So, uh, are we sure putting RFK in charge of Health and Human Services isn't just a way to let some sadistic eugenicist freaks torture autistic children and profit from it?

*Warning: this article gets kinda grim and horrifying at a couple of points; so if you're not up for that, maybe don't click the link and just read my analysis this time.*

https://archive.ph/KIb6k

RFK's pledge to discover the "cause" of autism isn't just a ploy — it's a war on children's health

"Robert Kennedy can't be bothered to hide his thorough contempt for science. "By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic," the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared on Thursday, when announcing a supposed "massive testing and research effort." Even a person with only a fifth-grade understanding of science can see the problem: no scientist can promise a definitive "answer" to a complex biological question at the beginning of a study. Nor can anyone confidently declare they'll have that inquiry wrapped up in a few short months, as if they're writing a summer book report instead of conducting a scientific investigation.

But it's easy enough to make these declarations when you've pre-determined your conclusion, and the only work left is to generate some fake statistics to back up that preordained "discovery." In the spirit of open-mindedness, I suppose I should pretend we must wait to see whatever nonsense is produced before judging it. In the spirit of common sense, however, there is no point in playing dumb. Kennedy has already indicated what he expects the "findings" to be: that vaccines did it, even though all legitimate science shows that is false. To make sure no real science accidentally happens, he has put a non-scientist/non-doctor in charge of this non-study: David Geier, a man who has been fined for practicing medicine without a license. Worse, his "treatments" of children are better described as pointless torture."

I don't want to minimize the primary thrust of Marcotte's analysis here; Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Trump regime's Secretary of Health and Human Services, is definitely an anti-science, anti-vax grifter freak whose government-funded "study" into the causes of autism is an absolute sham designed to codify the winger conspiracy that vaccines cause autism as official state policy. Vaccines work, they don't cause autism, and we don't have an epidemic; we're just much better at diagnosing autism in young people. This man absolutely is a walking public health crisis, and his leadership of HHS is unquestionably a danger to the health of children (and everyone else) in America; this is after all the same RFK Jr who recently touted his agency's wholly inadequate response to a measles breakout in America that has a child body count, as an example for all the world to follow.

Acknowledging that, I also couldn't help but notice the much darker implications of Kennedy's installation as HHS Secretary and his choice of unlicensed child torturer David Geier to head up his study, that the author mostly hints at. Look, if RFK Jr just wanted a sham study to back up the reactionary right's eugenicist conspiracy theories about autism in modern society, he could have easily found some quack with a medical degree to help him do so. The choice of Grier, a man who, along with his father was caught running illegal, needlessly cruel, and objectively harmful medical experiments on children "to prevent autism," strongly implies that Kennedy is after far more than a round of applause for speaking Q-Anon conspiracies into public health policy "reality." Grier is a man who has already demonstrated a willingness to prey on parental fears to umm, torture children for money, basically?

All of which brings me back to the widespread eugenicist mindset towards autism on the larger American right. These are folks who, because they believe they have a right to literally own their children, perceive a child with autism as "defective goods," and terrifyingly there are millions and millions of people in America who have adopted that mindset. This cluster of reactionary, abhorrent ideology sees autism as an "epidemic" that must be "corrected" rather than recognizing even their own children with special needs as unique, vibrant human beings who don't need to be "fixed," but rather supported by a society that accepts them for the people they are. Trapped inside that eugenicist, dehumanizing worldview, we have seen that these folks will happily pay someone to essentially "torture the autism" out of young people, and I fear that folks like Kennedy and Grier know this, and plan to legitimize those inhumane attitudes and ideas through the force of public health policy - so grifter cranks like them and their friends can get filthy stinking rich in the process.