Not Frightening At All! RFK Jr. Is Compiling Registry of People With Autism

This is alarmingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s notorious registry of people with disabilities who were deemed “unworthy of life.”

By Kylie Cheung | April 22, 2025 | 4:17pm

Photo: Getty Images Latest Politics

Not Frightening At All! RFK Jr. Is Compiling Registry of People With Autism

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is escalating his disturbing, ableist crusade to dehumanize people with autism. On Monday, the National Institutes of Health’s top official said the agency is in the process of amassing private medical records from different federal and commercial databases to hand over to Kennedy’s new efforts to study autism, according to CBS News. This includes launching a new, so-called “disease registry” to “track Americans with autism.”

Last week, Kennedy—who’s previously used debunked pseudoscience to claim vaccines cause autism—gave a batshit speech stating, “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.” He further told reporters that, with his new study, he aims to “identify precisely what the environmental toxins are that are causing [autism].” Kennedy pledged to have answers to these questions that no one asked for by September.

Most Popular

Advocates and health experts have since asserted that Kennedy is stigmatizing the disorder by falsely describing it as a “preventable disease.”

According to NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, between 10 and 20 outside groups of researchers will receive grant funding from the agency, as well as access to private medical records from a “broad range” of people. Meanwhile, research into cancer, HIV, diabetes, infertility, maternal mortality, abortion access, and more, as well as family planning and programs to prevent intimate partner violence and the spread of viral diseases, are all being arbitrarily gutted. Bhattacharya said the NIH was also looking at the potential to get more access to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The study also wants to look at data from smartwatches, claims from private insurers, medication records from pharmacy chains, and records from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service.

All of this, to state the obvious, is glaringly and alarmingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s notorious registry of people with disabilities who were deemed “unworthy of life.” Those policies were the culmination of years of rising ableism amid the height of the eugenics movement, which, similar to Kennedy, aimed to wipe out and “prevent” the birth of “unfit” populations, targeting people by race, class, and physical and mental health conditions.

“Autistic and other disabled people belong in our society. To claim otherwise, and to speak as though our existence is some kind of calamity that must be eliminated, is a form of eugenics—the dangerous ideology based on the idea that ‘some people are born to be a burden on the rest,’” the Autistic Self Advocacy Network said in a statement earlier this month. “Such ideas led directly to disabled people being incarcerated and forcibly sterilized in this country, and murdered in Nazi Germany, and it is profoundly disturbing to see this administration bringing back yet another hallmark of authoritarian policy.”

Kennedy has long been accused of effectively promoting eugenics. His disdain for vaccines, his critics argue, is rooted in an anti-science and dehumanizing belief in “survival of the fittest.” His extreme anti-vaccine advocacy led to a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people—mostly children. As recently as July, he called for people with ADHD and everyday Americans who he claims are “addicted” to common medications like antidepressants to be sent to “wellness farms” to be “re-parented,” which… sounds a lot like state-run camps for “unfit” populations.

As for Kennedy’s insane pledge to uncover the supposed root cause of autism by September of this calendar year, don’t hold your breath. One top vaccine scientist, Dr. Peter Marks, told CBS News last week, “If you just ask me, as a scientist, is it possible to get the answer that quickly? I don’t see any possible way.”

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.