Tag Archives: RFK Jr

Trump wants Robert Kennedy, who is already phoning it in at HHS, to take over a big piece of Special Education.

22 Jun

Let’s start with an uncomfortable fact. States have a financial incentive to underserve disabled students. Special education is expensive, and every support costs money. The Department of Education exists, in part, as a federal watchdog to ensure that states live up to their obligations under the law.

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.
–Robert Kennedy

The person who wrote that doesn’t understand what it means to treat other human beings as full human beings, entitled to define success for themselves. The person who wrote that should not be in charge of any part of Special Education. And, yet, Mr. Kennedy is being handed a huge part of the responsibility for managing Special Education.

He doesn’t understand that success is individual. There is no single yardstick that every person is obligated to meet.

That isn’t just part of treating people with dignity. It’s also one of the foundational ideas behind special education. Anyone who has been through the special education system as a parent or student is well aware of the term Individualized Education Program or IEP. This is the plan that students, parents and teachers craft to determine the goals (measures of success) that the team will strive for in a student’s education.

But, for the moment, let’s take Mr. Kennedy’s viewpoint. Let’s use his yardstick of success. The person who said those words has already given up on autistic children. He has effectively said, “You, young child, will never meet my definition of a successful life.” That is an extraordinary thing to say about any child, let alone from someone who may soon oversee part of the nation’s special education system.

And now he’s being handed a significant role in managing the federal office responsible for overseeing special education. In specific, the president has decided to effectively move managing the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) out of the Department of Education and into Health and Human Services (HHS). Mr. Kennedy is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Consider this paragraph from the statement from AESA, the Association of Educational Service Agencies:

The first agreement would shift day-to-day management of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ED would retain statutory responsibility and enforcement authority, and IDEA funding would continue to flow through ED for now. A transfer of IDEA funding to HHS is not expected before FY27 at the earliest.

Try to reconcile that with the rhetoric of “small government” and “government efficiency.” One agency will manage special education’s day-to-day operations while another will retain legal responsibility and enforcement authority. Meanwhile, IDEA funding will continue to flow through the Department of Education. If your goal is efficiency, splitting authority across agencies is a strange way to pursue it.

It’s as if someone really wants this to fail.

On that thought, add this to the overall SNAFU that is the move of Special Education to HHS. The New York Times recently published a scathing article entitled Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio. It’s paywalled, but you get the gist from the title. Mr. Kennedy already appears unable, or unwilling, to fully engage with the enormous portfolio he already has. And we are handing him special education on top of it?

Mr. Trump has not been shy about his contempt for the Department of Education. He campaigned on closing the department. He can’t really close it, that takes an act of congress, but he can kill it with neglect. Similarly, he has gutted HHS, firing tens of thousands of people. And Mr. Kennedy has been more than happy to help.

When congress enacted what is now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), they included a commitment to reimburse schools about 40% of the excess costs to educate special ed students. They never have, but the federal government does contribute a significant amount (about 20%). They are also the final federal authority responsible for ensuring that states uphold students’ rights. They monitor states to ensure that they are upholding FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education). They monitor metrics such as graduation rates to make sure that states are serving their disabled students appropriately. They investigate discrimination complaints.

It’s not perfect, by any means. I don’t know a single parent who thinks that the American special education system is fulfilling the promises we have made as a people.

But it could be worse. If the Federal government paid even less, it would be worse. If the federal government didn’t monitor and enforce special education laws and standards, things could be a lot worse.

Which is why I, for one, am shocked to hear that responsibility for managing the federal special education office is being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. We should be strengthening the oversight of Special Education, not weakening it.

Once again, it’s time to make your voices heard. Call, email, fax or, if you can, meet with your legislators. Tell them to reverse this bad decision.

Disability is not a disease to be managed. Special education is an educational commitment we have made to our children. It belongs under educational oversight. Special education needs oversight from leaders who believe every child is capable of growth and worthy of investment. Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly shown that he is not that person.

