiologist type person, isn’t it? Take a look at the org chart below. This is not a place for someone doing research like this. Not only that, but if my (admittedly limited) ability to read Mr. Geier’s entry in the HHS phone book is accurate, he appears to report directly to the Assistant Secretary or the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary. Why? Why isn’t he in some team of, oh, I dunno, epidemiologists, reporting to someone who, call me silly, can check his work?

Also, this begs the question: is Mr. Geier going to be influencing grants? I.e., is he just shoehorned into this position or is he going to help the people who work on grants and such? This next is a stretch, but what if he’s going to help get grants to other credulous “researchers”? I suspect projects are supposed to be approved through a different office, and this is more for managing finances. But, who knows in this topsy-turvy world.

One could imagine a world where Mr. Geier was invited in to work with people with the expertise to do these studies. You know, make sure there are no shenanigans and all. That would give Mr. Kennedy a chance to get an answer he doesn’t want to see. That would take guts. Frankly, if I’ve learned anything over the past 20 years it’s this: Robert Kennedy has no guts. He can’t face the fact that he’s not only wasted decades of his life, but that he’s caused harm. Harm to disabled children and their families. No, I don’t think Mr. Kennedy has that sort of courage. And with this decision, he’s proving me correct.

by Matt Carey

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Robert Kennedy isn’t just weird. Apparently, he’s also creepy.

4 Oct

Robert Kennedy (RFK Jr) has been a parasite on the autism community for decades. In that time he has failed to impress on scientific acumen and integrity. Recent news articles have shown Mr. Kennedy to make very questionable choices. Such as leaving a dead bear cub in central park and transporting the head of a dead whale on the roof of his car. But a story out today, if true, shows Mr. Kennedy to be beyond weird. He may be a slimy creep.

Recently, a journalist was put on leave for having a relationship with Mr. Kennedy. The “relationship” is reported in a few outlets (e.g. here at the NY Post) and I’m not going to reprint the details. So, he cheats on his wife. Well, America decided that’s no big deal when they elected Donald Trump as president. So, why do I claim Mr. Kennedy is a creep?

A recent story reports that Mr. Kennedy has been carrying on affairs with at least three women at his charity, “Children’s Health Defense”. CHD is the descendent of the “mercury militia” orgs of the past. Who are the women involved? Are they autism moms?

Do I find these accusations plausible? There have been rumors for a long time that the charlatans preying financially on autism moms at the “conferences” they hold have taken advantage of these same autism moms. And, frankly, if true the idea is worse than creepy.

But here’s the thing. Yes, charlatans have been bilking autism families out of money, a lot of money, for decades. Yes, there are rumors that the “luminaries” of the anti-vaccine movement have taken advantage of vulnerable autism moms. And these stories will make the news. But these “luminaries” have been behind promoting (directly or indirectly) fake “therapies” that amount to nothing less than the abuse of disabled children. And, for some reason, that doesn’t make news.

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by Matt Carey

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Robert Kennedy dodges his support for the failed autism/vaccine link

25 Aug

I’ve been watching Robert Kennedy (RFK Jr.) for nearly 20 years now. Watching him closely. As I recently wrote: I’m an autism parent. No way I will vote for Robert Kennedy Jr.. He’s gutless. And now we have a new example of his lack of backbone.

In preparation for being absorbed into the Trump campaign, Mr. Kennedy posted a video on Instagram to show that he’s not extreme in his views on vaccines. Watch it. Then tell me how he addressed his stance on vaccines and autism. You know, the thing he’s been pushing for 20 years. He wrote a book about it. His organization (Children’s Health Defense) is the “expanded mission” of the World Mercury Project, an organization built on the failed idea that autism is caused by mercury in vaccines.

But, back to Mr. Kennedy’s video. He thinks people are “most confused about my stance on vaccines”. So he wants to go “point by point” into his “exact posture”.

Mr. Kennedy plays the game, “It’s controversial to say vaccines have side effects”. As in, “my position is only that there are side effects”. Nope. He believes, to this day, that mercury in vaccines cause autism. 20 years ago it was a weak hypothesis. Now it is an idea that has been demonstrably refuted. Over and over. But Mr. Kennedy has never accepted the data. He’s never apologized for the harm he caused by promoting an idea that autistic people are damaged.

