We’re Not Their Problem to Solve: What RFK, Jr. Gets Dangerously Wrong About Neurodivergence

This week marks the end of Autism Awareness Month. It also marks the end of Trump's second first 100 days in office, during which he appointed RFK Jr. as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr. recently held a press conference that was a public reminder of how some of the loudest voices in the U.S. government feel about people like us.

RFK Jr. gave his opinion about a report from the Centers for Disease Control that explored the prevalence and early identification of autism in a little over 8,500 4- and 8-year-old children from 16 U.S. States in 2022. I say he gave his opinion because he made statements that are plainly incorrect, dismissed the conclusions drawn by the actual researchers, referred to the consensus among experts that increased rates of autism are largely the result of better and broader diagnoses as "the epidemic deniers' narrative," and referred to autism as "a preventable disease" that "has to be" caused by "an environmental toxin."

Earlier in April, he reported to President Trump that his department "will know what has caused the autism epidemic" and will "be able to eliminate those exposures" in the next 5 months. Because what could be more important than eliminating autism if you see it the way he does:

“This is an individual tragedy as well. Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which are children. These are children who should not be, who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them were fully functional and regressed, because of some environmental exposure, into autism when they're 2 years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

Those words didn’t come from some random podcaster or a celebrity sharing their uninformed opinion on a talk show. It's not a fringe opinion floating around social media for the shock value. That was part of a scripted speech by the person appointed by the President of the United States, and confirmed by 52 of the 53 Republican senators, to oversee the U.S. Government's health and disability policy.

If that makes your stomach turn, you're not alone. And you're not overreacting, because when someone with a platform that big ~ and a last name that famous ~ says people like us are a problem that needs to be eradicated, it's not just offensive; it's harmful and it's dangerous. Historically, this cabinet role has gone to a highly qualified person with an understanding of medical ethics, disability rights, and public health. Instead, we have someone who is already using the platform to revive the ugliest parts of our history, the parts where neurodivergent people were treated like contagions to be isolated, or mistakes to fix.

What's even worse is that he's framing autistic people as victims, people who've been "injured," people who've been damaged, people he wants to help, but the thing about pity is that it always hides a power imbalance. It may sound softer than hatred or disgust, but the result is the same: someone else decides that a life is less valuable; someone else decides what should be done about that. And let's be really clear here: This is not new; it's just louder now.

Those of us who are neurodivergent have lived our whole lives under the weight of this narrative, even before we knew we were neurodivergent. We got the message loud and clear that our natural way of existing was unpleasant, inconvenient, a burden, and that our lives would be better ~ meaning, more acceptable to others ~ if we could just be less like ourselves. Most of us grew up with that story weaved into our family dynamics, our school experiences, our relationships with peers, and how we came to understand ourselves. Now that story is being amplified again, only this time by the person at the helm of the country's health department, who should know more and do better.

So today, I'm going to call out what's wrong with RFK Jr.'s stance, and what's missing from the conversation he's trying to dominate. Because we are not a plague, we are not destroyed, and we are not their problem to solve.

Let's start with the idea that autism and other neurodevelopmental differences are new, which is not a casual comment; it's the bedrock of RFK Jr.'s entire argument. He claims that when he was growing up, autism didn't exist, or at least it was so rare that no one had ever seen it. And he's not aware of any autistic people his age, so there must not be any. He offers this as proof that autism must be caused by something external ~ toxins, chemicals, ultrasound exposure, obese parents ~ something that "injured" babies and children, and made them autistic. RFK Jr. said whatever it was became a problem in 1989, causing this epidemic, and once it's identified, we'll be able to prevent autism.

First of all, how fucking dare he? And also, there were autistic people before 1989. There have always been autistic people, and people with ADHD, and people with different levels of intellectual functioning, and differences related to motor coordination, communication, and learning. We existed, but we were locked in institutions, or hidden at home, or shamed into silent compliance, quietly failed by every system, some of us neglected or abused into submission, or death.

This fantasy that neurodivergent people are a "modern problem" erases an entire history of brilliant, immeasurable contribution, and of banishment and violence. It pretends that increased diagnosis is an indication of some kind of societal decline, rather than a sign that more people are being supported enough to survive, to be known, and to demand that their existence be valued.

And RFK Jr. doesn't stop at autism. This is something he said with complete confidence during his Senate confirmation hearing: “Twenty years ago, there was no diabetes in China. Today fifty percent of the population is diabetic.” That is objectively and indisputably false. And it matters, because it shows us something critical: RFK Jr. is not afraid to say completely untrue things into a microphone. He's not invested in the truth. He's interested in narratives ~ stories he likes because they reinforce his belief that modern medicine, chemicals, and social change have poisoned us, and that his version of "natural" health can save us.

