September 1, 2025

RFK Jr prepping more lies | Ineffective alt-med | Autistic Bowie

The ever-exhausting (we are so tired) US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr wants to erase autistic people from existence and has told lies about them for years.

Why RFK Jr keeps making his big, false, disprovable claims

The ever-exhausting (we are so tired) US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr wants to erase autistic people from existence and has told lies about them for years. He apparently can’t stand the sight of children whom he judges to be autistic. He’s absolutely willing to frame autistic people as toxic, poisoned, useless, dispensable, threatening burdens on society. Backed by gullible parents who also apparently can’t stand the sight of autistic children, he seems poised to make another false claim this month about his much-ballyhooed investigation into the causes of autism. He is widely anticipated to make the false, destructive claim that vaccines cause autism.

This is a man who has no business being the leader of a backyard BBQ (where the entree would probably be roadkill), much less of our national health enterprise. This is a man who for years has made money on these claims and on drawing in autism-fearful parents who want to place “blame” for traits they don’t want their children to have. This is a man who has already been “caught making up scientific citations” to support his fabrications. This is a man who lied to get the position he has. This is a man whose efforts to force officials at our national public health agency to lie have led to their departures and the prospect of a bleak future of avoidable, preventable death and disease in this country. This is a man who forced out experts on vaccines so that he could shove in his cronies. This is a man who shoved in those cronies so he could shove through policies so counter to evidence that medical associations have released their own guidelines. This is a man who already has left a track record of dead children behind him in his relentless pursuit of Being Right About This in the face of all evidence showing that he is wrong. This is a man so unfamiliar with the basics of public health that he thinks an "“intervention” is a “cause.” This is a man with no understanding of autistic people, no understanding of scientific research or human biology or federally funded science, and no consideration about the lives he destroys and the bleak future he is building for the children of this nation. This is a man with one encompassing motivation, and that is Being Right About This whether he has to lie, cheat, or let children die to do it.

Using the same raggedy, dogeared playbook this crowd has been passing around for decades, he tries to make autistic people a threat worse than death. He wants the possibility of having an autistic child to be so terrifying that parents will forgo the most effective, successful, life-saving preventative intervention in human history and view pain, disability, and even death of a child as preferable to having a child who is autistic.  

He is not a “vaccine skeptic.” He is virulently anti-vaccine because he took that stand many years ago, made bank and reputation on it, and resists all updates to his stance. He’d rather see harm on a massive scale than to accept that he was wrong. His desperation is clear in every action he takes, whether it’s firing people with the deep knowledge and understanding to call his BS or his literally just making things up as “proof.”

Regardless of what lies this man spouts when he reveals the “tremendous horror show” he’s decided causes autism, here is the evidence-based bottom line:   

• Autistic people are caused by being born.   

• By far the greatest contribution to being autistic is having a human genome.    

• Autistic people are humans caused by genetics.

• Wanting autistic people “intervened” or erased is very specifically eugenics, which is the false and anti-scientific idea that erasing people from the population will “improve” the gene pool of that population.    

• Currently available vaccines are overwhelmingly effective and life-saving.    

• Vaccines are among the longest-studied, best-established preventatives in human history.    

• Vaccines do not cause autism. 

News you can use

• Interested in hearing from people with years of training and real-life scientific research experience into what causes autistic people? Give this Nature piece by Helen Pearson a read. A takeaway: “One broad conclusion to emerge from the available data is that genetics plays a huge part.” Pearson’s really covering (again) why prevalence has increased, which, as is well established, is because of the triplet factors of reshaped diagnostic categories, shifting diagnostic capture, and much much broader awareness and recognition. The piece is a welcome contrast to wild statements like this one from Scripps News: “No one knows why autism rates have spiked in the past 25 years.” We do! We know! It’s been researched and reported and documented all over the world! Repeatedly!   

• The list of things that don’t play a huge part, or any part, in being autistic continues to grow, but sometimes those tarnished oldies show up again like reappearing ink. Some people can’t help themselves, and even when they’re writing that it’s genes all the way down, they have to trot out some parent blaming, especially the gestating parent. This fellow couldn’t help himself, apparently. He showed considerable confidence belied by the evidence in citing obesity, older age, gestational diabetes, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) as factors. Here’s what current evidence says: the slight association with IVF (it’s not “doubled risk” for autism, good grief) is probably related to other factors that led to the use of IVF. There isn’t a firmly established association of autism and gestational diabetes. Parental age on either extreme (younger or older) influences many, many important outcomes in birth, and having an autistic child isn’t on the first page of that list. Results on obesity are all over the place. And inherent in all of these questions is the real aim of “reducing the risk” that autistic people will be born.

• I thoroughly understand why people rightly frustrated by the medical profession turn to “alt med” and “wellness” just to find someone who at least listens to them even if simultaneously picking their pockets. But alt-med “treatments” for autistic children can carry considerable risks and dangers without involving the child’s choice. Now a huge analysis of 19 alternative/complementary/integrative medicine (CAIM) interventions shows that not a single one of them offers a notable benefit. Writing in Nature Human Behavior, the authors say that they “found no high-quality evidence to support the efficacy of any CAIM for core or associated symptoms of autism.”