He’s gutless. He’s a coward. He’s a politician who knows that saying what he believes will harm his chances to get elected. So he hides behind the idea that all he’s saying is that there are adverse effects to vaccines. And then he uses an old video of Bernadine Healy where she talks about vaccines and autism.

Grow a backbone, Mr. Kennedy. Say what you want to say.

He does throw out an old video of Bernadine Healy saying “no one studied the kids who got sick”. As an aside, being autistic isn’t “being sick”. It’s also an outdated statement. Way back in 2008 a study compared autistic children to non-autistic children to see if the MMR vaccine (one of the primary theories of the vaccines-cause-autism). They “studied the children who got sick”. What did they find? A “lack of association”. That’s science speak for, “there’s no connection”.

Another study looked at Mr. Kennedy’s favorite theory: mercury in vaccines cause autism. They found Vaccines are not associated with autism: an evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies. Lack of association is, again, science speak for there’s no connection. Case-control and cohort studies is science speak for “these studies looked at the children who got sick”.

So, Mr. Kennedy didn’t say what he thought out loud.

Mr. Kennedy hid behind Bernadine Healy, using an old interview to say what he thought. He neglected to tell his audience that Dr. Healy’s prime question is no longer valid.

The idea that vaccines cause autism was explored, in depth, in court. The Omnibus Autism Proceeding brought together the top experts on the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism to explain to a court their science. They lost. Badly. The court declared that the decision was “not close”. That was in 2010. I know Mr. Kennedy is well aware of the OAP.

Let me add, I listened in to the OAP hearings when they happened. I was listening every day. To say “this was not close” was charitable. The “experts” that were brought out to present the “science” behind the autism-vaccine link were, in a word, terrible. They would be laughable if the topic weren’t so serious. It was frankly embarrassing to see autism parents pinning their hopes, and being taken in, by that team of doctors and researchers. They were obviously wrong, and they were the experts Mr. Kennedy relied upon to support his failed ideas.

Frankly, Mr. Kennedy should have packed up his tent and left the autism-vaccine debate after the OAP. He should have before then, but when it was all laid out like that, there was no excuse for hanging on to a clearly failed hypothesis.

I know I’ve been going on a long while about this. After 20 years, believe me this is a brief discussion of how awful Mr. Kennedy is when it comes to his support of the autism-vaccine link. I haven’t even discussed the harm he has caused autistic people and their loved ones. I did some of that recently.

But just let me say again: the man is gutless. He didn’t address his primary issue: vaccines and autism. He dodged it. He’s just doing the usual bad politician gimmick of using code-phrases to keep his loyal followers in line while trying to not alienate other people. He tried to paint himself as just a guy asking important questions, when in reality he’s a guy whose questions have been answered, over and over (and over and over and over again), but he refuses to accept the answer. He knows his positions is extreme, so he hopes he can fool people into not looking closer.

He’s wrong. He’s extreme. If Donald Trump were a great guy in all other respects (he’s not even close), taking Mr. Kennedy on as part of his team would be enough to vote against him.

Or, to put it another way, it would take a lot to make Donald Trump an even worse candidate than he is. Mr. Trump found a way. He brought Mr. Kennedy into his tent.

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By Matt Carey

Imagine Mr. Kennedy working in a Trump administration.

17 Jul

Donald Trump was be very bad for America and very bad for the autism communities in specific and would be worse in a second term. Robert Kennedy would be very bad for America and very bad for the autism communities in specific. But it can get worse. What if Donald Trump were elected and put Robert Kennedy in a position of authority? Mr. Kennedy asked Mr. Trump for a job as some sort of “vaccine commissioner” before Mr. Trump’s first term.

A leaked video shows Robert Kennedy speaking with Donald Trump. Media outlets are focusing on Mr. Trump playing to Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine sentiments. A Trump/Kennedy conversation exchanging vaccine fearmongering is, frankly, not newsworthy in my opinion. The fact that a call happened is not either, to be honest. It would be appropriate for Mr. Kennedy to speak to Mr. Trump following the assassination attempt. We don’t have the full conversation in the video, so we don’t know who initiated the call or why. Mr. Kennedy says the main message was “national unity”

But here’s the part that I worry about:

Trump also appeared to appeal to Kennedy, though it’s unclear for what exactly. “I would love you to do something,” Trump said, without offering further context. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.”

