{"id":848569,"date":"2025-05-15T22:12:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T03:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/rfk-jr-calls-autism-an-epidemic-it-dwarfs-covid\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T22:12:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T03:12:02","slug":"rfk-jr-calls-autism-an-epidemic-it-dwarfs-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/rfk-jr-calls-autism-an-epidemic-it-dwarfs-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr. calls autism an epidemic: It \u2018dwarfs COVID\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a new interview, said autism was an epidemic with an impact that surpasses the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an epidemic. It dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people. Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity,\u201d Kennedy said during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM\u2019s \u201cThe Cats Roundtable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s absolutely debilitating for them, their families, their communities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

His statements come after the secretary faced scrutiny earlier this week for claiming \u201cautism destroys families\u201d at a Wednesday press conference.<\/p>\n

In the past, Kennedy has also promoted anti-vaccine rhetoric with unproven theories that vaccinations are linked to autism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the Centers for Disease Control<\/a> (CDC), children have a greater risk for autism if there\u2019s a family history of the disorder, if the mother experiences complications at birth or if chromosomal conditions pose a threat to their development.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s comments to Catsimatidis insinuated that the rate of autism was rapidly increasing and causing an uptick in health costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our country, just the pure economic cost of autism is, will be by 2035, $1 trillion a year. That\u2019s just the beginning because many of these kids are aging out and their parents worry every day. And I\u2019m talking about people with severe autism, what\u2019s called profound autism, which is about, which is about 26 percent of the total people who are diagnosed with autism,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThose families, those children are non-verbal, they\u2019re 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. And many kids with autism, many of the higher functioning autism actually can, have tremendous potential to live independently, to get jobs, take care of themselves,\u201d he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, CDC experts disagree and have noted autism cases are increasing due to better screening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Minnesota\u2019s first lady, Gwen Walz recently called out Kennedy\u2019s comments surrounding autism and criticized the leader for downplaying the contributions of individuals diagnosed with the disorder.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200b\u201cThis is deeply upsetting, especially coming from our nation\u2019s highest-ranking health official,\u201d Gwen Walz said in her post Thursday on X<\/a>. \u201cIndividuals with autism are family, neighbors, students, and coworkers and they contribute more to this nation than this man ever will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s comments about autism have also been condemned as \u201cdisrespectful,\u201d \u201cunrealistic and misleading\u201d by lawmakers and awareness groups that have raised concerns over the secretary\u2019s announcement last week launching a \u201cmassive testing and research effort\u201d for the disorder.<\/p>\n

\u201cReferring to autism as a chronic disease\u2026and using medical terminology like \u2018epidemic\u2019 are really dehumanizes autistic individuals and perpetuates stigma and stereotypes,\u201dThe Autism Society of America\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer Kristyn Roth told The Hill in previous comments. \u201cIt really reverses a lot of progress that has been made over the last decades.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said the rate at which Kennedy is promising to provide the cause of the disability is alarming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s giving people a lot of false hope,\u201d she said. \u201cTrue, rigorous, peer-reviewed science takes time to find quality answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his Sunday interview with Catsimatidis, Kennedy touted his proposed research by slamming the National Institute of Health (NIH) and CDC for researching gene linkage to autism instead of more environmental contributors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that NIH and CDC have blocked all the studies that would determine the environmental exposure. So we don\u2019t know. And instead they\u2019ve studied genes and genes contribute to autism, but they, you know, like I said, you need an environmental toxin. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re, that\u2019s what we are now going to look for,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019re going to identify it and using AI [artificial intelligence] and the best scientific protocols, all of it, very transparent. We\u2019re deploying 15 teams to look at all the potential exposures and that could be mold. It could be food additives. It could be pesticides. It could be vaccines. It could be ultrasound,\u201d he proposed.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a new interview, said autism was an epidemic with an impact that surpasses the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cThis is an epidemic. It dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people. Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":848570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4936,127],"tags":[14243,5691],"class_list":{"0":"post-848569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-autism","8":"category-calls","9":"tag-autism","10":"tag-calls"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}