Paying taxes is not what makes us worthy of care and respectLast week Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held his first news briefing as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to address a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about rates of autism among children in the United States. He used the opportunity to spread falsehoods. Kennedy claimed that "studying genetic causes" of autism is a "dead end." That's because "we know it's environmental exposure. Genes do not cause epidemics," he continued. While there may be environmental factors that contribute to autism, my newsroom colleagues point out, "Scientists have known since the 1970s that genetics contribute to the development of the neurodevelopmental disorder." But that's not all Kennedy said about people with autism. Shortly after mentioning that a study calculated the "cost of treating autism in this country by 2035 will be a trillion dollars a year," Kennedy said, "Autism destroys families, but more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children." Later he added: 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. These comments are plainly untrue. Many people with autism have pushed back, saying they can write poems and play baseball. The popular reality TV show "Love on the Spectrum" proves that Kennedy was wrong about dating. After the backlash, Kennedy went on the Fox News program "Hannity" to clarify that his original remarks were meant to refer to children with "low-functioning autism," who are about a quarter of those diagnosed with the disorder. I don't think that clarification makes Kennedy's initial remarks generous or correct. To my ears, the grimmest part of what he said is not about the ability to play baseball; it's that he started this litany with paying taxes and having jobs. That implies that those who are not able to be gainfully employed are somehow lesser citizens — that they're destroyed. This way of speaking is further evidence that Kennedy is not fit to be in charge of the health of the country. To the medical historian Jacqueline Antonovich, Kennedy's comments reminded her of eugenic arguments from the early 20th century — the idea that people with disabilities are "tax burdens therefore they shouldn't exist." This was not a fringe argument a century ago, Antonovich, who is an associate professor at Muhlenberg College, told me. Almost everyone accepted "the basic premise" of eugenics, she said — which is that "we need to improve our genetic pool" through proper breeding, behavior and environment. Though there were different interpretations of what eugenics would mean in practice, most eugenic manifestoes of the day framed "feebleminded people" (an antiquated umbrella term that could be used to refer to all manners of intellectually disabled people) as a burden to society and their families. One such address to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1912 described the "feebleminded" as "never capable of self-support or managing their own affairs," adding that they cause "unutterable sorrow at home." The arguments we are having today about Kennedy's speech are similar to the early 20th-century disagreements over society's treatment of people with disabilities. In the book "The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of 'Defective' Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915," the historian Martin Pernick catalogs the warring newspaper coverage around the "Baby Bollinger" case. Baby Bollinger was a boy born to a Chicago couple in 1915. A doctor named Harry Haiselden saw that the baby had physical defects and did not treat the child, allowing him to die. Haiselden then went on a media campaign to promote what is called eugenic euthanasia — killing the "unfit." Haiselden had many prominent supporters, including Helen Keller, who wrote a defense of inaction toward the infant: "Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and the world … the world is already flooded with unhappy, unhealthy, mentally unsound persons that should never have been born." But he also had detractors, notably the social reformer Jane Addams, who cited the abilities of Keller and others to show how Haiselden was misguided. Pernick explains that Addams listed an "honor roll" of the "world's great defectives," including Keller, the mathematician Charles Steinmetz and the French diplomat Talleyrand. Explaining the arguments against Haiselden, Pernick points out that "defining some people as defective would be the first step in an ever-widening circle." If we start dividing "useful" or exceptional disabled people to distinguish their worth, we may risk leaving out the most vulnerable, who are just as worthy of our care, attention and, to extend Kennedy's point, tax dollars. That someone as morally and scientifically confused as Kennedy is in charge of guiding our children's health is a grave mistake. It's a mistake that could prove especially tragic because President Trump is threatening to move federal special education programs under Kennedy's purview if he can fully dismantle the Department of Education. The administration is also proposing massive cuts to H.H.S., so the disability supports that currently exist may be in danger. "The very, very, very hard-won gains that have been made since the 1960s" on disability rights "are being pulled back very quickly by folks like R.F.K. Jr.," Antonovich told me. We shouldn't sit by and let Kennedy take us back a century. End Notes
Thank you for being a subscriber Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Skip to content