Allow me to sidestep the “I would love you to do something” comment and focus on what Mr. Trump means by “so good for you and so big for you”. Most likely it’s Mr. Trump offering vague and empty promises. That would be very on-type for Mr. Trump. But, this will read to Mr. Kennedy’s followers as a possible open door to some sort of appointment in a Trump administration. They have speculated in the past about Mr. Kennedy running FDA or CDC. Which again would be very on-type for Mr. Trump’s planned second term: replacing people with competence with loyalists. Mr. Kennedy is unlikely to be a fierce loyalist, in my opinion. But, as a “burn it down” appointee, Mr. Kennedy might serve Mr. Trump’s vision well.

I am just amazed that Donald Trump is a viable candidate. His performance his first term was…bad. His disregard for the foundation of democracy should be undeniable, but denialists abound. The idea that Mr. Trump could appoint Mr. Kennedy to some post shouldn’t be the tipping point in one’s vote. Mr. Trump is bad enough as it is. But, seriously, Kennedy + Trump is worse than Trump alone.

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By Matt Carey

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So, Mr. Kennedy does cancel some speaking engagements

13 Mar

I recently wrote about how Robert Kennedy Jr. is gutless (I’m an autism parent. No way I will vote for Robert Kennedy Jr.. He’s gutless).  Over the past few decades, Mr. Kennedy has spoken at many events where fake, even abusive, therapies are promoted to autism parents for use on their disabled children. As a keynote speaker, Mr. Kennedy could have either refused to attend or used his platform to distance himself from these charlatans. To my knowledge, he never has.

So I was a little surprised to read that Mr. Kennedy had pulled out of recent convention (Not Even RFK Jr. Wanted to Come to This Vegas Convention of Anti-Vaxxers and ‘Free Speech’ Brands). The Rolling Stone article states:

The result was more anemic than cohesive, however, in part because scheduled keynote speaker Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had pulled out following a February article from Mother Jones. The piece noted that another RePlatform speaker, Lonnie Passoff, president of financial services providers Green.Money and GabPay, the latter being the payment system of the far-right social media network Gab, had endorsed antisemitic comments on a prominent conspiracist’s streaming show. 

Good for you, Mr. Kennedy. Good for you. A speaker at the convention had endorsed antisemitic comments so you decided to not show up.

But this begs the question, why were you willing to speak when charlatans are preying on the families of disabled children? The example I gave in my previous piece was that of chemical castration. For those who didn’t read the piece, I’m not making this up or exaggerating.

Let me bring up another example. Bleach enemas. Charlatans sold (and still sell) chlorine dioxide (a bleach) as enemas and drinks to cure autism. Parents would give their kids bleach enemas, the kids would pass the lining of their intestines and people would say, “look, we got rid of the parasites that cause autism!” No, I’m not making this one up either. I wrote about it many times.

The main proponent of this “therapy” in the autism communities was/is a woman named Kerri Riviera. One of the times she spoke was at a parent convention called AutismOne in 2013. The keynote speaker that year was Robert Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy could have refused to speak. He could have spoken at the time that he disapproves of these therapies. He could have spoken out since then, demonstrating regret for lending his name and credibility to charlatans such as these.

To my knowledge, he never has.

That would have taken courage. And the ability to discern junk science. These are traits I have not seen Mr. Kennedy show often.

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By Matt Carey

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I’m an autism parent. No way I will vote for Robert Kennedy Jr.. He’s gutless.

26 Feb

As an example, I will discuss one particularly egregious “therapy” that was used on autistic children, the so-called “Lupron protocol”. Mr. Kennedy was in a perfect spot to stop or limit this therapy, but he never did. It would have taken courage, and, in my opinion, Mr. Kennedy is gutless.

