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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
This podcast is brought to you by Aura. By the time you hear about a data breach, your information has already been exposed for months. On average, companies take 277 days to report a breach. That's nine months where hackers have access to your personal data. That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Aura is an all in one digital safety solution that monitors the dark web for your phone number, email and Social Security number, sending real time alerts if your info is found. It also includes a vpn, password manager and data broker removal. To help keep you safe for a limited time. Aura is offering a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free@aura.com safety that's aura.com safety to sign up and protect your loved ones. That's a u r a.com safety terms apply. Check the site for details. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications, kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money. With guardrails in place. Try Greenlight Risk free today@greenlight.com Listen, I.
- [01:29]
Jane Marie
Am honored to introduce to you Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- [01:42]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'm going to go over some of the key numbers. Autism is increasing in prevalence at an alarming rate. In 1987, out of every 1 million kids, 330 were diagnosed with autism. Today there are 27,777 for every million. Shocking. This is part of an unrelenting upward trend. 25% of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are non verbal, non toilet trained and have other stereotypical features. Head banging, tactile and light sensitivities, stimming, toe walking, etc. This is coming from an environmental toxin. And somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food. And it's to their benefit to normalize it. To say, oh, this is all normal. It's always been here. The epidemic is real. There are many, many other studies that affirm this. And instead of listening to this canard of epidemic denial, all you have to do is start reading a little science. Because the answer is very clear and this is catastrophic for our country.
- [03:08]
Jane Marie
I'm Jane Marie and this is the dream. God, I hate giving the Kennedys any more press than they already get. But did you hear all the stuff RFK Jr has been saying and not saying about autism lately? I find it infuriating how little this man wants to know about actual science. So I reached out to some autistic journalist pals of mine, and they suggested today's guest would be the perfect person to address this.
- [03:33]
Eric Garcia
So, my name is Eric Garcia. I'm the senior Washington correspondent on the Washington bureau chief over at the Independent. Yes, it's that Independent. If anybody's watched Ted Lasso, it's the UK newspaper. Also the author of We're Not Changing the Autism Conversation. I mostly come to the White House in Congress. I covered the presidential campaign a lot last year, and now I cover the Trump administration pretty regularly. And that's kind of how I began writing about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And why I was at his press conference last week.
- [04:00]
Jane Marie
Do you go into that weird, sweaty room, the press room, where there's the briefing room? Yeah, yeah.
- [04:08]
Eric Garcia
This goes to the point, like, I, you know, I prefer covering Capitol Hill to the White House, not, you know, just because, you know, I didn't like it during the Biden prison either. Like, it's just. It's small and it's cramped. Like, being in the. And like, you don't really have a lot of free movement in the White House for obvious reasons. Whereas, like, with. With the US Capitol, you can really kind of go wherever you want.
- [04:33]
Jane Marie
I've just heard horror stories of, like, it just the stench of a, like, locker room.
- [04:39]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it is kind of dingy. It's under renovation right now, but I'm not optimistic.
- [04:44]
Jane Marie
It's going to be gross. Okay, so can we start with a little bit of your backstory?
- [04:53]
Eric Garcia
Sure, yeah. What do you want to know?
- [04:55]
Jane Marie
Well, I want to know where your personal relationship to what RFK is talking about comes from.
- [05:04]
Eric Garcia
Well, I was born. To borrow from my friend John Marble.
- [05:08]
Jane Marie
I was born, too.
- [05:10]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. Well, so the point I'm trying to make is, contrary to what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says, Autism is genetic. It is something that's passed down from the parents. It is not something caused by vaccines. And, you know, so what was interesting, and I've talked about this a lot, I'm an ADA baby, which is to say that I was born the year that the Americans with disabilities act passed 1990. And I think that's really instructive for how I look at the world, because I haven't grown up with a world where my rights weren't codified. Hmm. But at the same time, having your rights codified and having them enforced are two very different things.
- [05:52]
Jane Marie
Say more about that. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:54]
Eric Garcia
Like, I mean, so the point that I'm trying to make is that, you know, if you think about it, autism didn't get a separate diagnosis from schizophrenia until 1980.
- [06:04]
Jane Marie
Oh, really?
- [06:07]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, in the DSM.
- [06:09]
Jane Marie
Okay.
- [06:09]
Eric Garcia
And then Asperger's syndrome was not included until 1994.
