Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.
That’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A longtime environmental advocate turned fringe conspiracy theorist,
and now, a democratic candidate for the President of the United States.
You have a family of political know-how, but have you committed yourself
to a political future?
I don’t think so.
I think I’ll probably do some form of public service.
RFK Jr. comes from one of America's most renowned families,
second only to the Kardashians:
the Kennedys.
His uncle was none other than JFK, the 35th and youngest U.S. president.
His father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr.,
served as the attorney general in JFK’s
cabinet and later became a senator representing New York.
His other uncle was Ted Kennedy, a longtime Massachusetts senator.
When RFK Jr. was 9,
the world stopped when his uncle JFK
was tragically assassinated in Dealey Plaza.
A dark page on the annals of America
has been written to the crack of an assassin's bullet.
Our nation mourns.
The world grieves.
Five years later, at the age of 14, he endured another tragedy
when his father faced the same fate in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel.
Growing up in the shadow of deaths that shook the world, RFK Jr.
was kicked out of boarding schools for using drugs,
but he eventually went on to Harvard.
His 4 years there came to a close after his graduation in 1976,
but his drug problem persisted.
By 1983, when RFK Jr. was 28,
he had developed a heroin addiction.
At that time, I was re-evaluating my life,
and I just decided to do what I wanted to do, which was—had always been the environment.
After entering a treatment program, he turned his life around and dove deep
into environmental activism, litigating on behalf of a
Hudson River restoration project.
I found about 24 different polluters.
I photographed them, I sat by pipes all night long.
I’d bring a lawn chair and sit next to a pipe waiting for it to discharge.
I took samples, I got analysis done, and I then brought lawsuits
on behalf of the fishermen against all 24 polluters.
RFK Jr. spent much of his life as an attorney going to bat for the environment
and holding those destroying it accountable.
He opened his own environmental firm in 2000 and was part of the team
that secured a $670 million settlement from DuPont,
which was allegedly dumping C8-based Teflon in landfills, resulting
in the contamination of drinking water and impacting around 3,000 nearby residents.
DuPont has denied any wrongdoing.
In 1999, he was named one of
Time magazine’s 'Heroes [for] the Planet' for his environmental work.
His environmental advocacy took him around the world, where he fought
for marginalized communities affected by pollution and criticized
the Bush administration’s disastrous war on the climate back home—a topic
he wrote a whole book on, titled
he wrote a whole book on, titled ‘Crimes Against Nature: How George W.
Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking
Our Democracy’ You can’t talk honestly about the environment
You can’t talk honestly about the environment
in any context today without speaking critically about this president.
This is the worst environmental president that we’ve had in American history.
It was around the Bush presidency that RFK Jr.’s voice began to deteriorate.
He was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia,
Around the same time he developed this disorder, he began to parlay
his environmental activism into anti-vaccine activism.
While much of the first half of his life was dedicated to combating eco-terrorism,
the second half would shape up to look something
like a really long episode of ‘InfoWars.’ In the early 2000s, RFK
In the early 2000s, RFK Jr. took a turn down
conspiracy lane. And in 2005, he wrote an article
for Salon and Rolling Stone that linked thimerosal in childhood vaccines to autism.
Both sides ended up pulling the 4,700 word essay in 2011,
which Scientific American noted
RFK Jr. would use this site scrubbing as evidence that Big Pharma successfully lobbied
the media to brush this allegation under the rug.
In reality, there was consistent backlash to the piece since its publication,
and the teams at Salon and Rolling Stone failed to thoroughly fact-check the piece,
which was riddled with misquotations and factual inaccuracies.
But it was too late.
RFK Jr. had convinced many, and an anti-vax movement was born.
For the next 2 decades, he would repeat his bunk theories to the masses.
So, let’s go through some of them one by one.
Over the years, RFK Jr.
has repeatedly claimed that vaccines don’t go through placebo-controlled trials.
We oughta subject them to at least the kind of rigorous
placebo-controlled trials that are mandated for every other medicine.