By Matt Carey

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Dramatic Cuts in New NIH Research Funding Across the Board

12 Jun

NIH autism research funding has collapsed since Mr. Kennedy became HHS Secretary. I wrote about this in my open letter to the IACC. Then I got curious: are the cuts limited to autism, or is this happening across NIH? The answer: it’s everywhere, and it’s worse than I expected.

Below is a graph I made after using NIH RePORTER. I checked the number and funding amount of new grants from NIH. Note that I pro-rated the 2026 information since the fiscal year goes until Sept 30. Funding for ongoing grants is one thing, new grants tells us what the future will look like and what the priorities of this Secretary are.

Let’s put this simply: this Secretary does not value research. NIH is funding new projects at 25% of the level under the previous administration. Sixty percent fewer grants. Seventy-five percent less funding.

Take NIMH (the National Institute for Mental Health), which is a primary source for autism research. Grants are down over 50% in number and more than 75% in funding.

Several CDC centers that previously appeared in NIH Reporter as grant-funding entities show zero new NIH grants in FY2026. Whether these centers have been formally eliminated, absorbed into HHS’s new structure, or simply lost their grant-making authority isn’t entirely clear — but the result is the same: no new research from these centers through NIH.

These sites had projects listed in 2025, but not in 2026.

CLC — Clinical Center (NIH’s research hospital in Bethesda)
NIOSH — National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (part of CDC)
NCCDPHP — National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (CDC)
ATSDR — Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (HHS, administered alongside CDC)
NCEZID — National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (CDC)
GHC — Global Health Center (CDC)
NCIRD — National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (CDC)
AHRQ — Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (HHS)

Other non-NIH centers had their NIH funding cut dramatically NCIPC (the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at CDC) is down to nearly zero.

If you follow Mr. Kennedy’s social media feed, you will see that he wants to be seen as a champion of Native Americans. Rationalize that against the fact that he cut about 90% of new grants for the NIMHD: The National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities. Look at NIMHD’s homepage today:

My guess? Research into health disparities among minorities, even Native Americans whom Mr. Kennedy purports to champion, is woke. Am I surprised that Mr. Kennedy is willing to sacrifice his supposed core beliefs to please President Trump? Not at all. Mr. Kennedy is a politician. Always has been.

Research benefits Americans. Plain and simple. We can talk about blockbuster GLP-1’s or other in-the-news medical advances. I’ll just say simply: someone I love would be dead now if it weren’t for epilepsy drugs. I don’t want progress to stop.

Many of you read this blog because autism affects your life. The medical comorbidities our community faces — epilepsy, sleep disorders, mental health — are exactly the kinds of conditions that need research to improve. When NIH stops funding new research, those of us who depend on better medicine pay the price. Contact your senators and representatives. Tell them: find a way to make Mr. Kennedy fund the research.

-By Matt Carey

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Open letter to the IACC: Autism research is stalled. Get secretary Kennedy to make new autism research grants.

11 Jun

Secretary Kennedy has cut back on autism research, and you can act. You should act. You must act.

Here are data from NIH Reporter on new NIH autism grants by fiscal year. I pro-rated the results from 2026, since the fiscal year ends in September. This graph shows only those grants which are new in each fiscal year, not those which are funding ongoing projects.

New grants are down 60% from 2025.  Funding is down 80%.

I am going to ask you to read that again. An 80% drop in funding for new research grants.

You should be asking yourself about continuing grants. Continuing grants are also down. Overall, total NIH autism grants and funding are down by about half from 2025. Would you have been angry if such a cut was made under a different secretary? Not only is this a big cut overall, but this is also a Secretary who chooses to just not spend authorized funds. If you would have been silent under a different Secretary, then this letter isn’t for you. If you would have spoken up — you have to speak up now.