- [06:13]
Jane Marie
Because it was for girls.
- [06:15]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like, you have to remember, like, initially, Hans Asperger didn't even believe that girls could be autistic. He changed his mind over time. But, like, so take. So take that into account. So, you know, it's funny, because all this stuff was being implemented or, you know, in the same year, the Individuals with Disabilities Education act was passed, which, you know, mandated that schools accommodate and provide not just all disabled students, but specifically autistic students with a free, appropriate public education. So that just meant that these things were all coming together and the law was being implemented while I was growing up, and it wasn't. You know, look, I'm a political journalist. You know, once I saw the effects of policy, I couldn't stop seeing them.
- [07:10]
Jane Marie
Right.
- [07:10]
Eric Garcia
You know.
- [07:10]
Jane Marie
Right. Were they mainstreaming by the time you got into elementary school?
- [07:14]
Eric Garcia
They were. They were mainstreaming at the time. Yeah, by the time I got to elementary. But, like, I would still get, like, sent off, like, to do, like, you know, like, for, like, an hour a day. Like an hour, like, three times out of the week, I'd be taken over to, like, the special ed center, you know, and I'd get my. I get my support. So, like, I'd get the, you know, the assistance or the tutoring or whatever. And, like, I remember, like, you know, because, like, I have dyspraxia as well, which affects motor skills. Like, my teacher would cut this cut paper with the scissors. But the reason why I'm saying this, the reason why the backstory is all important is because I didn't. Is that, like, when I started out in journalism, I didn't really disclose a lot that I was autistic. Not because I was ashamed or anything like that, but just because. I don't know if I can say this. I didn't think it was anybody's fucking business.
- [08:04]
Jane Marie
No, say that. You know, say it again.
- [08:08]
Eric Garcia
My feeling was like, it's not in your fucking business. So I don't want people to. To pry into it. You know, I'm a. Believe it or not, I'm a very private person. Everything about me is On a need to know basis.
- [08:21]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [08:22]
Eric Garcia
When I go home, like, you know, I go to work and I go home. Those are two very different things to me. You know, it's funny now that, like, I'm a public figure and I'm a media figure now. Like, a lot of people, I think, believe that they. That they're entitled to parts of my personal life that they just aren't.
- [08:36]
Jane Marie
Right.
- [08:36]
Eric Garcia
But the point being is that this is a long way of saying that, like, I really didn't want to write about it. And it wasn't until 2015 I was working a publication called National Journal, and it was a great time. I was writing about economics and trade and politics, what happens. But then I go to a party, and this guy by the name of Tim Mack, who is a great reporter, he's now in Ukraine, he offered me a drink. And I said, like, oh, I don't drink because I'm on the autism spectrum and the medicine I take doesn't mix with alcohol. He's like, oh, there's a lot of autistic people in Washington, D.C. you should write about that. And it was funny because this is the first time that somebody. That somebody took me seriously. And Tim's a friend. I loved him a lot. And, like. And I kind of blew it off because my feeling was I didn't want to write about that. Then what happened was when I was working at National Journal, they decided to shut down the print edition of the magazine. A lot of people were leaving. My editor, the editor of the print magazine, a guy named Richard Jost, who I. Who I adore, he said, like, I just want the most, go for broke stories, pitch me, whatever, because I'm going to be out of a job at the end of the year.
- [09:43]
Podcast Host
Sure.
- [09:44]
Eric Garcia
And so I pitched that story, and initially I wanted it to be kind of a, you know, like, the secret lives of autistic people in D.C. kind of like a chatty, you know, one of those insider DC pieces, you know, like, these people don't know they're working with an autistic person. They're kind of stealth. Like. Like, you know, I think a lot of people feel like, oh, well, like, autistic people have a difficult time socializing. So, like, how do you get by in, like, a city like Washington, D.C. you know?
- [10:15]
Jane Marie
And you're like, well, I happen to know that we're more common here.
- [10:20]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. But, like, also, like, very difficult, with a lot of difficulty. Yeah. Like, you know, and God love Richard. He wasn't satisfied with that, and he shouldn't have been. He was like, why does this piece need to exist? And I said, like, well, I think that we need to focus more on autistic people living better lives instead of trying to cure them. And that was really the beginning of me writing about that. So I wrote this piece. It was like 6,500 words. It got published. On my last day at National Journal, I open up my phone and my phone is unusable just because people are just sharing and my phone's blowing up. And then that was the beginning of me writing what would become we're not broken. And all the while, this was happening. This is in 2015, Donald Trump begins running for president. And in Republican primary debate, he's asked about autism, and he's asked about vaccines and his past tweets about it.
