By Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for comments he made Wednesday about autism.
In a Wednesday press conference on a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Kennedy said that “autism destroys families.”
“More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which [is] our children,” he added. “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,” Kennedy continued. “Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children.”
Frost criticized Kennedy in a post late Wednesday on the social platform X that featured a clip with the Health and Human Service secretary’s comments.
“This is disrespectful and a flat out lie that further stigmatizes autism. It’s not a virus or a disease – it’s a neurological condition with a wide spectrum. Many Americans with autism work, pay taxes, and are living happy and healthy lives,” Frost said in his post.
Kennedy also suggested despite a lack of evidence Wednesday that “environmental toxins” in food and medicine were behind rising autism rates.
“One of the things I think we need to move away from today is this ideology that the autism prevalence increases, the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said.
The Health and Human Services secretary also said there is not a genetic connection to autism, but the CDC’s research in the past has found otherwise.
The Hill has reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.