On RFK Jr., vaccines and my son with autism and Down syndrome

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My son was born on a cold January night in 2007 and diagnosed with Down syndrome about five minutes later. When I look back at the hours and days that immediately followed, I’m mostly struck by the depths of my ignorance. I didn’t know anything about Down syndrome, or really anything much about intellectual and developmental disabilities, but was instead consumed with fear. I remember questions racing through my mind: Would he ever recognize us? Would he have to be institutionalized? Would this bankrupt us? What would his life expectancy be? And did we do something wrong that caused this? The answers, if you’re keeping score are: Yes. No. No. Within typical ranges. And no. But at the time, I just didn’t know. I was afraid and that made me vulnerable not only to my own fears, but to misinformation, conspiracy theories and lies.

I had only one advantage: I’m a historian. One of the true gifts of studying the humanities is not the content we learn in school, but that we develop the skills to learn what we need to know when life takes unexpected turns. So like a proper nerd, I made a reading list and then actually read it, absorbing so much about disability identity, culture, policy and especially history. By the time my son was later diagnosed as autistic (perhaps around 16% of people with Down syndrome are also autistic), we knew enough that the diagnosis just became a helpful data point rather than something to be afraid of. These days, thanks to the planned nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for the incoming Trump administration, I’ve been thinking back to that year of reading history. Because if you had told me back then that we would get a Kennedy into HHS, I would have been thrilled. Instead, I’m so worried about the consequences for the next wave of vulnerable parents and disabled Americans.

The Kennedys played a central role in the history of normalizing and supporting disability in American life. As president, John F. Kennedy transformed the federal government’s approach to supporting people with intellectual disabilities. His sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded Special Olympics. U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy was a principal sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act. All three were profoundly influenced by their sister Rosemary, who had an intellectual disability, and was forcibly institutionalized and lobotomized by their parents. They vowed to do better for future generations, and did. Today, Eunice’s children carry on the tradition: her son Timothy runs Special Olympics, her daughter Maria has been active in many campaigns related to disability and mental health, and her other son Anthony founded Best Buddies, which pairs typical kids and disabled kids to help them build friendships. It works. My son is heading off to see “Red One” with his “best buddy” this weekend.

But on the other side of the family, there’s RFK Jr. He claimed COVID was engineered in a lab specifically to protect Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews (it wasn’t). RFK Jr. has a long history of calling autism an “epidemic” (it’s not) and linking vaccines with autism (there is no link), including saying in August 2024, “autism is caused by vaccines” (but, again, it isn’t). President-elect Donald Trump has likewise been promoting the false connection between vaccines and autism since at least 2014, and recently promised to encourage RFK Jr. to find out what’s causing autism because “something is going on.” I’m worried about the way these men are going to create a feedback loop between them that intensifies their worst ideas, not only specifically impacting autism, but disability more generally as they focus on quack cures over care and support, stripping away resources, and promoting dangerous ideas about disability as a burden.

Another key piece of disability history is about polio, with so many of our great early leaders being people who had been disabled by polio and who led the fight for a more inclusive world — Justin Dart, Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann and so many others. JFK, as president, was instrumental in approving and promoting an oral vaccine for polio that could be more easily distributed to children, helping to save millions of lives. News recently broke that RFK Jr.’s main lawyer has tried to revoke FDA approval for the polio vaccine, one of the greatest health achievements in human history (not something I, as a historian, say lightly).

I’m not just concerned about the polices that RFK Jr., if confirmed, will promulgate at HHS. I’m worried about the next parent who hears a diagnosis at a vulnerable time in their lives. We’re so primed in these moments to take in dangerous messages, to believe disabilities are problems to be solved rather than attributes to be understood, sometimes mitigated against and always supported.

In mid-January this year, 10 days before the inauguration, my son is going to turn 18. This will propel him into a new legal relationship with the government — his life supported by programs that operate simultaneously through federal, state and county governments. Many possibilities for his life are going to be shaped in the next four years by people willing to work for Trump and people who see eye-to-eye with RFK Jr. Meanwhile, every day, both parents of disabled children and people who are themselves newly disabled will react out of ignorance and fear. Knowledge is the vaccine for both. But it seems RFK Jr. just wants to let the fever burn.

David M. Perry is a journalist and historian. He’s the associate director for undergraduate studies in history at the University of Minnesota — Twin Cities. He’s the co-author of “Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe” and the newsletter Modern Medieval.