With NIH Plans for an Autism Registry, RFK Jr.’s Public Health Takeover Grows More Alarming

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s personal crusade to “make America healthy again” is picking up steam and taking some startling turns.

Earlier this week, CBS News reports, the director of the National Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya said that his office is planning to build a tracking system for autistic people in the US, composed of private medical records, including from pharmacies, insurers, and even fitness trackers. The data would reportedly be used by select researchers as part of a series of studies into autism’s origins, which Kennedy, who oversees NIH as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has ordered.

The news of this deeply invasive effort came just days after Kennedy gave a harrowing talk about autism, referring to it as an “epidemic” that “destroys” families and children and mischaracterizing autistic people as being unable to hold jobs, have relationships, or pay taxes. Kennedy’s talk contradicted the findings of a new report by the Centers for Disease Control, which found that increased screening and changes to diagnostic criteria have contributed to rising rates of autism in the US.

Instead, Kennedy said his department would study the environmental causes of autism, and, it appears, he’s willing to go to troubling lengths to do so.

News about NIH’s plans drew swift backlash from both autism and privacy advocates. “The disability community, and many other marginalized communities, have reasonable fears, based in both historical events and in current policy pursued by the administration, of any attempts to create lists of marginalized people,” read a statement by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

While personal health information often is used for research, Ariana Aboulafia, a disability rights attorney at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a statement that collecting it without autistic people’s consent is “dangerous” and “crosses a line in the sand, particularly given longstanding and historical concerns surrounding the creation of registries of people with disabilities.”

While this may be the most disturbing development of Kennedy’s term so far, it’s hardly the only way he’s sought to reshape the landscape of public health in America over recent weeks. According to Politico, Kennedy is currently considering reversing the CDC’s recommendation that children receive COVID-19 shots. On Tuesday, Kennedy also said he’s working with the food industry to ban certain dyes by 2026.

All of that is in addition to the effects of the systematic gutting of HHS staff that Kennedy has overseen. In just the last month, the CDC has reportedly scrapped plans to help Texas schools control the measles outbreak there, amid layoffs. According to NPR, entire teams focused on car crashes, rape prevention and education, traumatic brain injury and more at the CDC have been let go. And while Kennedy has taken to calling sugar “poison,” he’s also presiding over an FDA that reportedly suspended quality control tests for dairy products and postponed a requirement for companies to trace and remove contaminated food.

Can’t you just feel America getting healthier?