Robert F. Kennedy, Jr gets an awful lot of things wrong about vaccines, but he especially gets a lot of things wrong about vaccines and autism.
“In 1965, my father toured Willowbrook on Staten Island and launched the national campaign to shut down these medieval warehouses for human beings. I worked for 200 hours in one of those nightmare facilities—Wassaic Home for the Retarded in Dutchess County, New York in 1968 and 1969. I worked around people suffering every kind of intellectual disability, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia and hydrocephaly, among many others. I never saw a case of autism. In fact, like most Americans, I knew nothing about the disease until I saw the extremely mild form depicted by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rainman in 1988.”
Is the Autism Epidemic Real?
That’s not surprising since it seems that he has learned much of what he knows about autism from the movie Rain Man…
What Robert F. Kennedy, Jr Gets Wrong About Vaccines and Autism
Before we get started, if you saw Rain Man, do you really believe that Raymond had an “extremely mild form” of autism? After all, he couldn’t take care of himself once he had grown up.
Anyway, Kennedy is wrong to use functioning labels in this way.
“Functioning labels are seen as the norm in some circles, but amongst large parts of the autistic community, they are seen as offensive, inaccurate and, ultimately, pointless. At their worst, they can be extremely damaging to an autistic child’s long-term prospects.”
Why functioning labels are damaging and irrelevant
Raymond was just autistic.
And are you surprised that even if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr really did spend time doing volunteer work at the Wassaic Home for the Retarded, that he would not have known if any of the patients had autism or another condition?
“Where are all the adults with classic autism? Where are the hand flapping, head banging, self-abusive, spinning, screaming, rocking, stimming, non-verbal and violent 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 year olds wearing autism helmets and diapers?”
Is the Autism Epidemic Real?
Or are you surprised that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr never took the time to learn that he was wrong?
“A Special Treatment Unit for disturbed mentally retarded adolescents was established in Cambridge State Hospital in the 60’s with remarkable therapeutic success. A similar unit for 20 autistic
A historical perspective and service report : Region VIII, American Association on Mental Deficiency.
children and adolescents was created at the Faribault State Hospital in 1969.”
Autistic children were being cared for at state mental hospitals.
That shouldn’t surprise anyone, as institutionalizing children with complex problems was the norm at the time. They typically weren’t cared for at home and they definitely didn’t go to school, as there weren’t any resources to help parents back then.
“The subject began taking off clothing unpredictably, tearing down curtains, upsetting furniture, pounding his head against the wall, and wandering 2 or 3 miles from home. The father’s ways of dealing with the boy’s disturbances ranged variously from severe punishment to isolation; he built a fenced-in cage to control the subject’s increasingly destructive behavior. Speech began to diminish at this time, and the child has been practically mute since the age of 4, when the parents sought medical care. At 7 years, the child was admitted to the LaRue D. Carter Memorial Hospital. During his stay there he remained nonverbal, except for rare occasions when he spoke one or two words.”
The development of performances in autistic children in an automatically controlled environment
They were hospitalized in state mental institutions.
“Unfortunately, of all the defenses, autism is the worst, short of actual suicide, and it is undoubtedly true that our institutions for the mentally retarded and our state institutions for the mentally ill, have an increasing number of individuals who were autistic children to begin with and who have not been able to respond to treatment. In my opinion, this is one of the most challenging problems in psychiatry…. This is because, unless they come out of their autism within the first few years, they are lost souls….”
Lauretta Bender, “The Autistic Child,” 1960
How did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. miss all of the autistic kids when he was doing his volunteer work? What do you think he was doing during his time at Wassaic?
“The relative therapeutic effectiveness of a large, long established state institution offering primarily custodial care; a large, modern state institution offering a therapeutic program of planning activities; and a small, psychoanalytically oriented day-care unit emphasizing the emotional relation between staff and children, was evaluated in terms of behavioral change over a year’s time.”
Changing autistic behavior. The effectiveness of three milieus
Fortunately, studies were being done, such as this 1967 study, Changing autistic behavior. The effectiveness of three milieus, which found that large institutions were not the most effective way to treat autistic kids.
And then, once these institutions were closed, schools had to change to offer more services to all of these kids who needed services.
It seemed to start with the Beadleston Act, a New Jersey state law enacted in 1954 that created funding for special education.
Later, the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act was amended and encouraged states to expanded their special education programs, which improved educational access for disabled students.
Next, in 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, children with disabilities were no longer excluded from school. And in 1990, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) included autism as a separate disability, making it a little easier to get services.
Add in a broadening of the criteria used to diagnose autism, diagnostic substitution, and better recognition among parents and health care providers and it is easy to explain much of the increase in kids getting diagnosed with autism over the years.
You should at least understand that the myth that there were no autistic kids in the 1950s, 60s and 70s is a lie.
In the 1930s and 40s too…
“In 1940, Dr. Helen Yarnell and I presented a paper at the American Psychiatric Association on 250 children under the age of six from our observation nursery at Bellevue Hospital. In this series we reported a few children with regressive phenomena which we could not account for… One group we called Heller’s Disease, because they seemed to develop normally to three or three and one-half years of age and then regressed without any known reason, such as an illness, or any neurological signs. The other group did not develop beyond the two-year level….”
Lauretta Bender, “The Autistic Child,” 1960
A report on regressive autism in the 1940s?
Can someone ask Kennedy what vaccines these kids got at age three or three and a half years to cause that?
If you are still not convinced, consider the number of groups that formed in the 1950s and 1960s to help support the parents of kids with autism and other developmental issues.
- League for Emotional Disturbed Children (1950)
- The National Association of Parents and Friends of Mentally Retarded Children (1950)
- National Society for Autistic Children (1965)
Why did they form?
Again, they formed because there were a lot of parents of autistic children who needed support!
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is Wrong About Autism
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has had to apologize for his past statements about autism, like when he described kids getting autism after vaccines as a Holocaust.
Hopefully he will one day apologize for describing autistic adults as being violent and “wearing autism helmets and diapers.”
Autistic adults that he doesn’t believe even exist.
More on History of Autism
- If It’s Vaccines, Then Why Are There Autistic Kids Who Are Unvaccinated?
- Competing Anti-Vaccine Autism Theories
- Explaining the Correlation of Autism After Vaccines
- Vaccines and Autism Redux
- How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Hurts Autistic Families
- Expert Statements on Vaccines and Autism
- Did the CDC Concede That There Are No Studies to Support Claim That Vaccines Given in First 6 Months of Life Do Not Cause Autism?
Is the Autism Epidemic Real?- Where are all the old people with autism? Most of them are dead. Can we stop denying their existence and start trying to make a difference?
- Functioning Labels Harm Autistic People
- Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already? (RFK, Jr. edition)
- Why functioning labels are damaging and irrelevant
- A historical perspective and service report : Region VIII, American Association on Mental Deficiency.
- Changing autistic behavior. The effectiveness of three milieus
- Lauretta Bender, “The Autistic Child,” 1960
- Robert Kennedy Jr apologises for Holocaust reference in autism speech
- What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong About Autism
- The Increase in Autism Diagnoses: Two Hypotheses
- The Alleged Autism Epidemic
- Another reminder that there is no autism epidemic
Last Updated on February 24, 2026
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