Autism Is Not An Illness

It’s apparent to everyone that many of the most consequential positions in the current US administration have not been filled by professionals with relevant expertise (or merit, as they like to call it), but by wealthy individuals with clear ideological agendas.

It didn’t happen by accident, of course. It is by design. These appointments serve to entrench the authoritarian vision of those in power, promoting policies that erode civil liberties, dismantle public institutions, and reshape society along lines that echo historical fascist frameworks. These strategic placements are intended to impose and enforce policies with drastically life-altering effects on American individuals and society as a whole.

Take Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appointed by Trump as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is a political figure and environmental lawyer who has publicly acknowledged suffering from a parasitic brain infection. (That’s not satire — it’s been reported and documented.) A committed anti-vaxxer and notorious spreader of medical misinformation, Kennedy has long been a source of conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific health claims.

Incompetence in charge

Trump’s decision to appoint him to oversee one of the most vital departments of government is no accident. It’s a deliberate move in line with an authoritarian strategy: placing ideologues, not experts, in charge. Even if Kennedy were to do nothing in his position, the sheer negligence of action would still be devastating in its consequences.

In his role as HHS Secretary, Kennedy oversees major federal health agencies, including the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His appointment has been controversial due to his long-standing promotion of vaccine misinformation and scepticism towards evidence-based public health measures.

For instance, during his first press conference as HHS Secretary, Kennedy made inflammatory and inaccurate remarks about autism, suggesting that children with autism “will never pay taxes, hold a job, go on a date” — a statement that triggered widespread condemnation from medical professionals and autism advocates.

Of course, an unqualified man doesn’t suddenly become informed and selfless simply by being handed a title. His ego and twisted convictions about health and life will never cease to direct his actions.

Some of those convictions point unmistakably towards ableism and eugenics.

A dangerous path

If eugenics sounds disturbingly familiar, it may be because we know from history that the Nazis used it to justify the forced sterilisation and killing of thousands of disabled people. Sterilisations were also commonplace in the US during that time (until the 1960s).

It was Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of President John F. Kennedy (JFK) who was lobotomised. Rosemary Kennedy was just 23 when her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., authorised a lobotomy to address what he perceived as mood swings and behavioural issues. The procedure left her permanently incapacitated, mentally and physically. She spent the rest of her life in an institution, hidden from public view. The family never spoke publicly about it for decades.

Ableism — the belief (often unconscious) that being able-bodied or neurotypical is the norm, and that anyone outside of that is somehow “less than” — remains deeply embedded in many aspects of society. When language centres the “impairment” of a person, it reinforces these cultural misinterpretations and dehumanising assumptions.

Kennedy’s portrayal of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is not only misleading and ill-advised — it’s actively harmful. It reinforces ableist tendencies within social structures and contributes to the fear and stigma that persist across all sectors of society.

From a medical perspective, autism is not considered an illness. It is not a disease that can be caught, treated, or cured. ASD forms part of the broader understanding of neurodivergence, a field that has developed over recent decades through more rigorous research and improved awareness.

There is now growing recognition that many previously labelled ‘disorders’ — involving people who think and behave differently — exist on a spectrum and should not be viewed as illnesses in varying degrees of severity. This spectrum includes autism, as well as ADHD and dyslexia, among others.

Normalising eugenics

This underscores the brutal consequences of ableist thinking wrapped in the guise of medical or social “correction”. And for someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (from the very lineage that had his great-aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, lobotomised) to now speak of “people who got autism” as if it were a disease, in dehumanising terms, is not only ignorant, it’s arrogant and wilfully hurtful.

In addition to his previously debunked claims that vaccines (such as the COVID-19 vaccines) “cause” autism, Kennedy now falsely asserts that environmental factors may be the reason autism exists. This framing of autism as an illness within society bears a disturbing resemblance to Nazi Germany in 1939, when eugenics was widely accepted and dehumanisation had become normalised in German public life.

It isn’t too hard to continue the reasoning line and see where this is going. The Trump administration has shown no moral or ethical restraint when it comes to rounding up people and deporting them to foreign detention prisons (de facto concentration camps). It is clearly driven by ethnic cleansing, targeting individuals who have a legal right to be in the United States, including American citizens, with skin colour and heritage serving as the unspoken criteria behind these actions.

Incorrectly portraying ASD as an “illness”, making it socially acceptable to think of it as a disease, and identifying a “cause” for this projected “illness”, is a precursor to what comes next: the rounding up of disabled people and the reintroduction of sterilisation, or other mechanisms designed to weed out what those in power deem to be undesirable traits within the population.

We need to stand up against this dangerous course. Not only Americans, but everyone with a conscience and a common education. This isn’t just fringe wellness influencers advocating false COVID-19 vaccine claims anymore. This has the potential to dismantle and erase the ethical and moral understanding we have of ourselves, and to derail our ongoing efforts to deepen our understanding of the variety and diversity of humankind.

Why we talk of a spectrum

Autism Spectrum Disorder is not an illness but a reflection of the diversity of human minds. It’s a different way of experiencing the world. Many autistic individuals process information with heightened sensitivity. Autistic individuals often display unique strengths, such as intense focus, attention to detail, creative thinking, and the ability to perceive patterns others might miss. These traits are not symptoms of illness, but expressions of neurodiversity.

These are not symptoms to be “cured”, but qualities to be recognised, valued, and supported.

The idea that difference is a weakness is rooted in outdated thinking. Viewing neurodiversity through a strengths-based lens allows us to understand these differences as part of the full range of human experience. It reminds us that variation in how we think, feel, and interact is as fundamental to humanity as any physical trait. Where some see struggle, others see extraordinary creativity, analytical depth, or emotional honesty. To frame autism as something broken is a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be human.

RFK Jr. knows amazingly little about autism

For someone who’s been talking about it for so long, the HHS secretary got many basic facts wrong.

Mother JonesAnna Merlan