- [11:12]
Jane Marie
As president, you would be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, both of which say you are wrong. How would you handle this as president?
- [11:21]
Eric Garcia
Autism has become an epidemic 25 years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics. Not even close. It has gotten totally out of control. And we've had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick. Now is autistic.
- [11:46]
Jane Marie
Dr. Carson, you just heard his medical take.
- [11:51]
Eric Garcia
He's an okay doctor. Okay.
- [11:58]
Jane Marie
Should he stop saying it? Should he stop saying the vaccines cause autism?
- [12:02]
Eric Garcia
Well, you know, he can read about it if he wants to. I think he's an intelligent man and will make the correct decision after getting the real fact.
- [12:08]
Jane Marie
Mr. Trump as president Trump.
- [12:10]
Eric Garcia
Trump is Trump, and he lies. Look, we know. We know now he lies about everything. But the other thing was, like, they asked Ben Carson about Trump's comments, and look, Ben Carson, whatever your thoughts are about Ben Carson, he's a pediatric neurosurgeon.
- [12:26]
Jane Marie
Yeah, he's a doctor.
- [12:27]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, he's a doctor. He's a. He's a doctor at Hopkins, you know, so, like, the fact that he kind of gave Trump a pass was a kind of emblematic of what would come. What would come in the future of the Republican Party. But B, it was also just like, it showed how so many people, they needed to kind of, like, cater to that wing of the American electorate. And the funny thing was that, like, you know, look, I grew up in Southern California. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, my feeling was like, hey, look, like, okay, Trump is a Republican. He's not a conventional Republican, but he's a Republican nonetheless. But like, I grew up in Southern California and I know a lot of yoga moms who vote Democratic and probably voted for Hillary Clinton and believe the same thing he does, you know, like, they don't want to put toxins in their kids bodies or things like that.
- [13:18]
Jane Marie
Right, right, right.
- [13:19]
Eric Garcia
And so my feeling about it was like, if this is what our politicians are talking about when it comes to autism, what are they overlooking and how does that shape policy? Because politicians are only as good as the information that they receive. Right. And so that was kind of the beginning of, to me, like, how do these bad ideas around autism shape autistic people's everyday lives?
- [13:44]
Jane Marie
Right.
- [13:45]
Eric Garcia
And what would happen if we did something different? And we kind of. The whole reason why I called it changing the autism conversation is I kind of wanted to move on from that. What's funny about it, the real kind of irony about all this is I only, I don't. I didn't mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once in the hardback edition of the book.
- [14:05]
Jane Marie
Right.
- [14:05]
Eric Garcia
I only mentioned him once in the paperback edition of the book. And it was talking about COVID vaccines.
- [14:12]
Jane Marie
But people clearly read your book and went, we gotta ask this guy about what's going on.
- [14:17]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, yeah. But like the point, but like the point being was like, if you read the book, you notice that like I only talk about the autism vaccine thing really early on in the book. And it was because I wanted to establish that this has been debunked. We've noted that this is not true for years. So let's, let's start this discussion by establishing that that is not real. That that's not real. So we could talk about bigger stuff, you know?
- [14:44]
Jane Marie
Yeah, I mean, we' we've done, I don't know, three or four episodes already, I think, on like Andrew Wakefield and my friend Anna Merlin, who reports on this and wrote this book called Republic of Lies, which.
- [14:58]
Eric Garcia
Yes, it's a great book.
- [14:59]
Jane Marie
Yeah, it's a great book. I have to admit, before we move on, I have to admit a little bit of jealousy, which is that you're saying that you had the opportunity to hide your autism. We live in a patriarchy and there's just no way for me to disguise it, really.
- [15:16]
Eric Garcia
So, yeah, I mean, but like, that was kind of the point is I was like, is that like I wanted to not spend so much time talking about this.
- [15:23]
Jane Marie
Right.
- [15:24]
Eric Garcia
Because I felt like it was already. I was like, look, there's bigger stuff to Discuss. Let's. Let's move on.
- [15:30]
Jane Marie
So why aren't we moving on?
