In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.
A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.
Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
“This is real,” he says. It’s an old text chain, but all the texts are from the other person—miles and miles of texts, long messages with links and few interruptions, screen after screen. Nye is showing not so much the content of the texts as the volume.
“That’s Bobby Kennedy Jr.”
Nye is laughing at the sheer prolificness of texting from the man who is now the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Nye had been connected to Kennedy by their mutual friend, Ed Begley Jr., the actor, who met Kennedy many years ago when Kennedy was a normal Kennedy, championing environmental causes.)
“Just no self-awareness,” he says. “And if you read these articles he sent, they’re all this speculation about autism and just cause-and-effect, and mercury in vaccines, that maybe there’s a connection. I wrote him back and said, ‘Okay, I’ll read your book. I think you’ve confused causation with correlation. Your friend, Bill.’ And he sent this.” More miles of texts. “So I wrote, ‘Okay, no more texts.’ And he started again! So I cut him off. He does not have good judgment. He is not suited for this job.”
