Advocacy teams are outraged over Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conflict on Individuals with autism.
They are saying Kennedy makes use of the dysfunction as a political device and pushes damaging stereotypes that unfold misinformation.
“The U.S. Secretary of Health, RFK Jr., made false comments about autism, like people with autism are broken, that autism is caused by vaccines, and that people with autism will never have jobs or families,” stated Teddy, a fourth grader from New Jersey whose assertion at a college board assembly went viral earlier this month.
“I have autism and I’m not broken,” Teddy stated. “And I hope that nobody in Princeton Public Schools believes RFK Jr.’s lies.”
The New Jersey schoolkid and autism consciousness teams felt the necessity to converse out after Kennedy’s vile feedback final month about U.S. autism charges, the place he repeated his false declare that autism is an epidemic that “destroys families.”
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Kennedy additionally mischaracterized autism as a “preventable disease” and falsely asserted that 25% of autistic persons are non-functioning—ridiculous notions that specialists say are inaccurate.
“His comments were incorrect, but more to the point, they were eugenic,” Colin Killick, govt director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Community, advised the Boston Globe. “Talking about autistic people as themselves being destroyed but also having destroyed their families is a horrific argument.”
Julie DeFilippo, a social employee with an autistic son, advised the Boston Globe that “as a parent of an autistic kid, I get hundreds of moments of joy every day. That’s the easy part—being at home and supporting him.”
Kennedy’s characterization of autism as a preventable tragedy additionally seems related to his infamous anti-vaccine campaign. In a current interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, he repeated the vigorously debunked declare of a hyperlink between autism and vaccines.
“Many of the parents have reported that their kid, that their child, developed autism immediately after [childhood vaccinations],” Kennedy advised the psychologist-turned-TV star.
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Kennedy has used his place as America’s chief public well being official to launch what he claims is a scientific examine into the reason for autism, to be led by an anti-vaccine activist with heinous concepts about remedies for the situation that embody experimenting with chemical castration medicine.
“I have seen a lot of people treat [Autism Spectrum Disorder] as some sort of disease that needs to be ‘cured,’ which is very offensive towards people like me,” John Trainor, a highschool pupil, advised the Boston Globe. ”We’re regular individuals who have a a lot tougher time socially.”
Kennedy has additionally introduced plans to create an autism database, utilizing the non-public medical info of thousands and thousands of Individuals, promising Trump in a surreal Cupboard assembly in April that he’d have the ability to determine the reason for autism by September.
Kennedy introduced on Could 7 that he intends to direct the Nationwide Institutes of Well being to make use of Medicare and Medicaid insurance coverage claims associated to autism diagnoses to construct his database.
Critics level out that Kennedy’s plan quantities to an autism registry, and specialists add that Kennedy’s guarantees are unrealistic.
“In case you simply ask me, as a scientist, is it potential to get the reply that rapidly? I do not see any potential method,” Dr. Peter Marks, a former high vaccine scientist for the FDA, stated on Face the Nation final month.
Kennedy’s speak about investigating autism is additional hypocritical contemplating the Trump administration’s slashing of funds for scientific analysis and haphazard dismantling of America’s public well being establishments.
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