Robert Kennedy (RFK Jr.) is running for president. He failed to gain the Democratic Party nomination and is now running as a third-party candidate. Since the beginning of his campaign, he’s faced criticism for being anti vaccine and anti-science. As someone who has watched Mr. Kennedy for nearly two decades I will agree: he is, indeed, anti-vaccine and anti-science. But that’s not why I am strongly against the idea of him being president. I oppose his bid for one reason:

He’s gutless.

Let me explain.

Long before Mr. Kennedy reached national prominence with his myriad of bad ideas during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was well known in the anti-vaccine autism-parent community. He was probably most famous for pushing the failed idea that mercury in vaccines caused an autism epidemic (an idea he still won’t abandon). And this is where many discussions focus on how his actions are anti-science and anti-vaccine. But to me, I hurt for the harms Mr. Kennedy’s advocacy has caused autistic people and the autism communities. One can say, “his anti-vaccine views have caused harm to public health”. One would be right. But, the anti-vaccine movement has long used autism and autistic people as the hammer with which they attack vaccines. And, to quote Sancho Panza in Man of La Mancha, “Whether the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock, it’s generally bad for the pitcher”. Being the weapon of choice for attacking vaccines has caused increased stigma and allowed charlatans to sell fake “cures” for autism which range from useless to abusive.

As an example, I will discuss one particularly egregious “therapy” that was used on autistic children, the so-called “Lupron protocol”. Mr. Kennedy was in a perfect spot to stop or limit this therapy, but he never did. It would have taken courage, and, in my opinion, Mr. Kennedy is gutless.

For decades there have been regular autism-parent conventions focused primarily on two things: promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism and promoting fake “cures” for autism as a vaccine injury. And Mr. Kennedy has been prominent at these conventions, serving as a keynote speaker.

Mr. Kennedy speaks primarily on the idea that vaccines cause autism (they don’t). He’s well respected as someone who has been involved for decades in this arena. His name gives some credence to the others at these conventions, including those who push abusive therapies.

I have never heard of Mr. Kennedy speaking out against the fake, even abusive, “therapies” pushed at these parent conventions. Why? In my opinion:

He’s gutless.

Allow me to focus on one of the most egregious fake therapies pushed as part of the vaccines-cause-autism movement. There are more. Many more. But let’s just discuss chemical castration.

If you are thinking, no way that happened, Matt. You must be exaggerating. I’m not.

Doctors were prescribing Lupron in order to reduce the testosterone in autistic children. That’s chemical castration in my lay opinion. Dr. David Gorski, an oncologist, wrote a series of articles about this “treatment” as “why not just castrate them“.

Surely they had a good reasoning for taking such drastic measures, you must be thinking. No, they didn’t. In fact, the “science” behind the therapy is horrifically bad. It would be funny if it wasn’t actually used on children.

How was the “Lupron protocol” justified? First, let’s start with the idea that autism is caused by mercury. It isn’t, but this is the idea that Mr. Kennedy pushed so hard 20 years ago. Mercury intoxication is commonly treated by chelation, which is a way to remove mercury from the body. For years medical practitioners pushed chelation on autism parents (again, often at these autism parent conventions that Mr. Kennedy is known to speak at). Only chelation didn’t work. It didn’t work because autism isn’t mercury intoxication. But to people like the Geiers, the problem was that chelation wasn’t working, the problem was they needed a better way to chelate. They came up with the idea that testosterone was binding to mercury and keeping chelators from working. So, they postulated, remove the testosterone and one can remove the mercury and the kid will stop being autistic. Which brings us to chemical castration: remove or reduce testosterone in the body. Which brings us back to Lupron.

Seriously, it happened. And a father-son team named Geier led the charge.

In order to prescribe the Lupron, the Geier’s needed a diagnosis. Insurance companies aren’t going to allow people to prescribe Lupron for mercury intoxication (even ignoring the fact that the Geiers didn’t have evidence for mercury intoxication). So the Geier chose precocious puberty as the diagnosis. Diagnose a kid with precocious puberty and you can prescribe Lupron.

The Geiers got into trouble for this. In 2013 they were facing disciplinary action as noted by blogger Todd W. at Harpocrates Speaks (among many others). They were facingmedical license suspension. In multiple states. So, you’d think people might be questioning the Geiers’ “protocol”. Perhaps checking the “science” that supported it? Well, not in Mr. Kennedy’s circles, apparently.

