Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. again likened autism to an “epidemic” and said it is far worse than millions of COVID-19 deaths.
The health and human services secretary made the comparison during a Sunday interview with billionaire GOP donor John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s The Cats Roundtable. Moreover, he claimed that the “pure economic cost of autism” will cost the United States $1 trillion a year in lost “productivity” by 2035.
“Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity,” RFK Jr. said. “It dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people.”
He added: “It’s absolutely debilitating for them, their families, their communities.”
RFK Jr. comments come on the heels of a Wednesday press conference in which he claimed that children with autism won’t grow up to live full lives.
“These are kids of 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,” RFK Jr. said.
His comments sparked the ire of several autism awareness advocates, celebrities with autistic children, and medical professionals who ripped the secretary as misinformed.
“[Autism] is not an epidemic, nor should it be compared to the COVID-19 pandemic, and using language like that perpetuates falsehoods, stigma and stereotypes,” said Autism Society of America president and CEO Christopher Banks in response to the comments.
RFK Jr. has also suggested that autism is the result of environmental factors and vaccines. However, the Centers for Disease Control, which RFK Jr oversees, reported that family history is the greatest risk factor for autism, in addition to birth complications.
In his interview with Catsimatidis, RFK Jr. clarified that his press conference comments were directed at people with “profound autism.”
“Many of these kids are aging out and their parents worry every day. And I’m talking about people with severe autism, what’s called profound autism, which is about, which is about 26 percent of the total people who are diagnosed with autism,” RFK Jr. alleged. “Those families, those children are non-verbal, they’re non-toilet trained. They have all this stereotypical features of autism, head banging, toe walking, stimming, agonizing gut pain and head banging. Those kids are kids that will not hold jobs.”