- [15:32]
Eric Garcia
The reason why that myth is so potent, even though, look, you know, as you. As you guys have gone through, like, Andrew Wakefield lost his medical license. He was a very unethical practitioner.
- [15:47]
Jane Marie
And who's the new guy?
- [15:48]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. David Guyer. His name is.
- [15:50]
Jane Marie
Yeah, the new guy is David Guyer. He also doesn't have a medical license, I believe.
- [15:55]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, like, these guys, were they fitness credit? But, like, I think the reason why is that autism is still seen as something to be feared. Autism is still seen as something to be scared of. And that, you know, like, if you listen to, like, what RFK's comments were last week, you know, he painted it in very apocalyptic colors, and he said that they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never go on.
- [16:24]
Jane Marie
A date, they'll never write a poem.
- [16:27]
Eric Garcia
Never write a poem. Yeah.
- [16:28]
Jane Marie
Can't use the toilet on their own resource.
- [16:31]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Which are children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure and into autism when they're two years old. These are kids who 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. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children.
- [17:11]
Eric Garcia
And I want to be clear, like, yes, there are autistic people who are going to need high supports for the entirety of their life. I don't want to be flippant about that.
- [17:24]
Podcast Host
Sure.
- [17:24]
Eric Garcia
And at the same time, the thing that I want to really establish is that earlier today, I was checking my Instagram, and I use Instagram a lot because I feel like it's a great weather vane for how parents feel about autism because there's a lot of content creators and moms.
- [17:41]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [17:41]
Eric Garcia
And the amount of parents of autistic kids, including the quote unquote, severe autism folks, the ones who say that, like, oh, you know, there's regular autism and then there's severe autism or, you know, the other term profound autism. You know, like, even they are furious about this. And that was what stood out to me, was that. Was that like, they were. Is that. Look, they, you know, a lot of those folks don't like me, you know, But I think that they recognize that this kind of rhetoric is seriously dangerous. It's not a personality quirky issue.
- [18:20]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Everything has changed for the individual with autism, and while there's a wide range.
- [18:24]
Eric Garcia
Of expression, it does change the family.
- [18:28]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it does inevitably change the community and the society in which we find.
- [18:35]
Eric Garcia
Treats their kids like a problem rather than a group of people with specific needs that need to be addressed. Right, And I think that's why his words hit such a nerve.
- [18:59]
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- [20:17]
Podcast Host
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- [21:45]
Jane Marie
Well, going back to the feminist part, and maybe this has nothing to do with anything, but, you know, it wasn't until 1998 that we like did an autopsy of like, like a clitoris. 1998, we didn't care. We did studies on healthy white boys and men.
- [22:03]
Eric Garcia
Yeah.
- [22:04]
Jane Marie
And all the literature that was out before 2000 was on healthy white boys and men. And I feel like the opening up of grants and funding for looking in other areas has taught us a lot. Do you have any thoughts about that?
- [22:29]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. So that's the point I was trying to make. Is that like, so RFK Jr talking about how the new numbers, the new CDC numbers show that it's 1 in 31.
- [22:39]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The ASD prevalence rate in 8 year olds is now 1 in 31. Since the first ADDM report, which was 1992 births, autism has increased by a factor of 4.8. The first ADDM survey was 22 years ago when prevalence was 1 in 150 children.
- [23:00]
Eric Garcia
The report he was referring to, it's called the Prevalence and Early Identification of Autism Spectrum Disorder among children aged 4 and 8 years and long short of what it does is that every two years it puts out numbers about autism diagnoses for children between four and eight years old in the last two years and then it monitors it. And so the conclusion, I have the report up in front of me, so I'm just going to quote straight from it if that's okay.
- [23:30]
Jane Marie
Great.
- [23:31]
Eric Garcia
It says differences in prevalence over time and across sites can reflect differing practices in ASD evaluation and identity and availability and requirements that affect accessibility of services, such as meeting financial or diagnostic eligibility requirements.
- [23:49]
Jane Marie
So you got to have good insurance.
- [23:51]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. Well, we'll like take into account that, you know, in the past, even when you controlled for Medicaid, like when a white child and A black child were both on Medicaid. There are other store studies about this that like, the black child will still get diagnosed with autism later than the white child. The point.
- [24:10]
Jane Marie
And then, you know, because they're not being sent to a specialist quickly.
- [24:14]
Eric Garcia
Right. They're not being sent to a set of specialists. They're immediately pathologized as having like a behavior disorder.
