Local family finds RFK Jr.'s autism comments offensive

Amy and Ben Sanders hardly know where to begin when assessing their frustration and outrage over Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent pronouncements about autism.

Parents of profoundly autistic twin daughters Amelia and Charlotte, they say Kennedy has compounded the difficulties for autistic children and their families in innumerable ways, the result of the Secretary of Health’s apparent suggestion in April that autistic people could play no meaningful role in society and, more recently, that Tylenol might be a culprit in autism.

For the Sanderses, those new difficulties include greater stigma against people with autism and their families, a greater reluctance of people affected by autism to seek out help or diagnoses, confusion and uncertainty among friends and family who don’t know what to believe and ever greater polarization among laypeople around a subject for which scientists share an overwhelming consensus.

“But I’m more concerned about some of the inflammatory statements making them out to be subhuman,” Amy says. “Or lacking relevance or being a burden to society and, you know, I'm a taxpayer, right? I can understand the tax burden and people's frustration, just in general, but I'm not sure why we're picking on Autistics. I have concerns about the implications for their safety and about things like eugenics, and it just really brings up a sick feeling that is causing lots of angst.”

Kennedy’s exact quote from April says, "Autism destroys families and more importantly it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. 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 …”

All of that comes on top of Kennedy’s unsupported assertions that autism is triggered by vaccines and environmental factors, this despite nearly all scientific and public health organizations, including the Autism Society of America, declaring such ideas debunked by decades of research.

Earlier this month Kennedy, who has gotten rid of career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and replaced them with people at the forefront of the movement to link autism with environment and vaccines, announced a new initiative to focus on the potential connection of autism with the use of Tylenol by pregnant women. No scientific studies support the claim.

‘What are the sources?’

“When I was pregnant, I was very careful not to take anything unless I absolutely needed to,” Amy says. “I did take Tylenol maybe twice with my first child because I had a really bad back.”

That child, Daniel, is the only one of her three children who didn’t develop autism.

Amy and Ben say their daughters’ doctor – the only pediatric neurologist in the Fox Cities – calls the whole Tylenol thing “baloney” and “insane.” That doctor, Terence Edgar, ran the prestigious Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is one of the few national centers that combines both an Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center and a University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities.

“He's just extremely well versed in pediatric neurology and all of the other neurological disabilities that exist,” Amy says. “He's an expert. And he said, if it were related to Tylenol, we would have figured that out by now. 

“So I want to know, who is supporting this theory? Like, what are the sources that we're citing? I can't get my hands on it, so I don't think it exists.”

Amy goes on to say that Kennedy’s Tylenol link can’t help but put a greater onus on mothers, much as the unfounded vaccine link has. A significant percentage of parents of children with autism claim they already carry a sense of guilt.

“I do think probably unconsciously to most people in the population, they now look and think that it's so much more front of mind for people,” she says. “I don't think people are savvy enough (to know what to think).

"Like, even my dad and my mom said, so did you take Tylenol while you were pregnant? Like, people just don't know that it's BS. People say, this is what I’m hearing.”

‘There’s this sliver of hope’

Amy and Ben’s further concern is that parents are potentially going to become vaccine-hesitant given the continual push to link vaccines to autism. That creates, she insists, further public health issues. As far as Tylenol and the collateral damage that might do, Amy says it runs the risk of driving autism into the shadows and parents into hiding.

“I’m concerned about people just not getting diagnosed,” she says. “Like it’s not impossible to think about our kids being taken away or being forced into institutions. I think people are going to be more inclined to hide them away. And we’re going to be a closeted community of the disabled population.”

The Sanderses also maintain that so much focus on unsubstantiated links to autism (most have been consistently refuted) takes energy and resources away from where it belongs: greater research into real causes and prevention for families in the future. Such is her and Ben’s sense of despair over the lack of progress in autism research that they allowed themselves a glimmer of hope over RFK, Jr.’s promise in August that the administration would soon be announcing real progress. This, despite her strong doubts about the Secretary of Health’s credibility.

“And for like a brief moment, I had hope we'd actually get some real research,” she says.

"There's a sliver of me that's going to hold out hope maybe someone is actually putting their money out there with this. Maybe someone is trying to figure it out. Maybe someone is trying to develop some stem cell research. Maybe someone is trying to uncover the cause so other kids don't develop autism. There’s this sliver of hope that I think some of us had that maybe we get more support.

“But instead, it just further divided and polarized. We all knew that, once they were starting to leak the Tylenol business, we all knew that that's what they were going to say. And sure enough, that's what they came out with.”

Local family finds RFK Jr.'s autism comments disgusting © 2025 by Kelly Fenton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0