We should have the same kind of testing—placebo-controlled trials—that
we have for every other medication.
Good thing we do.
Every vaccine, before it hits the market, is subject to placebo-controlled trials.
The polio vaccine trials in 1954 were famously randomized
and placebo-controlled,
a process that has been ongoing all the way up to the COVID-19 vaccine,
where, again, we saw placebo-controlled, double-blind, and randomized trials.
But RFK Jr.’s true claim to fame might be
his decades-long assertion that vaccines cause autism.
Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.
Something happened.
The CDC’s own data show we went from 1 in 10,000 people
having autism in my generation and your generation
to 1 in every 34 in my kid’s generation.
Here, he sets up an almost airtight argument.
An influx of vaccines has caused an influx of autism.
But he fails to mention a few crucial things.
First, the claim that vaccines cause autism has been disproved
by the scientific community time and time again—there’s a clear consensus
among scientists that autism is not linked to vaccines.
Secondly, it is true that the prevalence of autism has increased significantly.
However, the sharp rise in cases we see today
would probably have been quite similar to the rates in RFK Jr.
and Bill Maher’s generation
if they had undergone the same level of autism evaluations
and had the same understanding of the condition as we do now.
The criteria used to diagnose autism today
are markedly different from those used in RFK Jr.’s generation.
Scientific American noted that early estimates of prevalence in 1966
‘focused on children at the severe end of the spectrum
and missed those with subtler features.’ It’s worth noting that RFK Jr.
It’s worth noting that RFK Jr.
once agreed with mainstream scientists.
He even used them as the selling point for his argument about the existence of global warming.
We all know that global warming is happening.
All the mainstream scientists in the world know that global warming is happening.
All the mainstream scientists
in the world also know that vaccines do not cause autism,
but RFK Jr. continues to cherry-pick his way through this
second chapter of his life.
In possibly the wildest remark he's made to date, RFK Jr. said—
well, let's let him do it.
COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.
COVID-19 is targeted to attack
Caucasians and Black people.
The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
RFK Jr. later cited a study that one might expect to support his claims.
In reality, the study’s author, whose work he used as evidence,
made it clear that RFK Jr.’s interpretation was completely off base.
The author said, quote,
adding that the study’s findings ‘never supported’ RFK Jr.’s claims.
Despite his frequent lies backed by nothing, he’s
garnered support from many right wingers who pay for Twitter—
even Donald Trump called RFK Jr. a
even Donald Trump called RFK Jr.
which must mean a lot coming from a guy who wanted to nuke hurricanes.
In the aftermath of his campaign announcement,
a Republican firm set up a pro-RFK Jr. super PAC,
which has ties to Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos, and Herschel Walker.
Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Alex Jones are also
big fans of RFK Jr., elevating him every chance they get.
However, his run is not without opposition.
Several members of his own family are supporting Biden, and his wife, actor
Cheryl Hines, who could potentially become first lady, has expressed
that her husband's opinions do not necessarily reflect her own.
While they maintain a loving relationship, they differ on numerous current
issues—giving us the possible makings of another George and Kellyanne Conway.
Despite the extensive media coverage, support from influential figures
on the right and benefiting
from one of the most well-known names in politics, RFK Jr.
still faces a considerable uphill battle in the polls.
He’s trailing behind Biden, and this obstacle appears insurmountable,
even with the president’s floundering approval ratings.
Though RFK Jr.
might not pose a significant threat to the Biden machine at the moment,
he has caught the attention of prominent Republicans
and could potentially climb the ranks in the future.
Who even knows if he’s running to win.
History has shown that individuals who weren't their party's
ultimate nominee, such as Ben Carson, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris,
received substantial recognition and consolation prizes.
If RFK Jr. can maintain his appeal to people like Donald Trump, he might have a shot
at leading the country through future challenges, including potential pandemics.
We are gonna take back this country.
You give me
a piece of ground
and a sword, and I am gonna take back this country with your help,
the help of all the homeless Republicans, and Democrats, and independents who are Americans first.
Thank you all.