The problem with discussing RFK Jr's attacks on autistic Americans is that we're talking about two separate, but deeply intertwined issues. Kennedy is indisputably pushing a reactionary conspiracy theory about vaccines causing autism to justify a HHS "study" that will undoubtedly "confirm" his conspiracy. Furthermore the Health and Human Services Secretary's comments about autistic people are factually wrong, ablest, eugenicist, and dehumanizing. In other words, even if you believe there's nothing but sheer ignorance and hubris behind RFK Jr's behavior, everything about his fraudulent quest to "fix" autism is insulting, reactionary, and dangerous.

The truth however is that none of this is happening in a vacuum; Kennedy does work for a fascist regime employing eliminationist rhetoric, Kennedy himself has already demonstrated a profound disregard for human lives, and the unhinged eugenicist themes in RFK Jr's arguments about autistic children in particular, do point to an even darker purpose behind his odious actions. Listening to Kennedy speak, one is forced to wonder what he intends to do when, not if, it turns out he can't "fix" the existence of autistic people? Which is why news that the National Institutes of Health is now compiling highly sensitive and identifying medical records, as well as creating "a national registry to track Americans with autism" is extremely alarming.

https://truthout.org/articles/rfk-jr-seeks-broad-access-to-health-records-for-autism-research/

RFK Jr. Seeks Broad Access to Health Records for “Autism Research”

"Disability advocates argue that rather than investing in surveillance-style data collection or reviving long-debunked theories, the federal government should be focusing on supporting the needs of autistic people. This includes funding home care, accessible education, and individualized services.​ However, the Trump administration has stalled disability rights cases, moved to cut health care funding, and is attempting to dismantle disability protections in public schools."

Hey, if so-called "conservatives" want me to stop comparing the Trump regime to the Nazi Party, they should stop doing the exact same things Hitler and his minions did on the road to Auschwitz. There are literally no good reasons whatsoever for the US government to be compiling a "national registry" of autistic Americans, and that's without even considering that the HHS Secretary seems to regard them as something less than human and a drag on "productive" society.

The first thing a fascist government has to do if it wants to mass target specific groups of people in our society for confinement, suppression, or elimination is to establish lists of targets; which is why the Trump regime is funneling previously restricted government data on migrants to ICE, and anti-trans eliminationist GOP officials keep demanding the medical records of trans people. Now I'm supposed to pretend its totally fine to give identifying medical data on autistic Americans to a fascist collaborator conspiracy crank who doesn't care if his woo nonsense kills children, and considers autistic people to be broken and in need of fixing? Are you fucking kidding me? There is no way you can convince me that this story ends well.

I can't predict the future, but everything about Kennedy's time in government so far tells me that dismissing him as a woo-reactionary crank is a mistake. We're talking about a guy who claims to be trying to "solve" autism, while simultaneously lying about, demonizing, and dehumanizing autistic people on live TV. Kennedy knows his anti-vax rhetoric is bullshit, he knows that he's not going to "cure" his "epidemic." If he didn't know before he took the job, there were plenty of actual doctors at HHS already who told him so; to say nothing of the numerous advocates, rights agencies, and autistic people themselves who've pointedly told Kennedy how harmful and unwelcome his efforts to "help" have been.

So if RFK Jr knows without a doubt that none of this ends in helping autistic people at all, what's his plan? Let me make that question even easier; can you think of any possible way whatever Kennedy is trying to do is about helping autistic people, or public health? You don't build a surveillance apparatus to monitor a targeted group in society unless you intend to use it. What about anything Kennedy has said or done suggests to you that he intends to use it to accomplish anything good? Right, the best scenario I can come up with is legalizing quack "therapies" to prey on parents willing to try and "torture the autism out" of their kids, and every other scenario I can think of is arguably even more fascist, eliminationist, and terrifying.

Everything about Kennedy's behavior so far points towards something horrifying and sinister; RFK Jr isn't your drunk uncle, he's a danger to us all that must be stopped before its too late to dodge a eugenicist nightmare.

So, uh, are we sure putting RFK in charge of Health and Human Services isn't just a way to let some sadistic eugenicist freaks torture autistic children and profit from it?

*Warning: this article gets kinda grim and horrifying at a couple of points; so if you're not up for that, maybe don't click the link and just read my analysis this time.*

https://archive.ph/KIb6k

RFK's pledge to discover the "cause" of autism isn't just a ploy — it's a war on children's health

"Robert Kennedy can't be bothered to hide his thorough contempt for science. "By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic," the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared on Thursday, when announcing a supposed "massive testing and research effort." Even a person with only a fifth-grade understanding of science can see the problem: no scientist can promise a definitive "answer" to a complex biological question at the beginning of a study. Nor can anyone confidently declare they'll have that inquiry wrapped up in a few short months, as if they're writing a summer book report instead of conducting a scientific investigation.

But it's easy enough to make these declarations when you've pre-determined your conclusion, and the only work left is to generate some fake statistics to back up that preordained "discovery." In the spirit of open-mindedness, I suppose I should pretend we must wait to see whatever nonsense is produced before judging it. In the spirit of common sense, however, there is no point in playing dumb. Kennedy has already indicated what he expects the "findings" to be: that vaccines did it, even though all legitimate science shows that is false. To make sure no real science accidentally happens, he has put a non-scientist/non-doctor in charge of this non-study: David Geier, a man who has been fined for practicing medicine without a license. Worse, his "treatments" of children are better described as pointless torture."

I don't want to minimize the primary thrust of Marcotte's analysis here; Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Trump regime's Secretary of Health and Human Services, is definitely an anti-science, anti-vax grifter freak whose government-funded "study" into the causes of autism is an absolute sham designed to codify the winger conspiracy that vaccines cause autism as official state policy. Vaccines work, they don't cause autism, and we don't have an epidemic; we're just much better at diagnosing autism in young people. This man absolutely is a walking public health crisis, and his leadership of HHS is unquestionably a danger to the health of children (and everyone else) in America; this is after all the same RFK Jr who recently touted his agency's wholly inadequate response to a measles breakout in America that has a child body count, as an example for all the world to follow.

Acknowledging that, I also couldn't help but notice the much darker implications of Kennedy's installation as HHS Secretary and his choice of unlicensed child torturer David Geier to head up his study, that the author mostly hints at. Look, if RFK Jr just wanted a sham study to back up the reactionary right's eugenicist conspiracy theories about autism in modern society, he could have easily found some quack with a medical degree to help him do so. The choice of Grier, a man who, along with his father was caught running illegal, needlessly cruel, and objectively harmful medical experiments on children "to prevent autism," strongly implies that Kennedy is after far more than a round of applause for speaking Q-Anon conspiracies into public health policy "reality." Grier is a man who has already demonstrated a willingness to prey on parental fears to umm, torture children for money, basically?

All of which brings me back to the widespread eugenicist mindset towards autism on the larger American right. These are folks who, because they believe they have a right to literally own their children, perceive a child with autism as "defective goods," and terrifyingly there are millions and millions of people in America who have adopted that mindset. This cluster of reactionary, abhorrent ideology sees autism as an "epidemic" that must be "corrected" rather than recognizing even their own children with special needs as unique, vibrant human beings who don't need to be "fixed," but rather supported by a society that accepts them for the people they are. Trapped inside that eugenicist, dehumanizing worldview, we have seen that these folks will happily pay someone to essentially "torture the autism" out of young people, and I fear that folks like Kennedy and Grier know this, and plan to legitimize those inhumane attitudes and ideas through the force of public health policy - so grifter cranks like them and their friends can get filthy stinking rich in the process.