Autism CARES authorizes about $2B in research funding. Think about that. $2B earmarked for autism research. You may not agree with where the priorities have been placed. But you are in danger of being the Committee that not only allows HHS to not spend those funds, but also to see Autism CARES not be renewed.

Renewal of the ACT is far from guaranteed. If you look at past IACC meetings, you will find multiple instances where Tom Insel commented that congress does not like “single disease” bills. Renewal every four years is a real fight.

The Autism CARES Act is up for renewal in 2029, the same time your terms expire. Ask yourself, would congress vote to renew the Act if the funds they authorize aren’t being spent? 

We should address the elephant in the room. Congress is already going to be disinclined to renew the Act if it gives a platform to a Committee that promotes an anti-vaccine and pseudo-science agenda. You may feel validated with the appointment of Mr. Kennedy. But you haven’t convinced congress and you are unlikely to do so in the next couple of years. Moreover, are you willing to bet $2B that could help the autism communities on making your case to Congress?

In short, you have two big problems. First, your agenda is, to be polite, unpopular. Second, you are overseeing not the coordination of autism research, but the lack of autism research. I suggest to you that you focus on getting new autism research funded. Besides helping to ensure that Autism CARES gets renewed, it is your job. 

Many of you have worked with Mr. Kennedy. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have his email and his phone number. You may be the Committee in history that has the best chance to be heard by the Secretary. If he doesn’t hear from you on this, you have no excuse.

You also have the official avenues to make yourselves heard. The Committee can draft a letter to the Secretary. You can make your voices heard by the NIH directors who are sitting with you and who can forward your views up the chain. But, for those of you who know Mr. Kennedy, you have to reach out and make him understand that refusing to fund autism research harms the very communities he has claimed to support for decades.

I once sat on the IACC. I know what it is like to feel the responsibility to the autism communities of ensuring that autism research funding is well spent and that the Federal commitment to autism research doesn’t fade.

Respectfully Submitted 

Matthew J. Carey

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Want the Nobel Prize for Warp Speed, Mr. Trump? Fire Kennedy.

6 Sep

The same people who might value your efforts with Operation Warp Speed will also be able to do the simple math in their heads that says Mr. Kennedy’s approach is going to kill people.

Mr. Trump, there is a lot of chatter about you wanting the Nobel Peace Prize. OK, I know you’ve publicly stated you don’t want it, but just in case that’s just you being modest, let’s assume you actually do.

Even Robert Kennedy, a man with few to no good words to offer on vaccines, stated publicly that he believes you should get the Prize. Which may make you think, “good guy, Bobby. He’s going to help me get that Prize!”

Well…not so much. You may be thinking that I’ll point out the fact that Mr. Kennedy, as Senator Cassidy pointed out, says things like, “the vaccine killed more people than COVID”. You may be thinking that I’ll point out that he is likely getting people to generate “gold-standard science” that will claim the vaccine doesn’t work and kills people. Which he probably is doing.

Nope. Here’s an even bigger point I want to make: Mr. Kennedy’s policies are taking America back to a time when children die of vaccine preventable diseases. For example, we just had a large outbreak of measles, and Mr. Kennedy’s response was so lackluster that it certainly was a factor in how long it lasted. Two American children died. Needlessly. I called that outbreak “large”. It is nothing compared to what is in store for America under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership. Florida is moving to removing vaccine mandates for schoolchildren. That will lead to larger outbreaks. And not just among children. Florida is a state with a large retiree population.

The same people who might value your efforts with Operation Warp Speed will also be able to do the simple math in their heads that says Mr. Kennedy’s approach is going to kill people.

My guess is that if Mr. Kennedy is already telling you in private: “Solving the ‘autism epidemic’ will be even bigger than Operation Warp Speed. They will have to give you the Nobel then.” He even has ‘studies’ by some really bad and unethical people he can use to support his idea that vaccines are the cause. And, no doubt, more are on the way from David Geier and others. This is one of those times you need advisors who are both competent and free to speak their mind. People who actually understand science which, frankly, Mr. Kennedy does not. Because he is playing with people’s lives. Children’s lives. And that’s a lot more important than the Nobel Prize.