- [24:20]
Jane Marie
Right, right.
- [24:21]
Eric Garcia
You know, and this is to say nothing of ASD in or autism spectrum disorders, it's called, you know, in Hispanic communities or communities where English is a second language. So like in AAPI communities or African immigrant families. You know, what was ironic is RFK Jr talked about, like, how this is especially prevalent in boys.
- [24:43]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There is an extreme risk for boys overall. The risk for boys of getting an autism diagnosis in this country is now 1 in 20.
- [24:53]
Eric Garcia
But if RK had just done the research, the basic bare bones research, he would have seen that, if anything, we're still under diagnosing girls. Yeah.
- [25:03]
Jane Marie
You know, like, but that goes back to what I'm saying. Like, we don't do studies on girls or people of color.
- [25:09]
Eric Garcia
Like, I mean, but like, you know, how many, you know, I'm sure you've had people on this show, like, how many autistic women don't get diagnosed until their sons are diagnosed, you know?
- [25:18]
Jane Marie
Right. Yeah, because it's genetic.
- [25:21]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, it's genetic. And also, like, because society and social norms dictate that women are supposed to be quieter and supposed to be more demure and supposed to. And so as a result, because these kind of fixed gender roles, Right. Girls just kind of get overlooked because a girl who I don't know can name the. Can list the entire track listing of every Taylor Swift album and you know, or no, no, no, no.
- [25:53]
Jane Marie
I'm laughing at myself when you say.
- [25:55]
Eric Garcia
That they're gonna get. They're just gonna be seen as like, oh, that's a, you know, a quiet, nerdy teenage girl who likes horses and Taylor Swift. And that's going to be seen as very different from the boy who likes Hot Wheels or Roblox and. Yeah, and trains. And trains. You know, which is funny. You know, I should just say I'm autistic and I like both Taylor Swift and trains. But that's. That's a whole. That's a whole other thing. But like, the point being is, like.
- [26:27]
Jane Marie
We finally are looking in the right corners and RFK is misunderstanding that he's.
- [26:33]
Eric Garcia
Yes, that's what I'm trying to say is that we're looking where we needed to look where we hadn't looked before. And RFK is fundamentally misunderstanding it. You know what's funny is that the first major autism study in the United States was done by a guy by the name of Leo Connor at Johns Hopkins University, which is about an hour two hours out from where I live in Washington D.C. and what's funny is that the first study that he did, all of his subjects in that first autism study, eight of the 11 kids were boys, three of them were girls, nine out of them were white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant, and two of them were Jewish. So but like, what's funny about it if you know the history of Baltimore back, like I've thought about it, it's like, wait, Baltimore in the 1930s and 40s was not WASP, it was Italian, it was Polish, it was Jewish, it was Irish. You know, but like, you know, guess who could send their kids, could afford to send their kids to Johns Hopkins University to be evaluated. It was upper class white.
- [27:35]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [27:36]
Eric Garcia
So the point that I'm making is that RFK's fear mongering, you know, those statistics should be assigned for a science working. And you know, for all of the, you know, despite what Elon Musk says, our research universities and our researchers in the United States are still the envy of the world. And you know, numbers like this are proof positive of that. And I think second of all, it should lead to these questions of like, okay, we know that there are these numbers. What do we do next with this? How do we serve these people? Like, how do we make sure that when they become adults that they transition to adulthood in the right way, or that Medicaid is fully funded or that vocational rehabilitation courses are fully paid for.
- [28:25]
Jane Marie
You know, and we haven't even had a good nationwide discussion about the best way to help folks with autism.
- [28:35]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, exactly.
- [28:35]
Jane Marie
I mean, I think there's like great disagreement around if it's a behavioral therapy or all of that hasn't even happened yet.
- [28:44]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's the point is that like this vaccine discussion is really a distraction from the real legitimate discuss, the real legitimate debates. You know what's funny? It was last week after RFK made his remarks of the fascinating things was to me was that the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Autism with Autistic Women and non binary network and groups for like autistic people of color and all that, they all put out a joint statement with Autism Speaks.
- [29:13]
Jane Marie
What?
- [29:14]
Eric Garcia
And like, I was just like, do you recognize. Yeah, they put out like, whoops, sorry, you had, you had, you Kind of united all of these warring factions. All these warring factions kind of came together in such a unique way. And it was because, like, I almost kind of joke that it's like, look, we're gonna have these debates. We don't want RFK Jr. To have these debates. Let us just fight this out on our own.
