Tag Archives: Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Didn’t See Autistic People—But They Were There

14 Apr

Kennedy wants us to believe that autism was vanishingly rare when he was young. Instead, he’s revealed something much simpler: he didn’t know what autism looked like.

Robert Kennedy Jr. often tells a story meant to bolster the idea that autism is a modern epidemic. When he was a teenager, he volunteered at the Wassaic State School in New York. His takeaway? He never saw anyone with autism. The implication is clear: autism must be new. An epidemic, and one caused by vaccines. But there’s a problem with his story: there were a lot of autistic people at Wassaic.

At best, Kennedy’s story reveals more about his own lack of awareness than it does about autism. Based on data from the California Department of Developmental Disabilities (CDDS)—data Kennedy himself has cited in various arguments—to support the idea that autistic people were indeed present in institutions like Wassaic in significant numbers during the time he volunteered there.

His revisionist anecdote is standard in the “autism epidemic” playbook. First, you take old prevalence studies at face value—as though diagnostic practices and awareness haven’t changed dramatically over the decades. In the 1970s, autism was estimated at around 3 in 10,000. Wassaic housed somewhere between 2,400 and 5,000 residents at the time. If you apply that (outdated) prevalence rate, you might expect only one or two autistic individuals in the entire institution.

You can be forgiven if you don’t see the logical flaw in that argument. Apparently, Mr. Kennedy cannot. The autism prevalence in a place like Wassaic would have been much higher than that in the general population. 3 in 10,000, even if it were an accurate autism prevalence, is not the number to use. Pretty obvious once it’s spelled out.

So let’s do what Kennedy doesn’t: look at the numbers. Let’s ask how many autistic people were at Wassaic.

I examined a historical dataset from the CDDS* and asked a simple question: for individuals born around the same time as Kennedy (and, thus, would be representative of the age of students at the “school”), how many are recognized as autistic compared to those with intellectual disability (ID)? The answer: about 1 in 20. Implicit in Mr. Kennedy’s logic is that many or most of these autistic people would have been at places like Wassaic.

So, if you are looking at a population of people with developmental disabilities in 1972, you’d expect one diagnosed autistic** for every 20 people with intellectual disability. That one person probably is both autistic and intellectually disabled. So, on average, every classroom group Mr. Kennedy would have seen would have a recognized autistic person. Or, to put it another way, ff Wassaic had 5000 residents, there’d be about 250 autistic people.

Kennedy states he didn’t see recognize anyone who was autistic at Wassaic. And why would he have understood the people he saw were autistic? He was about 18 years old. Even now, he’s not a doctor. He’s not trained in neurodevelopmental disorders. The idea that he could identify autism in a mid-century institutional setting, from his memories as a teenager, is implausible at best.

So Kennedy wasn’t seeing too few autistic people. They were there. He was simply unable to recognize them.

This isn’t a complicated scientific issue. It’s about context, data, and critical thinking—qualities Kennedy claims to value but rarely applies. And that matters, because his ignorance has consequences.

Kennedy uses the “autism epidemic” narrative to stoke vaccine fear. He’s spent two decades promoting misinformation that undermines public health. Today, people are dying of preventable diseases in places like Texas because of narratives like his.

But my reasons for writing this go beyond public health.

This matters because it hurts autistic people. When Kennedy claims that autistic individuals didn’t exist before, he erases generations of people who went undiagnosed and unsupported. It’s not just bad science—it’s dehumanizing.

If Kennedy wants to lead, he needs to start by recognizing the people he claims to care about.

By Matt Carey***

*Here’s a screenshot of the spreadsheet I got from CDDS. It is from 2015. I added a column with the ratio of consumers in the autism category to the ID category. For people born around the same time as Mr. Kennedy, the age group likely represented at Wassaic when he was there, it’s about 1:20. I.e. for every 20 people at Wassaic with ID, there was at least one autistic individual. All this without saying “they weren’t diagnosed”.

Once, again, I’ll stress autism was vastly undercounted then. I have literally hundreds of articles on this blog discussing this.

**and a lot more undiagnosed autistics, but that’s the logic Mr. Kennedy and his community denies.

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“if you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about” Why did you lie, Mr. Kennedy?

7 Apr

We have recently seen a huge layoff at HHS. It’s amazing to think that just 2 months ago, Robert Kennedy was saying this wouldn’t happen.

On February 14, Robert Kennedy promised that people involved in good science would have nothing to worry about in terms of losing their jobs. He had a “generic list” of people who should be let go, but people working on good science were safe.

“I have a list in my head … we have a generic list of the kind of people that — if you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” Thursday night.

“If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I’d say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry,” he added.

Shortly after that, he started indiscriminately firing people. It’s so bad he’s admitting he made a mistake and has to bring people back. That’s not “you’ve got nothing to worry about”.

One area that affects the autism community directly is the Administration for Community Living.

The Administration for Community Living, which coordinates federal policy on aging and disability, was gutted – 40% of staff there lost their jobs, according to Alison Barkoff, the former head of the agency who says she learned this by talking to multiple members of her former staff. The ACL funds programs that run senior centers and distributes 216 million meals a year to older and disabled people.

These are not people doing science, but they are definitely people who care about public health who are not working for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s hard to see gutting this organization as being within Mr. Kennedy’s comments on FoxNews. At all.

Which is why I ask: did you know you were lying at the time, Mr. Kennedy? Or did you just not have the guts to stand up and defend good people doing good work when you were told to cut them?

Having watched Mr. Kennedy for decades, I never expected him to have a backbone when he got into power. Sacrificing the jobs of people who directly help disabled people in order to keep his job, yes, that’s in line with what I expected. Mr. Kennedy hired a staunch anti-vaccine pseudo-scientist, so we know where his priorities lay.

By Matt Carey

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James Terence Fisher: RFK Jr., autism and long-debunked theories

7 Apr

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an article by James Terence Fisher: RFK Jr., autism and long-debunked theories. If I start quoting, I’ll copy the whole article. So, I’ll just recommend you follow the link and read the article in place.

Prof. Fisher mentions “Autism families of a certain vintage”. I am of that vintage. I’ve watched his son grow up through blog posts over the years. I too saw Robert Kennedy over decades and David Geier promote bad science and bad medicine. The harm they have caused is real and it can only get worse with them in positions of power. Prof. Fisher gives another perspective on the history, from an autism father’s point of view.

By Matt Carey

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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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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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