THIS IS IMPORTANT: RFK Jr.’s War on Autism, Public Health, and Reality

1. Decide a group of people is a threat
2. Contain the threat
3. Remove the threat

That’s it. That’s the whole trilogy. History calls it a pattern. Your uncle on Facebook calls it “research.”

As Carl Sagan (astronomer, science communicator, and the only person who could explain the universe to the general public without crying) warned, “When we lose respect for critical thinking, we slide back into superstition.”¹

Guess what we slid into. Headfirst. Like a kid at a waterpark.

Stephen Hawking (theoretical physicist and certified galaxy brain) added, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is the illusion of knowledge.”²

Social media has turned illusion into a personality type.

WHAT IS THIS MOVEMENT REALLY ABOUT

The modern anti-vaccine movement likes to cosplay as a civil-rights movement. It is not. It is mostly a war on autistic people disguised as “concern.”

It paints autism as contamination, injury, error, moral failing, biological whoopsie, or something to “fix” instead of understanding.

Numbers that explain the movement better than their websites do:

• Medical organizations agreeing vaccines do not cause autism: 100 percent³
• Anti-vaccine influencers with actual immunology degrees: zero
• Annual revenue of the “detox and cure autism” industry: 2.1 billion dollars⁴
• Actual autistic people created by vaccines: zero
• Autistic people harmed by being treated like glitches: millions
• Times “toxins” are defined clearly by anti-vaxxers: never

This is not advocacy. This is diagnostic eugenics with cute fonts and a coupon code.

As Temple Grandin (autistic scientist and animal-behavior legend) said, “The world needs all kinds of minds.”⁵ Unfortunately, what we have right now is “all kinds of opinions with zero citations.”

THE MOST RECENT ACTIONS OF RFK JR.

The past year has been a nonstop science-fiction dystopia written by someone who thinks organic toothpaste and tall glass of ice-cold methylene blue will fix public health.

RFK Jr. highlights include:

• Number of CDC vaccine advisers removed or replaced: dozens
• Number replaced with vaccine skeptics: more than zero, which is too many⁶
• Attempts to remove CDC language stating vaccines do not cause autism: at least one official directive⁷
• Jobs potentially eliminated under MAHA reorganization: 20,000⁸
• Public-health experts saying this is dangerous: all of them⁹
• New scientific discoveries made this way: none

Former CDC directors (from both political parties, which is rarer than a solar eclipse) have united to say RFK Jr. is endangering American health.¹⁰ When bipartisan scientists agree on something, it usually means “Stop doing that immediately.”

As John Mulaney (comedian, former SNL writer, and human ferret) says, “You cannot just do stuff. You have to know why you’re doing stuff.” This movement has no why. Just vibes.

HOW DANGEROUS IS THIS

On a scale from “mildly concerning” to “the CDC now has to explain measles to grown adults again,” this sits at DEFCON 1.

The math does not lie:

• Childhood mortality before vaccines: 20 to 30 percent¹¹
• Drop in mortality after vaccines: over 95 percent¹²
• Increase in life expectancy due to public health: more than 30 years¹³
• Number of legit studies linking vaccines to autism: zero
• Diseases waiting to return if vaccinations drop: all of them, like a reunion tour
• Number of TikTok creators who can spell methylmercury: not enough

Science works. Viruses do not care about your political identity. And measles does not need your permission to return.

IS THIS EUGENICS

Let’s define it clearly for the uninitiated:

Eugenics is the belief that some people are biologically “better,” and that society should prevent “undesirable” people from being born or allowed to reproduce. It led to forced sterilizations, institutionalization, marriage bans, anti-immigrant laws, and eventually helped justify atrocities like the Holocaust. Any argument that autistic people are mistakes, burdens, or contaminations is the modern-day, rebranded, Whole-Foods-aesthetic version of the same idea.

Eugenics indicators, now in convenient bullet form:

• Autism described as contamination: frequently
• Autism described as degeneration: also, frequently
• Policies supporting autistic adults: very few
• Policies aimed at preventing autistic births: increasing
• Autistic people requesting extinction: zero

Andrew Solomon (writer and psychologist who taught half of America how to understand identity and difference) wrote, “The tragedy is not being different. It is being told you need to be fixed.”¹⁴ Exactly.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CDC

The CDC used to be the quiet, reliable kid in class who did the whole group project while everyone else scrolled Instagram.

