According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Felon’s secretary of Health and Human Services, people with autism are parasites and a drag on society: “They’ll 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.” As noted at the link, while this is true of some “high support needs” autism cases it’s not at all a universal truth. Even with HSN individuals, it’s definitely not a truth that autism “destroys families” and children. Plus they all deserve human decency, dignity, and help if they do need it. As noted at the link, Kennedy’s gutting of government health services won’t help them at all.
Of course, Kennedy’s solution is to send them, along with addicts, people with depression and ADHD sufferers off to the country to work the land. Which won’t fix people (though it fits with the civilization-sucks thesis I blogged about last week. It won’t help them, but as noted at the link it’ll get them out of sight and out of public life.
This makes it rather creepy that Kennedy’s plans to relitigate — I won’t call it research — whether autism causes vaccines — includes setting up a database tracking people with autism. I have a strong suspicion this will not include any efforts to conceal personal data or protect their identities. It will make it easier if his plan for farms goes forward. Sure, he says they’ll be voluntary, but I don’t buy it — Kennedy clearly loathes autistic people. Nor do I believe his claims his autism research will be unbiased. He’s already rejected CDC studies that don’t fit his agenda. And I doubt his wish to access to information in the FDA vaccine safety database was for good purposes. Ditto burying a CDC pro-vax measles report.
Which leads to the question of my title: what’s his goal? One possibility is straight-up eugenics: remove autistic people from public life, sterilize them, subject them to whatever crackpot cures he thinks will work. This may also relate to his other awful policies: sure, some people will die but that’s just culling the herd, leaving healthier people behind. If more LGBTQ people commit suicide, well, Republicans are cool with it. Or consider Mehmet Oz, Kennedy’s new director of Medicare and Medicaid, who thinks Americans can cut drug costs by using less drugs. Or Kennedy’s claims our health problems are all our own fault.
Second, Kennedy’s made money off his crusades before and lots of 21st century doctors have profited off quack cures and dubious theories. It’s quite possible it’s all about money, much as phony covid cures are a cash cow..= Or simply arrogance: Kennedy wants to prove his medical nonsense and he wants to make his theories policy, deciding what treatments work and which do not. Or a combination of all three.
Or maybe, as Paul Krugman says of this administration in general: “It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.”
In other bad Republican health ideas:
USDA is suspending milk quality-control tests. Only temporary, supposedly. And it can’t use terms like “safe drinking water.”
ACA’s Medicaid expansion provides healthcare for millions. Republicans would like to kill it. DeSantis allegedly profits off it.
Anti-vaxxers are spreading misinformation about deaths in Texas’ measles outbreak. Hey, maybe it was a bioweapon!
Trump’s one good accomplishment was Operation Warp Speed giving us the covid vaccine. The rest of his response to the pandemic was terrible — and like everything else in his second term, it’s gotten worse.
The “health freedom” movement says people have the right to make their own choices — but like so many deregulation efforts that shifts the burden for safety and health from medical professionals and regulators onto individuals — and “do your own research” gets people killed. And I’m sure makes more money for alternative medicine practitioners and providers. As Paul Campos says, in the context of medicine, “personal choice” is lethal. See also.
Despite Kennedy’s professed concern for environmental health the CDC’s firing the teams that perform cruise ship inspections and firing the CDC’s lead experts. Despite his promises of transparency, he’s firing the teams that handle Freedom of Information Act requests.
I don’t believe in the Book of Revelation as a literal prophesy of the end times, but Kennedy sure does qualify as the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.
