RFK Jr. Says There Are No Autistic Poets. We Asked an Autistic Poet.
“I will challenge RFK Jr. to write a poem as good as me any day of the week.”

Politics, 9 hours ago
Julia Métraux
Reporter

To Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—and contrary to medical consensus and decades of study—autism is an appalling, family-destroying “disease.” To pediatric psychiatrists and autism experts like Vanderbilt University’s Zachary Warren, speaking Wednesday to National Public Radio, autism “isn’t a single thing; it is a word we use in an attempt to capture a spectrum of behavioral strengths, differences, and vulnerabilities.”

During a startling recent press conference, and following a pledge to establish the “cause” of autism by September, the HHS secretary sparked further outrage—by, as my colleague Anna Merlan reported yesterday, saying the following:

“These are kids who will never pay taxes,” Kennedy declared. “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. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children.”

Kennedy’s years of anti-vaccine activism have centered in large part on autism, framing it as a “preventable disease” and epidemic driven by environmental contaminants. A lawyer by training, with no medical background beyond freelance taxidermy, Kennedy has consistently peddled misinformation about autism and autistic people, presenting the condition as a vaccine-driven scourge.
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/rfk-kennedy-hhs-autism-diagnoses-poet/