- [29:42]
Jane Marie
Right, Right. Right. Well, but that brings me to my. To an important question. So I feel like the Kennedy family, including John F. Kennedy himself, has a history of hiding their diagnoses, disabilities, et cetera. And the biggest story out of that is that John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, their sister Rosemarie was basically disappeared from the family.
- [30:13]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. I wrote about this a while back.
- [30:15]
Jane Marie
And I think that. That being RFK Jr. S, I don't know why he doesn't have more sympathy, but maybe it's just.
- [30:24]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, well, like, you know, ironically enough, it did kind of have the opposite effect with his Uncle Ted, you know, who co authored the Americans with Disabilities Act. You know, his aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, started the Special Olympics. You know, John F. Kennedy. You know, President Kennedy was very dedicated to getting people with disabilities out of institutions. Even his father, Robert. Robert F. Kennedy Sr. When he was a senator, famously exposed the Willowbrook Institution in New York. The people with intellectual disabilities and disabilities as a whole were just living and just living in their own shit. I visited the state institutions for the mentally retarded, and I think, particularly at.
- [31:11]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Willowbrook, that we have a situation that borders on a snake pit and that the children live and filth, that many of our fellow citizens are suffering tremendously because lack of attention, lack of imagination, lack of adequate manpower. There's very little future for the children or for those who are in these institutions. Both need a tremendous overhauling.
- [31:36]
Eric Garcia
I think all of us are at fault. It's long overdue that something be done about it.
- [31:40]
Jane Marie
But let's talk about that, because that's where Rosemary ended up. So if you don't mind explaining for us, like, what happened with her.
- [31:47]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. So what happened with Rosemary Kennedy was Joe Kennedy, RFK Jr. S grandfather and President Kennedy's father, eventually just decided to send her to an institution, I believe in Wisconsin, but don't quote me on that, and then essentially opted to have her lobotomized.
- [32:07]
Jane Marie
Yep. She had anoxic brain injury, apparently as a baby.
- [32:11]
Eric Garcia
Yes.
- [32:12]
Jane Marie
Which is not uncommon.
- [32:13]
Eric Garcia
Right.
- [32:14]
Jane Marie
But she was fully functioning in terms of, like, able to write a poem and go to the bathroom. Yeah, exactly. But then apparently she suffered from. In terms of what was written at the time. Feeble mindedness and nymphomania and a few other symptoms that were mostly placed on women or given to women. And then her family had her lobotomized.
- [32:44]
Eric Garcia
Yes, correct.
- [32:45]
Jane Marie
And it went slightly awry.
- [32:48]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, exactly. The fascinating thing, I wrote a call about this for MSNBC about two years ago, and initially, Joe Kennedy. So Joe Kennedy was the one who gave approval for what it was believed to be the first lobotomy in the United States performed on an intellectually disabled person. And he saw it as this thing to be ashamed of, you know, because, like, Joe Kennedy senior wanted to have his family. They were Irish American, and they wanted, you know, this Irish American family to be seen as the same as, like, wasps, essentially.
- [33:23]
Jane Marie
Yeah. And the Royal family.
- [33:26]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, the royal family. And in many ways, you know, look, my stepdad is Irish Catholic. Like, my God, the Kennedys are royalty. And, you know, you know, to a lot of Irish Americans, even my dad, who's a Republican, admires John F. Kennedy. My mom. My goodness, my mom's a moderate Democrat. Oh, my God. You know, the Kennedys are, as you said, they're royalty. When the lobotomy didn't, quote, unquote, fix her, then she was sent to the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Wisconsin. And Eunice Kennedy Shriver said she didn't know about Rosemary's whereabouts for more than a decade.
- [34:05]
Jane Marie
I think Eunice didn't Visit her for 20 years until something like that.
- [34:09]
Eric Garcia
Yeah.
- [34:09]
Jane Marie
Jodin never visited her after the lobotomy. And then 20 years later, once he had a stroke, Eunice felt like she was allowed then to go visit her daughter.
- [34:19]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, correct. She felt like she had the ability to. Or she had the capacity to.
- [34:26]
Jane Marie
And then there was also, you know, JFK himself had health issues that were hidden.