But narratives are dangerous when they're this disconnected from reality and this emotionally charged ~ especially coming from a person in his position, because they're not just inaccurate. They shape policy. They influence funding. They affect what services people get, how needs are seen, and who is allowed to define what's "healthy" or "normal" in the first place.

The irony here is impossible to ignore. The Kennedy family ~ his family ~ played a crucial role in deinstitutionalizing people with what were known as developmental disabilities and mental illness in the United States. His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, signed the Community Mental Health Act into law just 3 weeks before he was killed. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, RFK Jr.'s aunt, founded the Special Olympics, and spent her life advocating for dignity, inclusion and community-based support. They did those things in part because of their own sister, Rose Marie, another of RFK Jr.'s aunts, whose development and behavior were atypical, so she was educated separately from her eight brothers and sisters before being lobotomized in secret at the age of 23, then spending the rest of her life ~ another 63 years ~ living in an institution, largely without any contact with her parents or other family members.

Now we have a Kennedy at the helm of federal health policy who, just last year, was talking about his goal of building "hundreds of healing farms" where people, including children, can go "get off drugs," including medications prescribed for depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Here’s something he said in 2024:

“My Peace Corps program is going to be wellness farms ~ rehabilitation facilities that I'm gonna start in rural areas all over the country, where people, any American, can go for free. Any of them who is dependent on drugs, either legal drugs or illegal drugs ~ psychiatric drugs, which every black kid is now just standard put on ~ Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence ~ and those kids are gonna have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented.”

You can't pretend that's progress. It's almost laughable, but it's not funny. It's dystopian, because this isn't just some rich, white guy making outlandish comments about healthcare. He made those comments last year, when he was a presidential candidate, and now he's in charge of national policy, having just asserted that black kids who've been diagnosed with ADHD and emotion regulation problems are also violent, and should be removed from their families and communities and "re-parented."

Let's pause here because that's not just appalling; it's dangerous. It's a eugenics-adjacent worldview that portrays neurodivergence and emotional distress in children of color as a problem that can be solved by preventing them from interacting with their families and learning the value of hard work. As children. That was the solution he proposed to enact as the leader of the free world. Not to work with black communities, offer support and equal opportunities to black parents or, God-forbid, increase understanding and acceptance of neurodivergence. And listen, I am well aware that the results of trauma and chronic stress can disguise themselves as neurodivergence, and that people of color are inexcusably overpathologized in the U.S., but systemic racism, overtaxed health and educational systems, sustained poverty, and mass incarceration aren't remedied by sending children to work in farms.

No one can be re-parented in a positive way by a system that fundamentally disregards and devalues a child's identity, culture, and connections. That's subjugation all dressed up as caring, and it's what RFK Jr. is prescribing over and over again. He's trying to make it sound gentle, like a return to the simplicity of the good ol' days ~ just going back to home-cooked meals instead of McDonald's, as though that isn't the result of economic hardship, disenfranchisement, and capitalism without oversight. Underneath all of it is just another form of institutionalization, another way of separating acceptable from unacceptable, another version of, 'We'll decide who gets to stay in society and who needs to be removed, retrained, or erased.'

That's not new; it's just repackaged, and that's why it hits hard for people who've already internalized the belief that they're defective, that their differences are personal failures, that they're lucky anyone puts up with them. People like my clients. People like you. People like me. When someone like RFK Jr. steps up to a microphone to explain what's really wrong with us, and people clap, it's not just infuriating; it's traumatizing. It's dehumanizing. And it's deliberate. It's a calculated strategy to weaponize the majority against the minority by using a position of power to tell the world that there's no need to understand or include, to create access or protect accommodations, because the problem isn't the system; the problem is us. When he says more autistic people is a crisis warranting an urgent government response, he's saying we shouldn't exist. When he says people who are prescribed medication for ADHD learn they don't need it to function in their real lives if they spend enough time away from their real lives, he's saying our only issue is we just need to deal.

And the gaslighting intensifies when he says he wants to help, because even if we reject his opinion as bullshit on the outside, we can't help but question ourselves on the inside. We go back to wondering, even if only on a hard day, if maybe he's right. Maybe our pain and struggles are proof we're so unacceptable as we are that heaven and earth should be moved to prevent any other person from ever being destroyed the way we are. Maybe we are broken. Maybe the most important thing we can possibly do is try to be different than we are.

