How inaccurate comments about autism reflect dangerous ideas about eugenics

Robert F. Kennedy Junior, Minister of Health and Social Services of the United States, recently gave a press conference during which he once again made non -existent and inaccurate comments on autism.

His statements have caused a lounge, especially among people in the spectrum or have other disabilities.

The press conference concerned a new report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on autism.

Among other things, Kennedy Junior said:

« Autism destroys families and, most importantly, destroys our largest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not suffer like that … And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They will never have a job. They will never play baseball. They will never write a poem. They will never make an appointment. Many of them will never use a toilet without help. « 

Earlier, during a cabinet meeting, he promised to find the cause of autism until September.

Rfk jr. On Autism: « If the Epidemic is an artifact of better diagnostic criteria or better recognition, then why are you not seeing it in older people? Why is this only happening in young people? » pic.twitter.com/t1kwebzwwh

– The post millennial (@tpostmillennial) April 16, 2025

These comments raised deep concern, as according to The Conversation article are reminiscent of dangerous ideas that were supported during the eugenics movement.

The roots of eugenics

Eugenics is the belief that society can and should be « improved » through selective reproduction.

It is based on a pseudo -scientific classification of people in a racist hierarchy, which judges non -white and people with disabilities as the least desirable.

At the height of the movement, at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenics was promoted by scientists, doctors, politicians and clergymen, persons with prestige who encouraged the « most appropriate » to reproduce, while recommending the departure from the society of people with « unwanted ».

Part of achieving this goal was to sterilize or enclose people with disabilities.

Eugenics was applied to its most extreme form in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

Six million Jews and millions of other people, including about 250,000 people with disabilities, were killed.

The official condemnation of Nazi acts in the form of Nuremberg has sparked a popular reaction to these horrific Nazi crimes after World War II, resulting in the global rejection of eugenic ideas and the gradual abolition of practices such as sterilization and sterilization.

‘Eugenic logic’ is evident in many places

However, Kennedy Junior’s comments remind us that eugenic ideas are still alive and real, among other things, but not exclusively, in the field of radical right and technologically assisted ideas for returning to the values ​​of the « strong man ».

Eugenic ideas exist in the form of what the bioethicist and humanities scholar Romari Garland-Thomsson calls « eugenic logic ».

This is the persistent belief that the elimination of disability and disabled people is a desired and reasonable goal.

The power of eugenic logic surrounds us.

Harthaim Castle, a euthanasia center where people with physical and mental disabilities were killed with gases and deadly injections. Hartheim, Austria, date uncertain.

It shapes the immigration policy that punishes disability.

It means that reproductive technologies and medical practices are used to eliminate certain situations that cause disabilities.

For example, recently, Quebec’s doctors college has called for legislation to allow for the euthanasia of severe disabled infants.

This also confirms the views of the popular but controversial philosopher Peter Singer, who argues that babies with disabilities are deprived of personality characteristics and can therefore be killed.

Connecting human value to ‘productivity’

Rfk Jr.’s eugenic ideas. Today they are very popular. They are politically in line with neoliberalism, creating a form of anti-discriminatory discrimination that he considers every citizen as « a capable business being ».

Neoliberal racism links human value to one’s ability to work, with what Dan Gudi and Rebecca Lothom scholars call « the ability to contribute productively … limited and cut off by others, capable, flexible and subordinate. »

People with autism and other people who cannot serve society in this way threaten neoliberal order and capitalism.

This is how they are considered harmful to society.

The social model of disability

Undeniable observations on autism by people who hold official positions in the leadership of the health sector threaten to destroy decades of efforts that have led to significant benefits for people with disabilities.

In the 1970s and 1980s it developed what the activists and scholars of disability call a social model of disability.

This shifted the perception of disability from the « problem » of individuals’ physical/mental states.

Disability is regarded as a mismatch between disability and obstacles facing the (social) environment.

This significant change in a way of understanding disability rejected the notion that disability is a personal responsibility or defect. For the first time, environmental, economic and behavioral obstacles were paid attention.

This has allowed people with disabilities to have unprecedented access to education and other areas of society.

Progress, although achieved, remains vulnerable.