In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong. A leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate 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.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. recently spoke with Reason magazine for a lengthy interview about his 2024 presidential campaign and was asked directly about the myriad of widely debunked conspiracy theories he has peddled in the past in a brutal line of questioning.
Reason editor at large Nick Gillespie asked the question an hour into the interview from late last week, noting “One of the critiques of your candidacy or even your public profile is that you traffic routinely in conspiracies and that kind of conspiracist mindset where almost everything that we take for granted is bad.”
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Gillespie again asked Kennedy how he addresses the criticism he is a conspiracy theorist. Kennedy again challenged his critics to “show me where I get it wrong.” Gillespie then challenged Kennedy on his now-retracted article in Rolling Stone in which he claimed vaccines cause autism. Kennedy defended the article insisting no one has shown “one mistake” he made in the article.