- [34:33]
Eric Garcia
He had Addison's disease. Yeah, yeah, he had Addison's disease.
- [34:37]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [34:37]
Eric Garcia
And, you know, but. But, like, weirdly enough, like I've joked in the past that, or said only half jokingly, that Rosemary's siblings really spent a lot of their time trying to pay for the sins of their dad. So, you know, John F. Kennedy signs the Community Health act, and he wanted to cut the population of people in mental health hospitals by half. John F. Kennedy, ironically enough, was one of the people to sign the Vaccine Assistance act in 1962.
- [35:09]
Jane Marie
So what happened to RFK Jr?
- [35:11]
Eric Garcia
What's his really, if you listen to him, he really comes through it through his activism on the environment and trying to understand food allergies and recognizing that vaccination is somewhat tangentially tied to food allergies, as far as I understand. And so that really begins him down the rabbit hole. And like, is it if you're an environmentalist, if you're like, if you're a certain type of environmentalist, that isn't too much of a leap, if you know what I'm saying.
- [35:40]
Jane Marie
But I also feel like is his genetic disorder that he, because he comes from this family of politicians that he just has to hitch his wagon to something.
- [35:51]
Eric Garcia
Well, like, I mean, I think the thing of it was, was that when, you know, when his father was assassinated, you know, he did have a very traumatic childhood. You know, he obviously dealt with substance abuse, you know, and far be it for me to criticize somebody's past on substance abuse, you know, and I have admiration for anybody who gets sober or who tries to get sober because that could very easily be any of us. You know what was interesting is that the generation after the initial Kennedy generation, they like a lot of the kids had a lot of troubles. But like they also, like, they often all tried to find something to latch onto, like a cause to latch onto. You know, Kerry Kennedy is really the leader of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights center or Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was lieutenant governor of Maryland and Ranford Governor Joe Kennedy III, who is RFK Jr. S nephew, he became a congressman. In the Kennedy family, it was seen as like even if you don't run for office, public service was seen as a noble calling, almost divine. So I think that his disposition, like him finding something like the was something that he felt he could do some good in and he did do some good with cleaning the Hudson River. The fascinating thing about RFK Jr is if he had just stuck to the environment, he would be seen as carrying on his father and his uncle's legacy on the environment and protecting the planet. People forget at one point Barack Obama thought about making RFK Jr. I think his EPA administrator or something like that. But again, think about how different things could have been. Yeah, but like what happened is that he puts up this article@salon.com called deadly immunity and it's also co published in Rolling Stone and immediately it's riddled with errors and fact checking issues and then ultimately they had to retract it. And it's about the vaccines and vaccinations and again I think that if you are a certain type of environmentalist, that's not too hard of a leap to make. Which is if you believe and it's look, is it true that major corporations pollute our waters, pollute our oceans?
- [38:02]
Jane Marie
Look I grew up near Flint, Michigan, south of Saginaw. Cancer clusters all over the place, you know, and that would be something noble to address. They don't even care about drinking water in that area, you know.
- [38:17]
Eric Garcia
Precisely. Yeah. And so it's not that hard of a leap because, like, what the way that, like, some profiles. My friend Brandy Zadrozny has written about it, it's like, you know, he would be talking to people about the Earth and the planet, and then every once in a while, someone would come up to him and mention autism and the vaccine. So it's not the most illogical step, is what I'm trying to say.
- [38:40]
Jane Marie
Yeah, I get the logic of that step, but I don't get the logic of. Read a fucking paper, dude. Like, just read a little bit.
- [38:52]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, I mean, well, I think that, like, if you are already predisposed to saying that, like, okay, government agencies are predisposed to regulatory capture, which, again, is true, you know, that the government often provides special treatment for pharmaceutical companies. Again, true.
- [39:11]
Jane Marie
Yep.
- [39:12]
Eric Garcia
You know, it's very easy to make that leap.
- [39:15]
Jane Marie
And we've spoken on this program about the Quaker Oats radiation studies where they gave babies irradiated oats to see what would happen, or the Tuskegee study. Like, there's a lot of. Of wrongdoing, obviously, but that doesn't negate the science that's been done.
- [39:38]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. And I think about this in the framing of, like, as a journalist, it's actually like a great framing through a media story. It's like, these are concerned parents who are fighting the drug companies. So, like, the framing works really well. And I think that's why the narrative around vaccines and autism was so compelling, because take into account, like, this was after we had just disposed of the idea of unloving mothers causing autism.
