Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made multiple headlines in recent days thanks to his controversial comments on autism, most recently on Sunday when he compared autism to the COVID pandemic during an interview on a radio show. "It dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people," he said, per People. "Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity." Claiming, without citing evidence, that autism will cost the US economy $1 trillion per year by 2035, he continued, "It's absolutely debilitating for them, their families, their communities and for our country—just the pure economic cost of autism."
Four days prior, speaking at a press conference, the anti-vaccine Health and Human Services secretary said that "autism destroys families," and made similar claims regarding economic productivity. "These are kids 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." Those comments sparked enormous backlash, CNN reports, with members of the autism community as well as advocates for the community sharing their own stories to push back on a narrative they called reductive, harmful, and ignorant.
Among those decrying Kennedy's comments was Gwen Walz, wife of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Hill reports. "This is deeply upsetting, especially coming from our nation's highest-ranking health official," she posted last week on X. "Individuals with autism are family, neighbors, students, and coworkers and they contribute more to this nation than this man ever will." Walz's teen son, Gus, has ADHD and nonverbal learning disorder. (More Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stories.)
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