Those beliefs are exactly what keeps so many brilliant, thoughtful, creative, self-aware, neurodivergent adults trapped in cycles of self-rejection, self-doubt, shame, isolation, and burnout. Because we've been taught that if we struggle, it means something's wrong with us, not with the way the world is right now. It means we should keep trying to change ourselves, which conveniently distracts us from the truth that we need to change the world, and we can.

Before I continue, I wanna tell you about something that's been on my mind since RFK Jr.'s press conference. My grandmother, whom I adored, was Irish Catholic, like the Kennedys. I can see the den in the house my grandparents lived in when I was a child as though I'm there now. There was a dark shelving unit that seemed huge to me ~ and fancy, like nothing in my own house, partly because it only had a few things on it ~ important things my grandmother loved, that each deserved space to be the center of attention. One of those things was a small, bronze, sculpted bust of JFK that mesmerized me. My grandmother loved the Kennedys, especially JFK. My mother, too. He was talked about almost like a savior, or at least an idol ~ someone legendary, which is how he and his brother, Bobby, were presented to most of us who were born after they died by those who experienced their ascensions, and then assassinations.

Next week, my grandmother will have been gone 22 years, and that small, bronze, sculpted bust is in my mother's dining room, right down the street from me. Someday it will sit in my house. I know JFK was flawed, and that he and all the Kennedys have complicated histories, but the concept of his and his brother's lives, deaths, and work are iconic in my mind, golden, aspirational. They're symbols of service, leadership, and progress. So to watch a person with their name and family legacy, who looks so much like them, address the American public ~ with information that is patently false and delivered to suggest that people who are different are a problem to solve, that our lives are a sign of societal decay, that it's an urgent priority of the most powerful country in the world to find the cause of what we already know is an aspect of genetic variability that is not catastrophic and does not destroy families ~ it created for me a kind of existential confusion and despair. If something that was a reliable symbol of hope and justice is now a threat, what else is unsafe?

And that, I think, is the real grief underneath all this. It's not just about what RFK Jr. said. It's about what it represents. It's about how it feels to already be someone who's had to fight for your right to be who you are, only to have someone in power decide, and declare to others, not only that you shouldn't be who you are, but that no one else should be like you, that your mere existence is pathetic and obstructs happiness and prosperity for the "normal," deserving people who seem to be right there cheering in agreement with the blatantly false information that's given us proof that this is all true. It's wrong in every sense of the word. It's factually incorrect, it's unjust, and by most standards, it's immoral. But it's being allowed to happen. Again.

Two things are always missing from the arguments of anyone who opposes equal equitable inclusion of people from any minority or marginalized group: truth and decency. Not coincidentally, truth and decency have been at the heart of every human rights, civil rights, and social justice movement, including the Kennedys' deinstitutionalization movement in the late '50s and '60s, and the current neurodiversity movement.

The term "neurodiversity" was first used in 1998 in a brief article in the Technology section of The Atlantic magazine. The article, by the late Harvey Bloom, described a website called the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical, which satirically claimed the existence of "Neurotypical Syndrome," described as "a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity." Sadly, that website is no longer live, but the article brought to the mainstream the idea that atypical neurological functioning benefits technology ~ and may even be responsible for it. This article also gave us the term neurodiversity, in its title and this statement: "Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general."

In his 2014 essay, psychologist Nick Walker proposed the neurodiversity paradigm as a way of understanding differences in neurocognitive functioning based on three principles. First, that differences in neurocognitive functioning, or neurodiversity, are one of the countless types of human diversity that are, as he says, "a biological fact," which we know is absolutely, irrefutably true. Second, there is no single "normal," "healthy," or "right" kind of neurocognitive functioning, and any assertion that there is is culturally constructed, which means they're created, maintained, and changed by a culture, but have no universal or factual basis. Third, human diversity, including neurodiversity, produces social dynamics, which can be used to disempower people who are seen as abnormal or atypical, or can celebrate the ways differences expand and enrich societies. This is a historical fact.

And right now we're living in a part of history when the scale felt like it was really finally starting to tip towards celebrating neurodivergence, or at least recognizing the contributions of neurodivergent people, and then somebody handed RFK Jr. a microphone. And the scale feels like it's shifting towards social inequity for the neurodivergent ~ not based on truth, and decency is nowhere in sight. It's a strategic move that's been made before by dishonest, indecent people who think anytime anyone other than them gains anything, they somehow lose something. But life is not a zero sum game. In fact, it's more often the opposite because one person's gain usually benefits everyone around them in one way or another.

