What Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Doesn’t Understand About Autism

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

When Donald Trump made an alliance with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he brought vaccine skepticism and the debunked link between vaccines and autism into the center of the MAGA agenda. Though the scientific establishment has long disproven that link, as many as one in four Americans today believe that vaccines may cause autism. In April, Kennedy, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shocked the medical community and families across the country when he said that his agency would uncover the cause of autism—the subject of decades of research—once and for all. That news came even as Kennedy oversees drastic cuts to critical medical research of all kinds. Dr. Alycia Halladay, the chief science officer of the Autism Science Foundation, talks with David Remnick about the initiative, and the problems with focussing on environmental factors such as vaccines or mold. She also discusses why debunked claims and misinformation have such a powerful hold on parents. “You will do anything to help your child, so if it means a bleach enema”—referring to one extremely poisonous and falsely touted treatment—“and you think that’s going to help them, you’ll do it. It’s not because these people don’t love their children. It’s because they’re desperate.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick. Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:10.7	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:18.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:22.2	When you hear 10,000, it was 1 in 10,000 and now it's 1 in 31 for autism.
0:29.1	I think that's just a terrible thing. It has to be something on the outside. It has to be
0:33.7	artificially induced. It has to be.
0:36.5	Donald Trump's operating procedure involves dismissing expertise of all kinds, economic,
0:42.3	diplomatic, scientific, you name it.
0:44.7	But when he made an alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he brought one particular conspiracy
0:50.0	theory into the center of the MAGA agenda, the idea that vaccines are responsible for the rise
0:56.2	in autism rates. Kennedy, who's now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has long
1:01.7	advanced that notion. Of course, it's been thoroughly discredited by scientists, but the discrediting
1:08.0	has only fueled some people's belief that it must be true.
1:12.7	According to one survey, as many as one in four Americans today believe that vaccines are linked to autism.
1:20.4	Kennedy is not a doctor. He's not a scientist. But as the nation's senior figure in public health,
1:26.5	he shocked the medical community and families
1:28.6	across the country recently when he said that his agency would soon reveal the cause of autism
1:34.9	once and for all.
1:36.4	We've launched a massive testing and research effort that's going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world.
1:47.2	By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and will be able to eliminate those
1:53.3	exposures.
1:54.7	Now, this is supposed to happen in the fall, just months from now.
	...

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