The new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spotlighted Autism, promising to find a “cause” by September of this year. 

In doing so, he has put forth widely debunked theories and ideas as to the cause of Autism and its impacts on Autistic people. 

His comments have provoked considerable backlash across the Autism community, from self-advocates to researchers to Autism organizations with widely divergent views.

These critiques correctly point out the lack of evidence supporting RFK Jr.’s claims, right down to the many Autistic people who shared the ways they don’t match some of the unusual stereotypes that RFK Jr. evoked in his statements. 

To any reasonable observer, he has shown a callous disregard for the facts in support of his own narrative.

Despite that the facts do not support RFK Jr.’s narrative, that narrative still has power. Not because it holds water in any meaningful way, but because the man propagating it runs the Department of Health and Human Services and will hold considerable sway over the current administration’s policy toward Autistic people for the foreseeable future. 

It is worth examining the framework that RFK Jr. and those who agree with him are trying to establish around the conversation, so that in arguing about the facts, we do not lose sight of the playing field we are on.

In putting forth a narrative about whether Autistic people can pay taxes or enjoy baseball, RFK Jr. and those promoting this narrative benefit from arguing on the facts. 

As more and more Autistic people show how clearly incorrect it is to assert that Autistic people as a group do not work or enjoy a wide variety of activities, we must also ask the most pressing questions: What exactly is the problem if some people can’t pay taxes? Why is baseball the thing that makes life worth living?

There is already considerable danger to the head of the American government’s health department, having wildly misguided views about what it’s like to be Autistic and what may cause it. But worse than merely being misguided is asserting that some people need to be “fixed” if they cannot contribute sufficiently to society, or if, by one person or committee’s evaluation, someone is deemed incapable of sufficiently enjoying all the things that life has to offer. 

It proposes a world in which it is OK for the government to control the lives of Autistic people they deem insufficiently contributing to or participating in society.

There are signs of where these types of narratives eventually point to. HHS’s recently abandoned plan to to create a registry of Autistic Americans exhibits a degree of intrusiveness and control over personal health information that would never be acceptable for Allistic people but is OK to RFK Jr.’s HHS because they deem Autistic quality of life so insufficient that it’s OK to exert control over it wherever the individuals in charge deem appropriate. 

The narrative that the government can and should exert more control over Autistic people can have far-reaching implications. In the UK, the NHS recently announced plans to test patients seeking gender affirming care for Autism under the presumption that an Autism diagnosis would sufficiently prove the patient is incapable of making their own decisions.

In combating people like RFK Jr. on the facts, we must also actively highlight their true goals and point out the ways that the narratives they promote about Autistic people fly in the face of fundamental values such as personal autonomy, accessible communities, and social safety nets.

We must emphasize that HHS does not get to decide what lives are worth living. One unfortunate reality of the current political environment is that RFK Jr. has tremendous leeway to use HHS resources to support his narrative, and only by combating that narrative and putting pressure on the administration can we hope to protect the autonomy and integrity of Autistic people from needless government intrusion and worse.