Facing The Autism Crisis: RFK Jr. Is Right, And Sugarcoating The Facts Won’t Save Our Kids

Where autism diagnoses used to represent 1 in 10,000 kids in the 1960s and 1970s, rates have steadily increased, reaching 1 in 150 by 2000. Just two years ago, it was 1 in 36. Today, 1 in 31 eight year olds have autism. For boys, the odds are even greater, at 1 in 20. 

Getting to the bottom of why that is should be our topmost priority. It's the kind of unobjectionable sentiment you’d expect from a First Lady initiative: the kind of unanimously supported busywork that everyone can get behind, like urging kids to eat their vegetables or get more exercise. The public reaction to RFK Jr.'s address, however, has been nothing short of hysterical. So, what prompted this reaction? 

RFK Jr. didn’t mince his words when he insisted that addressing the autism crisis is at the top of the Trump administration’s agenda because it’s a leading economic and moral issue. On the one hand, he claims economic projections suggest autism-related costs could reach $1 trillion annually by 2035—hardly far-fetched, as previous projections from 2015 had predicted we’d reach that estimate by 2025. On the other, allowing this trend to continue without any investigation is certainly a moral issue considering the profound limitations and struggles that dealing with autism can mean for autistic people and their loved ones.

Just to illustrate the point, for as much virtue signaling as I hear about the incel crisis, I don’t see a lot of people showing as much concern about the growing incidence of autism, despite significant overlap in these two issues. Some studies have shown that about half of self identified incels are on the autism spectrum. Autism can cause social difficulties like an inability to read social cues, suffering from black-and-white-thinking, having flat affect or inappropriate facial expressions, and an awkward physical presence, to name a few. 

The public aversion to RFK Jr.’s comments on autism have largely been a result of his past comments potentially linking autism to vaccines and his characterization in the media as an anti-vax pseudoscience loon. It’s worth noting Kennedy recently supported the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to address a measles outbreak in Texas, so the extent to which he’s been portrayed as dogmatically anti-vax is somewhat exaggerated. But as a non-crunchy person myself who still finds utility in the scientific and medical communities’ expertise (not that it’s infallible), I grant that a misrepresentation of data on vaccines would be a valid concern worthy of criticism, had that been the speech that Kennedy actually gave.

Kennedy didn’t address the nation and subsequently launch into a tangent insisting that all autism cases are a direct cause of vaccines. Vaccines weren’t actually mentioned at all. He did emphasize that the rise in autism cases don’t appear to merely be a result of improved diagnostics, but of environmental exposure, suggesting these cases can be prevented. Some characterized his statements as being overly dismissive of the CDC’s previous findings that genetic predisposition is a risk factor for developing autism because of statements like “Genes do not cause epidemics. You need an environmental toxin.” 

Maybe epidemic is not the proper terminology, as autism is not technically a disease, but it’s in keeping with the colloquial usage—no different than describing a disproportionately obese population as an “obesity epidemic.” Per A Dictionary of Epidemiology, Kennedy’s use of "epidemic" is perfectly apt. Either way, the pushback feels reductive, not to mention sidestepping the real concern here, which is why so many of our children are autistic. 1 in 12 boys in California—if that’s not an epidemic, then I don’t know what it is. But it’s surely not ideal.

Regardless of the cause, we should all feel inclined to find out what’s responsible for this spike. Kennedy poses a real point, too—that unwavering faith in the genetic predisposition explanation has resulted in considerably more funding put into studying genetic, rather than potential environmental causes. What’s the harm in studying it? Kennedy has faced a lot of pushback for sentiments he never actually expressed, or for claims people have extrapolated from unrelated statements. 

Some press members challenged Kennedy’s assertion that the autism epidemic can't simply be explained by better diagnostic tools. But Kennedy explicitly cites scientific literature to support the claim that the true incidence of autism is increasing, and he doesn't deny that improved diagnostics have played a role. He simply argues that better recognition explains only a fraction of the rise. As Kennedy put it, “There are small slivers of the autism epidemic, maybe 10 to 25%, according to the studies. The highest studies are around 25% that can be attributed to better recognition and better diagnosis." 