• Those of us who have experienced the deep exhaustion and self-questioning following deployment of social camouflage might be surprised to learn that the practice isn’t just an autistic one. Or maybe that’s not surprising. At any rate, a study published last year in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders suggests that the common feature for anyone relying on camouflage may be feelings of anxiety and negative-self perception, fed in part by previous experiences. Makes sense to me.

• The authors of a widely covered UK report have chosen the predictable stratagem of claiming that children are being “overdiagnosed” as cover for limiting the school services system known as SEND. The report, entitled “Out of Control” (good lord) has elicited a response from the National Autistic Society. Tim Nicholls, the Society’s assistant director of Policy, Research and Strategy, stated that the report is “a litany of poorly evidenced claims and ill-thought-out ideas. Its sweeping assertions of overdiagnosis are just wrong and even the opinion evidence it cites conflicts. This is a time for good, well-reasoned thinking but this report couldn't be wider of the mark. The SEND system is failing, but it’s not the fault of children and families seeking the support they need. We expect better and autistic children deserve better.”  

• As we know, the data stolen from creators, discussion boards, and elsewhere to train large language models for genAI has, to date, largely been human-created. That means that all of our various biases are baked into this information, which in turn means the answers these machines generate will reflect those biases. People who fall outside the most common representations in these training materials will feel the effects of this machine-generated, human-founded bias, and autistic job applicants are no exception. Bloomberg Law reports on how use of these tools may entail this bias in hiring and even be in violation of federal disability laws. Reporter Rebecca Klar writes, “These technologies raise potential Americans With Disabilities Act violations, from video and audio screenings that measure applicants’ character traits via their eye contact and voices to automated analyzers that downgrade resumes based on disability-related group memberships or awards.”

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People you should know

• Meet Viraj Dhanda, who will be matriculating at MIT next year as the first non-speaking autistic student ever to attend the school. He spent a dozen years with pretty much everyone around him making choices based on an assumption that he had intellectual disability. But he does not and instead experiences difficulties signaling to his speech muscles to speak and express his thoughts, which is called apraxia. His family finally realized that what he really needed was the right kind of communication device. With the just-right tablet in hand, Dhanda pursued his studies and applied to MIT. The experience "felt liberating” to him, he told WBUR, Boston’s public radio station. “The simple dignity of being able to speak was enough for me.”

• Lexi Jones, the daughter of supermodel Iman and the late David Bowie, has posted to Instagram about being diagnosed as autistic at age 25. She quotes from an essay she wrote about her experiences growing up undiagnosed and says, "This diagnosis does not change who I am, but it gives me language, clarity, and relief.”

• Megan Donelson has an autistic child and also is an academic at the University of Dayton who specializes in public rhetoric around health. It’s a risky time to speak out from a university about the current language the US health secretary and his “MAHA” movement are using about autistic people. But Donelson did so in an essay at The Conversation, writing, “... in the language of MAHA I hear a disregard for the humanity of people with disabilities and a shift from supporting them to blaming them for their needs.” Donelson unpacks the all-too-familiar rhetorical gambits RFK Jr and MAHA employ in their effort to lure the public into their cause.   

• Sometimes, if we don’t find what we want to see, we have to create it ourselves. That’s just what Ayanna Sanaa did. Sanaa, whose handle on Bluesky is “Phenomenally Autistic,” said that she “wanted to see more children’s books with little Black autistic girls,” so she wrote and illustrated one called, “I’m Autistic & I’m Phenomenal.” From the book description: “This is more than just a story — it's representation, it's affirmation, and it's a celebration. Whether you're searching for books for Black autistic girls, inclusive classroom stories, or simply a heartfelt read that embraces neurodiversity, this book is a must-have.”

Bits and bobs

• You know how useful being out in nature is for some of what ails us? It can be great! But claiming that nature is a cure-all or even curative for various human conditions can be a form of quackery, writes Polly Atkin at Lit Hub. She takes a recently exposed fake memoir as her example, writing: “Nature writing has long had a problem with the way it presents illness. Nature writing only wants to admit illness into its pages if it is to show nature performing a miraculous cure. … if it were that simple, no one would be ill.”

• The journal Annual Reviews has published a sweeping look at aging while autistic in the UK. The authors examine autism in middle-age and later and the various age-specific issues that still badly need to be addressed. They also note the “very high rates of underdiagnosis of autism in this demographic,” estimating that almost 9 in 10 autistic adults over age 40 in the UK aren’t diagnosed. An even larger proportion over age 60 live undiagnosed. Without a diagnosis, older autistic people go without supports and have greater risk for age-related conditions and social isolation.

• ⬆️ That sounds dark, I know, but some people are working on solutions. NHS Education for Scotland has just posted a recording of a webinar on strengthening efforts in the UK to support the older autistic population, including getting better at diagnosing. You can find a link to the webinar recording here.      

• A study just published in Nature Human Behavior suggests that spouses tend to have neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions in common. The association held across different geographic regions and generations. Honestly, relatable. 

Thanks for reading, and may you find whatever gives you clarity and relief.

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About the Author

Dr. Emily Willingham is a 2022 MIT Knight Science Project Fellow, and the author of several books, including the upcoming If Your Adolescent Has Autism: An Essential Resource for Parents from Oxford University Press, and has served as a regular contributor to Scientific American and other national publications.