As many of you are aware, I have been concerned and somewhat verbal about autism, because of the dramatic effect that an autistic child can have on a family.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services is taking aim at autism attempting to ascertain its cause.
Recently the Epoch Times ran a bio-story about three autistic individuals. Interestingly, and perhaps coincidentally, all three of the involved parents related the onset of the autistic symptoms to childhood vaccines. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that although autism can be diagnosed at any age, it’s described “as a ‘developmental disorder’ because symptoms generally appear in the first two years of life.”
Since the onset of autism is typically around when these children are receiving vaccinations, this could certainly be an example of true-true, but not related. However the honest answer is that we just do not know.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the prevalence of autism has increased to one in 31 children, up from one in 150 children in 2002 and one in 10,000 in the early 1990s.
On April. 28 RFKJr said, “This is an epidemic, and it is clearly an epidemic, and it’s happening. And epidemics are not caused by genes. Genes can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental exposure, and we need to identify what that exposure is. What is doing this to our kids?”
In an address on April 16, Kennedy said that autism is an epidemic and criticized those who attribute the jump in cases largely or solely to better screening and diagnostic criteria.
“Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children,” he said.
“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 remarks drew criticism from some parents, who said that their autistic children are successful and not reflective of what Kennedy described.
Could it be that these parents who were critical of what RFKJr said have children who are not severely autistic, but rather on the autism spectrum?
In a town hall with Dr. Phil McGraw on April 28, Kennedy reiterated that he was bringing attention to the plight of families who have children with “profound autism,” which he said represents around 26.4 percent of people with the condition.
“What that means is non-verbal, non-toilet trained, and all these other stereotypical behaviors like toe walking, stimming, hand flapping, et cetera,” he said.
Although as I have alluded to before, in some, just the mention of RFKJr’s name causes their blood to boil. However, I can bet that these irate individuals do not have autistic children.
5/21/25