What RFK Jr. Doesn’t Understand About Autism
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May 22, 2025
25 min
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Episode 129 · May 22, 2025
What RFK Jr. Doesn’t Understand About Autism
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25:07This episodeWhat RFK Jr. Doesn’t Understand About Autism
Summary
We talk with Eric Garcia, author of We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation and a political reporter at the Independent, about the myths spreading about autism under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yes, there’s the one about how vaccines cause autism, which the scientific community has rejected. But there’s also a more fundamental one that Kennedy references often: Is there, as he repeats, an “autism epidemic”? And if not, what explains the dramatic rise in reported cases of autism over the last few decades? Garcia also recounts his own story growing up autistic in the age of exploding diagnoses, and landing now in a moment where, for his job, he covers a health secretary’s particular brand of concern.
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