Last year, a familiar myth was repackaged as breaking news: “tragedy,” “disease.” Teenagers scrolling their feeds and parents watching their television heard a senior federal health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., declare that, “Autism destroys families” — claims that ignored established science and characterized neurodiversity as a disease that needs to be “eradicated.”
“[People with autism] 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 on a date,” the US Health and Human Services chief said in the speech.
His generalized “epidemic” rhetoric rippled through the airwaves, but Autism is a spectrum, and even though some people do require lifelong support, needing support doesn’t erase humanity, and no diagnosis justifies declaring an entire population incapable of work, art, love or contribution. Neurodiversity is not a contagion. They’re neurotypes that comprise near 20% of the population. And again, their existence was framed as an urgent medical crisis.
Neurodiversity is not a contagion. They’re neurotypes that comprise near 20% of the population. And again, their existence was framed as an urgent medical crisis.
“Wanting to cure autism implies that our way of being is wrong, and it isn’t,” Love on the Spectrum star Dani Bowman told NewsNation. “We need to be supported. But the answer isn’t erasing autism, it’s building a more inclusive world for all of us.”
The current and neurotypical structure of the world — the nine-to-five corporate composition, social and professional expectations, even beauty standards — already perpetuates internalized ableism by compelling people across the neurodevelopmental spectrum to mask their authentic selves to avoid stigma. When federal platforms fear-monger neurodiversity by promoting debunked theories, it perpetuates the idea that masking autistic traits — including the many joyful behaviors — in favor of socially acceptable ones, is the ultimate goal. Such language inherently neglects the beauty of neurodiverse identities and dilutes the individuality and humanity of those it claims to help.
Regardless of intent, harm matters. Federal language shapes policy, perception of self and others. It’s a powerful tool with the ability to decide elections and social movements. And as history has proven time and time again, in the wrong hands, powerful tools can be made into dangerous weapons. Recklessly defining autism with the same language used for global pandemics has overlapping consequences with language that dehumanizes people with autism.
“When I was younger, other students and even some adults did not understand autism or similar neurological conditions,” Love on the Spectrum star James B. Jones said in a video he posted. “So many people insulted or even ignored me.”
Like Jones remembers, autism hasn’t been defined the same way over time.
- In the early 1940s, psychiatrist Leo Kanner coined the “refrigerator mother” theory, incorrectly blaming “cold” parenting for causing autism, which according to University of Toronto science historian Marga Vicedo, was code for “an intellectual mother who had other interests besides raising her children.” That theory was largely discredited by the late 1970s, but much like the vaccination-autism myth, what’s debunked in journals often lives on in public discourse.
- When the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) finally classified autism in the late 1960s, it was considered a symptom of childhood schizophrenia.
- It wasn’t until the 1980 revision that “Infantile Autism” became a separate diagnosis.
- Then, a six-year effort involving over 1,000 individuals and numerous professional organizations resulted in a comprehensive overhaul of the manual in 2000, grouping Asperger’s Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder with Autism — a faction dropped in 2013, when the DSM-5 defined autism as both a spectrum and an umbrella diagnosis.
The 6th edition is expected to release in the next few years, and given the abundant clinical breakthroughs since 2013, its neurodiversity section is highly anticipated, with ongoing debates whether to include one at all.
As criteria expanded to include more experiences, more experiences were accounted for.
At present, the DSM frames divergent neurotypes through a different lens, as if overstimulating classrooms and uninspiring offices are the standard of health, so those who prefer quiet spaces or whose brains simply won’t cooperate with arbitrary work are cast as dysfunctional rather than differently wired. That manual, perhaps a functional clinical tool, is not a cultural definition of human worth.
But these books aren’t the only forces shaping how autism is understood.
Months after RFK Jr.’s initial comments, the White House doubled down, framing acetaminophen — naming Tylenol — as a plausible cause of neurodiversity, again framing neurological differences as a negative consequence of parenting choices. In January, however, a Meta-Analysis settled the debate, finding that, across autism, ADHD and intellectual disability, there was no clinically meaningful increase in risk.
Neurodiversity is not an outbreak like measles.
When brain diversity is framed as a side-effect of a household medication, the implication is that it’s a preventable tragedy, rather than a neurotype that’s always existed.
“Autisic people are not broken,” Shelley Wolfe from Love on the Spectrum said. “They just think differently.”
Neurodiversity is not an outbreak like measles. It’s a way of being, and by embracing and supporting the full range of human cognition, people with neurodivergent minds find great love stories, thrive at work, successfully pay taxes and don’t just write poetry — they write “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Kindred” and “A Christmas Carol” … even if their methods look a little different.
