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.
Kennedy's attack on science is despicable. But what may be even worse is his full-blown assault on the health and well-being of American children. His fixation on playing games with the bodies of vulnerable kids has a sadistic and eugenicist edge to it. Before confirming him, Senate Republicans should have listened to Caroline Kennedy, when she called her cousin "a predator" who enjoys "a perverse scene of despair and violence." She discussed how he would get a kick out of feeding baby chickens and mice into a blender to feed his hawks.
In 2011 and 2012, Geier and his father, Mark Geier, got in legal hot water with Maryland health authorities for running illegal experiments on children that are so weird that I hesitate to recount them here, for fear readers will believe I'm making it up. The two had concocted a nonsense theory, with absolutely no supporting evidence, that autism was caused by mercury in vaccines and precocious puberty. They were so set on this notion that, according to the Maryland State Board of Physicians, they would put young kids on puberty-blocking drugs, often without performing any physical examination at all on the patient. They would also put the children through chelation therapy to remove non-existent mercury from their systems. The children were subject to a battery of blood draws and other tests, but for no purpose. The board found these blood draws had no relationship to the "therapies" prescribed. The elder Geier had his medical license revoked. The younger, who has no medical education and just a bachelor of arts, was fined for practicing medicine without a license.
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The Geiers abused disabled kids, whom they gained access to by manipulating parental desperation. As Dr. David Gorski noted in a recent blog post about the Geiers, there are legitimate uses of puberty blockers in children, for precocious puberty or to reduce gender dysphoria in trans adolescents, but there was no reason whatsoever for these children to take these drugs. Delaying the onset of puberty in kids seems like it's punitive, as if they believe neurodivergent people don't deserve normal sexual development. Chelation therapy is no joke, either, and can cause serious side effects and kidney damage. The relentless blood draws, which don't seem to have any relationship to the "therapies" prescribed, feel like cruelty for its own sake.
Scientists already know why autism rates have risen. As public health specialist Dr. Atul Gawande told Pod Save America last week, the main reason is "we have become much more liberal about diagnosing people on the spectrum."
Perhaps it's no surprise that Kennedy has a fondness for Geier. Kennedy has a sadistic streak towards children that is not hard to see, for those willing to look. In 2019, Kennedy played a major role in persuading large numbers of Samoan parents to avoid the measles vaccine in their kids, which he glowingly described as a "natural experiment." The result was predictable: measles spread rapidly and children started dying. Kennedy refused to blame the deaths on the measles — heaven forbid anyone decide it's good to prevent a deadly disease — and instead blamed vaccines for the deaths.
Kennedy and his anti-vaccine colleagues don't just minimize the dangers of the measles, but often slip into talking about this horrific disease as if it's a good thing to put children through. As I wrote about last week, he celebrated families in Texas who chose infection over vaccination, even though two of them lost daughters to measles. His anti-vaccine group had one set of parents explain why that's a good thing because "she’s better off where she is now." He romanticized measles as a "great week" for kids, because they get to skip school and eat chicken soup. On Fox News on Thursday, he insisted about measles, "We need to do better at treating kids who have this disease, and not just saying the only answer is vaccination."
You don't need to "treat" a disease you don't get, but clearly, Kennedy prefers kids get measles. The "treatments" he recommends have echoes of the Geiers' ugly treatment of children. He's been telling parents to overdose kids with vitamin A, which can cause liver damage. He's been pushing the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin, both of which can have side effects. None of these treatments work, and they all risk making the situation worse.
Kennedy exploits the language of the "wellness" industry, with its misleading emphasis on "natural" health care and "letting" your body heal itself. What's ironic is that's what vaccines do. Vaccines work by stimulating the body's natural immune response, so that it prevents infection using the body's own resources. All these "treatments" Kennedy touts aren't just ineffective, they're not "natural." They're blitzing a child with often overwhelming amounts of medication, which won't work but could make the kid even sicker.
Kennedy's claim that his team of non-scientists and quacks will discover the "cause" of autism in a few short months is preposterous on its face. It's worse because scientists already know why autism rates have risen. As public health specialist Dr. Atul Gawande told Pod Save America last week, the main reason is "we have become much more liberal about diagnosing people on the spectrum." There is no concurrent rise, he noted, in the number of cases of severe autism.
This is a good thing. It means more kids have more health care access at younger ages, so they grow into happy, functioning adults. But Kennedy doesn't like that answer, so he ignores the facts. This history suggests one reason why. Despite all his protestations to the contrary, Kennedy does not want American kids to be healthier. He instead seems determined to bring back horrific diseases that do nothing but hurt or even kill children.
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