The Ugly Historical Echoes of Kennedy’s Comments on Autism

^{"Autism Awareness Ribbon" via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0}

Last week Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held his first news briefing as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to address a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about rates of autism among children in the United States.

He used the opportunity to spread falsehoods. Kennedy claimed that “studying genetic causes” of autism is a “dead end.” That’s because “we know it’s environmental exposure. Genes do not cause epidemics,” he continued. While there may be environmental factors that contribute to autism, my newsroom colleagues point out, “scientists have known since the 1970s that genetics contribute to the development of the neurodevelopmental disorder.”

But that’s not all Kennedy said about people with autism. Shortly after mentioning that a study calculated the “cost of treating autism in this country by 2035 will be a trillion dollars a year,” he said, “Autism destroys families, but more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children.” He added:

These are kids who will...