04/22/2023
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running for President on Wednesday. In his announcement speech he covered many topics, but of special importance to us, he told the truth about autism, and asked some questions no presidential candidate has ever had the courage to ask. Here is what he said:
"I want to talk about the chronic disease epidemic in this country. This is the worst attack on the middle class in this country. We have the worst healthcare system in the United States of America. We spend more money by far on healthcare in the United States and we have the worst outcomes. We spend $4.3 trillion on health and 84% of that goes to treating chronic diseases. Why is that?
Because America has the highest chronic disease rate in the world, and we didn’t always. In the 40s, 50s and 60s we had a really healthy population. Only 6% of our children had chronic disease. By the 1980s that became 12%, today it is 54%. We have the sickest generation in American history. We have the sickest children on Earth in this country.
By “chronic disease” I mean obesity, and more importantly neurological disease; ADD, ADHD, speech delay, tics, Tourette’s, ASD and autism.
Autism, 1 in every 10,000 in my generation, 1 in 34 kids today. Now one of the talking points of the industry and their crooked legislators and regulators, they will say, “Oh, we are just seeing it for the first time.” Missing autism is like missing a train wreck. It's absurd.
But more importantly, study, after study, after study, has shown that this epidemic is real, it is not the result of a change in diagnostic criteria. It is not the result of better recognizing it. It is an epidemic.
And it is common sense, if it was a change in diagnostic criteria, you would see people my age with autism, I am 69 years old, I have never seen anybody my age with full-blown autism; stimming, head banging, toe walking, non-verbal, non-toilet trained autism. I have been exposed to people with intellectual disability my whole life. My aunt founded the Special Olympics. I worked there since I was a kid. My dear cousin Andrew Shriver founded Best Buddies. I worked for 200 hours in a home for re****ed in the Hudson Valley when I was a teen. And I haven’t seen it.
I haven’t seen it in people my age, yet at my kids’ schools there are many, many children who look like that.
And why aren't we asking the question, “What happened?”
A study just came out that showed the cost of caring for people with autism as this group ages will be $1 trillion per year by 2040.
Congress said to the EPA, “Tell us when the autism epidemic began.” And the EPA is a captive agency, but it is captive to the oil, coal and pesticide industries, not pharma. And they actually came out with an honest study, and the EPA said. “It is a redline: 1989.”
Something happened in 1989. And we know it is an environmental insult because genes don’t cause epidemics. The only thing is we just haven’t figured out what it is. There are a limited amount of chemical culprits, chemical toxins that became available in 1989.
And it isn’t just neurological disease, all these immunological disorders.
People my age did not see children with rheumatoid arthritis, or juvenile diabetes when we were younger. The food allergies, peanut allergies, eczema, anaphylaxis. 27% of school budgets are now spent on special education. This is crippling the middle class in this country.
When I am President I am going to end the chronic disease epidemic. If I have not dropped significantly the rate of chronic disease in this country I do not want you to re-elect me."