I am the parent of a young autistic adult. My kid grew up during the time Mr. Kennedy has been running his campaign against vaccines. I am a scientist. A researcher. Not in medicine, but I understand the studies. Focus on that last–not in medicine. I have no conflicts of interest other than this topic is very important to me. I don’t want children to die because Mr. Kennedy used my kid as a weapon against vaccines. I just don’t want children to die needlessly. I have been speaking out to counter Mr. Kennedy for 20 years because I saw the danger he posed.

Mr. Trump, I think you don’t want children to die and that is probably a bigger motivation than the Prize. But, do the simple math. Anyone on the Peace Prize Committee who values public health to the point of considering you for your efforts with the COVID vaccine program will see the dangers your administration–with Robert Kennedy running HHS–poses.

Do it for the children. Do it for yourself. Fire Robert Kennedy.

By Matt Carey

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For Robert Kennedy “Restoring Trust” is not a goal. It’s a weapon.

3 Sep

We pay for the CDC. It isn’t there to support Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. It’s there to generate good information that Mr. Kennedy can use or, sadly, not use. He can’t ask them to sign off on dangerous vaccine policy and then cry “restore trust” to excuse firing the trusted experts who are, in his own words, world-leading experts who drive the science that serves us all.

Robert Kennedy (aka RFK Jr.) is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services*. He came to this job after his failed run for the office of President, but if you follow his social media you know: he still sounds like someone campaigning.

He loves slogans. Of course he has his “MAHA” (Make America Healthy Again) which not only brands his movement, but allows him to flatter Mr. Trump at the same time. Two more slogans are very important to him and are what I will focus on today: “Restoring Public Trust” and “Gold-Standard Science”. On first glance, they sound like good aspirational goals. But “restoring” public trust is a slam, where Mr. Kennedy makes people accept his premise that people don’t trust the CDC. Likewise, “Gold-Standard” science is a way of saying that results produced before his tenure are low quality.

Allow me to discuss Mr. Kennedy’s failure this last week with the CDC to highlight his use of “Public Trust” as a weapon.

What failure am I thinking of? Losing much of CDC’s leadership through mismanagement. That failure. Last week, Mr. Kennedy tried to pressure the head of the CDC into rubber-stamping his agenda on vaccines. The CDC Director, Dr. Susan Monarez, not only refused to approve Mr. Kennedy’s anything-but-gold-standard vaccine policy, she also refused to recognize Mr. Kennedy’s authority to fire her (Kennedy Sought to Fire C.D.C. Director Over Vaccine Policy) Eventually she was fired by the President.

At least four other senior CDC officials resigned over Mr. Kennedy’s actions with Dr. Monarez (CDC director is out after less than a month; other agency leaders resign). The list includes Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s deputy director; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of the agency’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.

Losing so much expertise in one week in a huge blow to America. We all rely upon the CDC. We rely on expertise, experience and a nonpolitical agency. Make no mistake, all this is a huge blow to Mr. Kennedy. He not only lost experienced leaders who could provide him with quality information (which, he appears to be too arrogant to ask for), but also the reputation of the CDC and these staff. Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t have wouldn’t have pressured Dr. Monarez to rubber-stamp his policy if he didn’t want the credibility of the CDC behind his action.

If this wasn’t bad enough for Mr Kennedy’s claim to be restoring trust, nine (nine!) former CDC directors wrote a scathing (to use the New York Post’s word) editorial spelling out how dangerous Mr. Kennedy’s actions are: We Ran the CDC: RFK Jr. Is Endangering Every American’s Health. If it had been one, or only democrats, perhaps Mr. Kennedy could shrug this off. But it was nine former heads of the CDC. People who know how CDC works and know how important it is.