Now it is understaffed, reorganized by political appointees, mocked, distrusted, and asked to fight pandemics without enough scientists.

By the numbers:

• Lab scientists and epidemiologists displaced: thousands¹⁵
• Years of institutional knowledge lost: tens of thousands
• Trust in the CDC pre-2020: solid
• Trust now: somewhere under the floorboards
• Pathogens that care about political drama: zero

Anthony Fauci (physician, immunologist, whose name was on the cover of my medical school internal medicine book and the nation’s reluctant emotional-support scientist) said, “Public health is about protecting people even when the danger is invisible.”¹⁶ Hard to protect people when your epidemiologists are replaced by wellness bloggers.

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE CDC DISAPPEARS

Short answer: chaos. Long answer: a permanent March 2020, but without the sourdough.

The horrors, quantified:

• Time for disease to spread without surveillance: days
• Countries relying on U.S. data: 100 plus
• Agencies capable of replacing CDC infrastructure: zero
• Predicted new pathogens per decade: increasing
• Odds of catching them without experts: not great
• Global tolerance for more pandemics: low

Public health is like plumbing. You only notice it when everything leaks at once.

THE CRISIS OF DEMOTION: A NEW WAR ON PROFESSIONS

As if dismantling public health wasn’t enough, an entirely different kind of disaster is unfolding: the demotion of graduate and professional degrees, especially those dominated by women.

New student-loan policies have decided that degrees in psychology, counseling, social work, education, public health, and nursing specialties are not “professional” enough for adequate federal loan support.

The carnage in bullet form:

• Annual borrowing cap for many graduate degrees: $20,500¹⁷
• Actual cost of these programs: $40,000 to $70,000 per year
• Percent of workers in these fields who are women: 70 to 90 percent
• Students who can pay out of pocket: zero
• Projected therapist shortage by 2030: 100,000 plus¹⁸
• Chance any of this improves care: less than zero

This is not reform. This is deleting the workforce.

Laughing Through It

As Maria Bamford (comedian and mental-health truth teller) puts it: “If the people who help us disappear, we don’t get better by magic.”¹⁹

THE TWO-PRONGED COLLAPSE

Put these two crises together and you get the real, civilization-level emergency.

Collapse 1: Public Health. Our disease defense system is being dismantled.

Collapse 2: The Helping Professions. The people trained to care for us cannot afford the degrees required to help us.

The numbers speak for themselves:

• Decline in public-health staffing: massive
• Decline in clinician pipeline: severe
• Increase in mental-health needs: off the charts
• Increase in vaccine misinformation: exploding
• Countries recruiting American scientists: many
• US incentives to keep them: few

THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT

While Trump dominates the news by threatening allies and complimenting authoritarian leaders like he’s giving out addled superlatives, RFK Jr. is quietly dismantling scientific institutions. Together they are creating an environment where fear thrives, and expertise dies.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist and cosmic explainer) says, “When you have people not understanding basic science, you’re courting the collapse of civilization.”²⁰ We are not just courting it. We sent it flowers.

WHAT HAPPENED

Not one thing. A whole messy pile of things:

• Anti-science ideology
• Political opportunism
• Institutional sabotage
• Student-loan restructuring
• Demotion of helping professions
• Rise of conspiratorial thinking
• Weakening of public health
• Stigmatizing neurodivergent people
• Exporting scientists abroad
• Normalizing pseudoscience
• Monetizing fear

Life Is Worth Losing

As George Carlin (comedian and social critic who saw this coming before the rest of us) said, “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show.”²¹ We are in the splash zone.

A FINAL THOUGHT

Anti-science movements always follow the same eight steps: Find something complex, blame something wrong, scare parents, attack experts, politicize health, rebrand cruelty as compassion, claim persecution, sell something.

Autism is not a tragedy. Human beings are complementarily varied. Vaccines are not villains. They work. That’s why you live this long. Science is not an opinion. Facts don’t care about your feelings. And public health is not optional.

If you found this valuable, infuriating, validating, or just slightly entertaining, leave a comment, tell me what you think, or visit my website at Boulder Psychiatry Associates to learn more. Your voice matters here.