In other words, even under the most generous interpretation, the majority of cases remain unexplained by diagnostic improvements alone. He isn't ignoring the scientific literature, he's responding to it. Kennedy’s anecdotes in reference to the apparent invisibility of autism in the elderly population, of his age cohort, might appear trivial and unscientific, but it isn't meaningless. 

Noting the absence of elderly individuals with clear signs of autism by explaining it away with the neurodivergent "masking" explanation is to admit that there is at least a comparable lack of profound autism in the elderly age cohort. That's yet another indication that there has been a sharp rise in profound autism, as it has been steadily increasing in younger populations. As Tablet Magazine recently reported, autism rates are also soaring in adult Medicaid and Social Security disability programs, where by definition only the most severe cases qualify.

However, there was a particular line in his speech that sent parents of autistic children in a defensive tizzy. The polarizing comments made by RFK Jr. centered around his characterization of autism as a “tragedy” that “destroys families and our greatest resource, which is our children.” First, he posits that our children should not be suffering like this, and that many kids with autism were developing normally and fully functional, but start regressing around two years old from some environmental exposure.

"These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they were two years old. 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."

The outrage machine wasted no time. Before you knew it, everyone was milking what was a genuine public health of concern, born out of compassion, being conflated with bigotry toward all autistic people. It should go without saying that RFK Jr. does not literally believe that anyone on the autistic spectrum is incapable of falling in love, holding a job, paying taxes, or using the toilet unassisted. 

But that didn’t stop opportunists leaping at the chance to make a worrying trend all about them and their supposedly prodigious children who apparently function just fine in society with minimal struggles, setbacks, or faults. As wonderful as that is, that’s besides the point. We shouldn’t have to pre-eminently over-qualify every statement to avoid anyone tangentially related to the topic getting offended.

Though he shouldn’t have to, RFK Jr. did make the media rounds to clarify that his statements were not about all autistic people, but about the more than 25% of severe cases that are nonverbal (this is actually a conservative estimate, other estimates place the number at 30 to 35%). It’s a mystery why so many are being so uncharitable to Kennedy by insisting that he didn’t qualify his statement in the first place by mentioning the 25% of profound autism cases during the very speech people are cherry picking quotes from.

Autism may be a spectrum that can manifest wildly differently from person to person, and you may know or love someone close to you who is autistic. But that doesn’t change the fact that autism is an incredibly difficult condition to deal with, that causes a lot of people, especially low functioning cases, a lot of suffering and a reduced capacity to live a normal life. 

There are parents who have to make the decision between tolerating abuse from their low functioning profoundly autistic child or placing them in a 24/7 care facility, which they may not even be able to afford. What’s frustrating is that as valid as it is to be neurodivergent, high agency, independent, and highly successful—potentially incredibly talented, high IQ, or creative, it’s unfortunate that low functioning autistic people are always being erased from the conversation because people with “neurodivergent quirks” are always speaking over them. 

High functioning autistic people (and their parents) whose biggest difficulties arising from their neurodivergence is registering when the people around them are growing bored of their ramblings about their special interest can’t constantly insert themselves into the conversation about a public health crisis if they insist on erasing the struggles of people with profound intellectual disabilities that have irrefutably robbed them of the hope to live a normal life. Living with a life-limiting disability may mean that their family struggles to care for them, or feel overwhelmed by caring for them. 

Being nonverbal may mean they can’t even voice their own struggles. It’s an incredibly devastating predicament for everyone involved, and it doesn’t erase anyone’s humanity or value to acknowledge that. Every time relatively high functioning autistic people who just have a quirky personality hijack the conversation to remind everyone how having autism is no big deal and you’re evil if you suggest otherwise, it’s people who are seriously disabled that get left behind. 

To the contrary, it’s inhumane to push these people aside, insist “there’s nothing to see here, autism is a super power,” while an insignificant proportion of our children, and their families, are struggling. Addressing this public health crisis is, as Kennedy rightly suggests, both an economic and a moral issue. But we can’t even address our nation’s ailments if we refuse to open our eyes in the first place. That’s not kindness, that’s cowardice. There’s no place for PC-policing a genuine medical crisis, and no one is demonizing your autistic children by speaking honestly about an increasingly sick populace.