Clearly it was time for damage control. Mr. Kennedy took to the Wall Street Journal to defend himself. Instead of acknowledging that he severely damaged trust in the CDC, he spun his actions as “restoring public trust” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We’re Restoring Public Trust in the CDC). Of course, to “restore trust”. Mr. Kennedy states “First, the CDC must restore public trust—and that restoration has begun.” No, really, it hasn’t. When nine former CDC directors come out and not just disagree with you, but state that you are “endangering every American’s health”, you can’t claim to be restoring public trust.

Focus on how Mr. Kennedy uses “restoring trust”. “Restoring trust” isn’t a goal. It’s a weapon. Stand up for the health of Americans? You are out, because we need to “restore trust”. It’s an excuse. “Did I try to ram through a vaccine policy so dangerous that over a dozen leaders, past and present, of CDC protested? No! I was ‘restoring trust'”.

The final sentence of Mr. Kennedy’s opinion piece is a slam to the good people who stood up and resigned. Mr. Kennedy doesn’t have the guts to directly call them out, instead he simply states:

It won’t stop until America’s public-health institutions again serve the people with transparency, honesty and integrity.

Yep. Those good people were part of a system that doesn’t serve with “transparency, honesty and integrity”. As opposed to Mr. Kennedy, who fired most of the FOIA staff (so much for transparency) and, frankly has rarely shown integrity and honesty in the 20 years I’ve known of him.

Consider that just a few weeks ago, Mr. Kennedy responded to the shooting at the CDC campus by praising the very people he now accuses of lacking integrity and honesty and the “public’s trust”. How did he characterize the people who work at CDC then**?

Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are curable or preventable, chronic or acute, or from human activity or deliberate attack, CDC’s world-leading experts protect lives and livelihoods, national security and the U.S. economy by providing timely, commonsense information, and rapidly identifying and responding to diseases, including outbreaks and illnesses. CDC drives science, public health research, and data innovation in communities across the country by investing in local initiatives to protect everyone’s health.

Yes. In a couple of weeks, they went from “world-leading experts” who “drive science” to people who lack “transparency, honesty and integrity”.

Mr. Kennedy is a politician. He’s not a doctor or a health expert. As a researcher who has followed Mr. Kennedy for 20 years, I can say he is not in any way the expert on reading science that he claims to be. He’s a politician. One week it serves him to praise CDC and the people there. The next he needs to slam them to excuse his own inexcusable behavior.

We pay for the CDC. It isn’t there to support Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. It’s there to generate good information that Mr. Kennedy can use or, sadly, not use. He can’t ask them to sign off on dangerous vaccine policy and then cry “restore trust” to excuse firing the trusted experts who are, in his own words, world-leading experts who drive the science that serves us all.

By Matt Carey

*It’s been six months, but it is still mind boggling to read, much less type, that sentence. After 20 years of following Mr. Kennedy’s action, much of that chronicled on this blog, it would be hard to imagine someone worse for the job that Mr. Kennedy.

** One might argue that since Mr. Kennedy didn’t sign that statement, these aren’t his words. He’s the Secretary of HHS. The quote is from a “Statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services“. If one wants to argue whether these are his words or just words he approved of, go ahead with the semantics. The end result is the same.

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In light of the CDC attack, RFK Jr. should apologize for his language against vaccine researchers.

21 Aug

I will state this straight out–I believe the anti vaccine movement has put good people at risk for decades with their rhetoric. And I also believe Mr. Kennedy has contributed a great deal to this climate of hate. How much or how directly he may have influenced the gunman who opened fire at the CDC recently, I cannot say. But I can say that I believe Mr. Kennedy, who has used terms like “corrupt”, “criminal” and “poison children” when discussing a CDC researcher, should apologize for his language. It isn’t a matter of whether the language directly contributed to the shooting. He never should have made many of the comments that were a mainstay of his speeches over the years.

