RFK Description Of Autism Is Why We Need To Break Up Spectrum

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raised a ruckus last week when he proclaimed that autistic people “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

As we live in the age of social media, people naturally railed against him, posting pictures, such as this one, of their autistic children who can do all those things. The thing is, though, RFK was correct. The problem wasn’t with his statement, it’s that the autism spectrum is so broad that the term “autistic” no longer paints a discrete picture of what’s being described.

There is significant overlap amongst the previously distinct disorders, so the concept of the spectrum makes sense from a scientific perspective. It adequately identifies that while there are variations in onset and severity, there are enough commonalities to form one group. Finding causes and treatments, especially for the kind of challenges RFK describes, requires researching every expression. When it comes to effective communication, though, referring to everyone from the quirky programmer to the nonverbal adult who can never live alone to the kid who is simply a little weird as “autistic” makes clarity impossible.

Americans responding with “outrage” at RFK with illustrations from their own lives were more likely describing children with Asperger’s, which was the preferred term for level 1 autism before the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) was updated in 2013 and placed it under the autism spectrum. That designation was named after Hans Asperger, the German scientist who was one of the people who discovered the disorder.

Granted, there are questions about just how aligned he was with the Nazis, which is likely the real reason that the term was jettisoned, though surely the decision makers did also consider inclusivity and avoiding prejudice. But if people can still wear Hugo Boss while driving a VW, surely Asperger can avoid historical cancellation, no matter what people on Reddit say.

We could abide by the DSM, even though we generally should never abide by the DSM, and use its method of classification instead. We could add Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3 when discussing autism as a means of conveying severity. We do that with cancer. It would still largely be unclear, though, because not everyone knows about the levels. Another issue is that cancer is a progressive disease, whereas people with autism don’t get more severe over time. Start a level 3, stay a level 3. There’s also the fact that even parents of autistic kids don’t necessarily know the levels. I myself was unaware I had a level 1 daughter until this kerfuffle erupted.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to all of this. First, admit that RFK was right and that parents of the children such as he was describing agree with him.

Second, return to terms that mean something and let us laymen have clarity of language — distinct words, not levels. There are two sitting right there, ones that were used until 2013. We could consider at least one of those for level 1. Maybe levels 2 and 3 need some new ones.

Doing this would not only help us avoid stupid arguments such as the one surrounding RFK’s statement, it would also help those we’re describing. Nearly everyone considered autistic has some degree of difficulty with communication, one that leans heavily towards the literal. Muddying the definitional waters this way comes off as a bizarre joke at their expense.

Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast Coffee & Cochon, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, though you should probably avoid using social media.