Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent comments on autism sufferers have caused frustration from some who have the disorder, including “Love on the Spectrum” star Dani Bowman.
Bowman said she was “disgusted” with Kennedy’s remarks in a press conference Wednesday, when he said, “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 on a date.”
“Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we need to recognize that we are doing this to our children,” the HHS chief added.
Bowman responded, telling NewsNation that “autistic people have the same hopes, dreams and yes, the same awkward dating moments as anyone else.”
“To generalize and say none of us can work, date or contribute to society, is completely false. I have a job. I do pay taxes. I’ve dated I have a master’s degree,” she added.
Kennedy says he was talking about the 25 percent of Autistic people who are nonverbal, people like Eric Nurminen, who also has Down syndrome.
“Eric’s situation is much different than ‘Love on the Spectrum,’ when RFK is really speaking about people like my brother,” Owen Nurminen said of his brother in an interview with NewsNation.
Tiffany Nurminen, the mother of Eric, spoke to a vastly different reality from Bowman’s life.
“If you’re a single parent and you’re struggling because your kids kind of beat [you] up every day and they’re wearing diapers when they’re 20, you kind of run out of gas over the years, and it gets tough,” Tiffany said.
RFK Jr. vows to investigate cause of autism
Kennedy is vowing to get to the bottom of this, deploying 15 teams to find the potential exposures — including mold, food additives, pesticides and vaccines.
He says that he hopes to have some answers for the reason for this increase in autism cases by September.
Bowman, however, believes this is an inherently wrong approach.
“Wanting to cure autism implies that our way of being is wrong and it isn’t,” she said. “We don’t need to be fixed. We need to be supported.”
“But the answer isn’t erasing autism, it’s building a more inclusive world for all of us,” Bowman added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report earlier this month demonstrating that autism cases have increased in the United States to 1 in 31.