Let’s consider one specific event. Ten years ago Robert Kennedy attended an anti vaccine event called the CDCTruth rally. The rally was held in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the CDC. Mr. Kennedy singled out a researcher at CDC, calling them them “corrupt”, a “criminal”, “guilty of research fraud”, who injured people and suggested they “poison[ed] children”. Read his statement for yourself:

I’m going to say one last thing to you.  [CDC-Researcher], who runs the division, the vaccine division, and who orchestrated this corruption; [they are] a criminal and he committed scientific research fraud and [they are] guilty of injuring all of these people.  Now I’m saying that and I’m using [their] name*; and what I’m saying, if it’s untrue is an act of slander, and I want [them] to sue me.  And if [they] didn’t do it, [they] ought to sue me.  [They] ought to file a suit this afternoon and enjoin me from ever saying that again.  If somebody said that about me, I would sue them immediately and I’m saying to you, [CDC-Researcher], if you didn’t poison the children, you need to sue me right now and shut me up because what I’m saying to you is damaging to your career.  So let’s see what [they do] on Monday.  Thank you all very much.” 

That was ten years ago, why bring this up now? Because, as I noted above, a gunman killed a police officer in what was an apparent attempt to commit mass murder at the CDC recently (1 week after deadly shooting at CDC, some employees feel Trump and RFK Jr. have moved on). The attack appears to have been a motivated by the CDC’s actions with vaccines (Shooter attacked CDC headquarters to protest COVID-19 vaccines, authorities say).

When Mr. Kennedy spoke, it wasn’t about the COVID-19 vaccines. The pandemic hadn’t occurred yet. It was about the MMR vaccine. But, I will argue, it contributed to the climate of hatred towards vaccine researchers that persists to this day among his supporters. While I can’t say Mr. Kennedy’s words directly influenced the murderer, he never should have said them. They were irresponsible then and they should be retracted now.

We should address a few points as long as this topic has come up. First, as Medpage Today reports:

“There is no evidence that vaccination causes depression and suicidality,” Roy Perlis, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told MedPage Today.

So, for those who have framed this as, “look at what vaccines did”: stop. You are setting the stage for the next attack.

Also, from the same article, “One study found that those with depression were more likely to endorse COVID vaccine falsehoods”.

Mr. Kennedy’s supporters can try to excuse his comments as, “reasonable people wouldn’t use words like these to justify violence.” Not everyone is reasonable. And you can’t just send out hateful words to reasonable people.

By Matt Carey

I suspect Mr. Kennedy will make moves that will dramatically reduce access to the MMR vaccine. Sooner rather than later. It will be a big mistake. That’s one of the big understatements ever made on this blog.

That said, here’s something to consider as an appendix to the article above. Mr. Kennedy made statements that, in his own words, are slander if not true. He was talking about the MMR vaccine which in his statements “poison[s] children”. Begs the question: why is it still approved? It is safe and effective and doesn’t cause autism. But why hasn’t Mr. Kennedy stopped its use?

Mr. Kennedy has been in charge of HHS–which ultimately has control over whether the MMR vaccine is approved for use–for six months. While he has done a lot to dismantle America’s vaccine program, and has moved very quickly, the MMR vaccine is still approved for use with American infants. Given Mr. Kennedy’s 2015 statements, one must ask why he didn’t immediately pull approval. Did Mr. Kennedy actually believe his rhetoric back in 2015 or was it indeed slander? Or, did he believe it then but doesn’t now? Is he moving slowly to keep his position of power? Wouldn’t that action, if the MMR vaccine were indeed poison (again, it is not), amount to sacrificing the kids getting the vaccine today for some “greater good”?

I have a hard time aligning Mr. Kennedy’s actions with his views.

* I redacted the researcher’s name and gender. Should be obvious that I think Mr. Kennedy put that researcher in danger and that I want don’t want to contribute to that effort.

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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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