You and I know this. We know that being kind to someone spreads kindness forward. We know that accommodations and support that allows someone to reach their potential, or pursue their dreams, improves that person's life, which ripples out to the people who love them, teach them, work with them, love the music they produce, or the gadget they invented, and so on and so on. We know that during the moments and interactions when we are able to be ourselves without shame or fear, we're the best versions of ourselves ~ whatever that means for us individually. Maybe you're more productive, more joyful, more relaxed, more creative, funnier... And if we were able to be like that all the time, our relationships and connections would benefit, we'd have the clarity to engage in activities or work that really mattered to us, and we'd be more productive, maybe earn more money, which means we could donate more, or help people we love, or contribute to economies more than we can now. We know that life isn't pie. A piece for me doesn't mean one less piece for you ~ especially when it comes to truth, decency, and the acceptance, support, and understanding we give to and get from other people.

So what do we do about the people who see life as a single pie and want to take all the pieces for themselves? How do we tip the scales of the neurodiversity paradigm for ourselves and others? What do we do about RFK Jr. or, really, how we feel about RFK Jr.'s message, and him being given the platform to share his message publicly and enact policies with taxpayer money to advance it?

First, we can acknowledge our humanity and our value, and give ourselves the compassion, that are being taken or damaged. If you feel stressed, tense, weighted down, overwhelmed, tired, or unsafe, take care of yourself, because you deserve care. And remember to take care of your nervous system. That means reducing your exposure to things and people that activate you, and you don't owe anyone an apology for it. If someone offers you a coconut cookie and you're deathly allergic to coconut, you don't have to eat it, and you don't have to have "a healthy debate" with your asshole coworker about vaccinations causing autism. Taking care of your nervous system also means doing more of whatever centers you, which may be resting, drawing, baking, sitting in the sun, petting your dog, drinking cold lemonade, eating Kraft macaroni and cheese, dancing around your living room, or screaming into a pillow.

Second, remember that facts are not up for debate. You don't need to waste any of your precious energy sending fact-checking summaries to someone who keeps replying that what you've sent was falsified by liberal snowflakes. There's no need to argue with anyone who's demonstrated that they're committed to misunderstanding and dismissing what you say. I know many people think we need to find common ground, but I'd like to offer that "reaching across the aisle" to someone who thinks their opinion is more important than your health and safety is not your fucking responsibility. That you have value and deserve respect are also facts that you don't need to prove or justify. Remind yourself of that, and remove yourself from anything and anyone who challenges it.

Third, talk to people who do listen. Tell supportive people in your life you need a little extra support and why. Maybe they're feeling it, too, and hearing it from you will be like a light in the fog for them. For others, your perspective may be one they hadn't considered, or even been aware of, until you gave it. That doesn't mean you need to send an email to everyone in your company, make an announcement at an extended family event, or make a series of social media posts you don't really want to make. You are not obligated to be the voice of any movement, but the voices of individual people are what have advanced every movement, because the constructs around all types of diversity are culturally created, and you're part of a culture. We all are. And when we express our opinions and beliefs, they make our culture what it is. Even if telling someone about your neurodivergence, or something you know about neurodivergence in general, only seems to broaden the perspective of one person a little bit, and it feels like it can't possibly matter, it does. Even if we were a tiny minority, it would matter, but here's another fact that you probably already know:

The majority of people want to live in societies built on the principles of truth and decency, they want leaders who are truthful and decent, and they do believe that people's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable. If all of us use our voices in whatever ways we're able, we'll know, and show, we're not alone. We can be iconic, golden, aspirational. Each of us can be symbols of service, leadership, and progress in our own ways, in our own time, with however much screaming into a pillow or Kraft macaroni and cheese we need, because we are not the problem. An autistic child who never pays taxes or writes a poem is not the problem. A black kid who takes Adderall is not the problem. The problem is with people having the authority to enact a solution for something they know nothing about, including whether or not it needs solving at all, which also lets them deflect attention from other things that really do need solving but they see as something that will take a piece of the one pie away from them. But that's another topic for another time, so I'll wrap up today with this reminder from RFK Jr.'s father, Bobby Kennedy.

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current, which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Let's keep sending out ripples of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring. Until next time, remember: You don't have to change yourself to deserve happiness or success. Being who you are isn't the problem; it's the solution. I'm with you, and I'm rooting for you ~ exactly as you are.