A few days after Todd W. wrote his article, two things happened. The Geier’s spoke at a parent convention called AutismOne. And Robert Kennedy was the keynote speaker for that convention.

Think about it. Mr. Kennedy could have told the parents at that convention that he stands apart from the Geiers. He could have just said perhaps people should be cautious, a relatively weak stance. Mr. Kennedy could have taken a stronger stance said that what the Geiers were doing was chemical castration and it was wrong, a much stronger stance.

To my knowledge Mr. Kennedy did not speak out then against the Geiers or any other practitioner of fake autism cures. I have no knowledge of him ever speaking out against charlatans.

It would have taken courage to speak out. It would have taken courage to admit to himself that he’d missed the obviously bogus science before, and that he, a self-professed science expert, was wrong. And it would have made a difference. I don’t consider it hyperbolic to say that I consider chemical castration of disabled (or any) children to be abusive. And Mr. Kennedy could have slowed or even stopped this practice long before Dr. Geier lost his license. He was respected and a frequent speaker at these conventions.

It takes courage to face allies (the Geiers were long known for pushing the mercury-autism link. Mr. Kennedy cites them multiple times in his books) and say they are doing wrong. Mr. Kennedy didn’t even have to admit that the mercury-causes-autism idea was false (which would have taken another step of courage and would have been the right thing to do). Just that chemically castrating disabled children is wrong.

Seriously, how hard is it to say, “Chemically castrating disabled children is wrong”, Mr. Kennedy?

Mr. Kennedy has spoken regularly at the “vaccines-cause-autism” parent conventions. And the Geiers were not the only ones pushing abusive therapies. It would have taken courage to say, “I will not speak and lend my name to a meeting where fake therapies are promoted.” But Mr. Kennedy lacks that courage.

This is largely due, I believe, to the fact that Mr. Kennedy lacks to courage to analyze his own lack of scientific expertise. My belief is that Mr. Kennedy, to this day, doesn’t understand just how bogus the “Lupron protocol” was. But it would take a courage for someone who has branded himself as a person who understands science (even though he lacks any credentials) to say, “You know what, I didn’t catch on to the idea that the science the Geiers were claiming was unsound.”

One might ask, was the Geier science obviously bogus? I would say yes and I would say that someone with the expertise Mr. Kennedy claims to have should have easily seen there was a problem very early on. Let me explain. The Geiers claimed that mercury and testosterone form “sheets”, large complexes, in the brains of autistic children. Sounds very scientific and all, until we found that the study the Geier’s were basing this idea upon involved boiling mercury and testoterone in benzine.

In my opinion, Mr. Kennedy should have known that a child’s brain is not similar to boiling benzine. Yes, this sounds snarky, but it really is that simple. The science behind the Geier’s “Lupron protocol” was really that bad.

But this discussion risks getting back into the realm of “He’s anti-science”. I bring this up not to point out Mr. Kennedy’s lack of science chops, but to point out that the science was so bad that it didn’t really take much analysis to see it.

That is if one has the courage to question. To question one’s allies. To question one’s own expertise. To question whether one’s own inaction led to the abuse of disabled children. And, again, in my opinion this was abuse. And Mr. Kennedy could have helped stop it sooner.

Again, I only picked one example. And this discussion has gone long, so you can understand why I chose only one example. But there are many examples of fake cures promoted at autism-parent conventions that Mr. Kennedy could have stopped. There’s also a lengthy discussion we could have about the stigma the anti-vaccine movement has brought to autistic people (one of Mr. Kennedy’s allies tried to label autism as “mad child disease“, to give you one example.) Mr. Kennedy could have spoken out agains the stigmatizing language. But the fear of autism and autistic people has long been a mainstay of the anti-vaccine movement.

We need a president with courage. While others discuss his anti-vaccine views, his near self-delusional belief in his scientific acument, let me just say this again: Mr. Kennedy lacks courage.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is gutless.

_____

By Matt Carey

More discussions
This blog on Mr. Kennedy.
Articles on this blog about the Geiers.
Articles on this blog about Lupron.
Mark Geier’s Wikipedia Page.


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