Many in the autism community says RFK Jr. is pushing harmful and regressive rhetoric about who they are

“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,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said of people with autism.

Alison Singer has a few people she’d like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to meet. Singer’s brother and daughter are two of the millions living with autism in the United States, and part of a much larger community that has very publicly expressed feeling hurt and disrespected by the US Health and Human Services secretary’s description of who they are and how they live. “He clearly doesn’t understand either one of them,” said Singer, the president of the Autism Science Foundation. Singer’s daughter lives and works on a farm where she takes care of animals and grows and sells crops, and her brother lives in group home where he delivers meals on wheels to homebound senior citizens, she said. They’re both loving individuals who are active members of the community and family, she said. But Kennedy “made it sound like these were people whose lives were worthless, when that couldn’t be further from the case,” Singer said. At his first news conference as head of HHS, Kennedy said this week that the rising rate of autism in the country is an “individual tragedy” and “catastrophic for our country.”