- [40:04]
Jane Marie
Yeah. It's always our fault.
- [40:08]
Eric Garcia
So, like, think about, like, the guilt that it put on parents.
- [40:12]
Jane Marie
For a long time, if someone came up to me and said, actually, your kid's autistic because of the doctor and not because of you, I'd be like, yes.
- [40:23]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. Yeah. It is such a. It's such a salve, and it's such a relief.
- [40:28]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [40:30]
Eric Garcia
And that, you know, you combine it with, like, the vaccine panic really begins when you see these autism numbers go up because of the idea. And the ADA that I mentioned.
- [40:37]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [40:38]
Eric Garcia
It creates this kind of moral panic. And there's this. There's this misperception that this is being caused, that there's this epidemic.
- [40:45]
Jane Marie
Right.
- [40:46]
Eric Garcia
You know, when really it's just better Detection Foreign.
- [41:00]
Jane Marie
Ryan from the Tony and Ryan Podcast from Down Under.
- [41:02]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Today we want to talk to you.
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Eric Garcia
About Boost Mobile, the newest 5G network in the country.
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Jane Marie
These guys are no longer the prepaid wireless company you might remember.
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Eric Garcia
They've invested billions into building their own.
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Jane Marie
5G towers across America, transforming the carrier into America, America's fourth major network, alongside the other big dogs.
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Eric Garcia
Yep, they're challenging the competitors by working harder and smarter, like this amazing new network they've literally built. The Boost Mobile network together with their roaming partners covers 99% of the US population, but 5G speeds not available in all areas. Yep, they have blazing fast Internet and plans for all the latest devices. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find them online@boostmobile.com this podcast is brought.
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Podcast Host
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- [42:38]
Eric Garcia
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- [43:08]
Jane Marie
Did you know that Andrew Wakefield had a patent out on a single measle vaccine before he.
- [43:16]
Eric Garcia
Yes.
- [43:17]
Jane Marie
He was like, he was like, the MMR causes autism, but my m. Yeah, is gonna be great.
- [43:26]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so he had, so he had. He had a vested financial interest in this, didn't he?
- [43:30]
Jane Marie
Yes.
- [43:32]
Eric Garcia
So, like, the point that I'm trying to make is that, like, it was kind of this apotheosis and nexus of all of these different things coming together at the same time. And it's funny because, like, I talk about this all the time with, like, my family and friends. I first stumbled across the anti vaccine thing when I was like a teenager and it was on CNN and Larry King was interviewing Jenny McCarthy.
- [43:53]
Jane Marie
Oh, boy.
- [43:54]
Eric Garcia
And like, and I was like, hey, mom, did I get vaccinated around the time that I got diagnosed? And my mom was like, what are you talking about?
- [44:00]
Jane Marie
You know, everyone gets vaccinated, right?
- [44:04]
Eric Garcia
And I tell that story to be very, very specific, that it's like, I'm almost kind of glad that for all of the issues that living in that time came with, before there was a lot of information, I'm almost kind of glad that I got diagnosed and I kind of grew up in that time because it was before the advent of the Internet and before the Internet became like an essential part of everyday life.
- [44:26]
Jane Marie
And before Jim Carrey and Jennifer McCarthy.
- [44:29]
Eric Garcia
McCarthy and before the Internet became really a cesspool of misinformation.
- [44:33]
Jane Marie
You know, do you still pledge to have answers by September or is that going to be the beginning of this process and are you open to following the science regarding, regardless of whether it confirms some of your expectations or not?
- [44:45]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I mean, we're going to, we're going to follow this science no matter what it says, and we will have some of the answers by September.
- [44:54]
Jane Marie
What do you think RFK's September plan is?
- [44:58]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, so, you know, Trump essentially tasked him with trying to find out what's up with this, you know, this epidemic in vaccines or whatever, and to come up with, like, results by September. Which, you know, I joke all the time that, like, if RFK really wants to know what's up with autism, all he needs to go is go to the NIH and save all the studies that Elon Musk hasn't cut. But, but, but, but, but, but like, you know, it's impossible to do that within, what, five months. So, you know, what, what, what worries me about this. You know, we're joking a lot about this. We're having fun. But like, the thing that I worry about the most is like, look, you and I are high info. We're sickos. We enjoy, we enjoy following the stuff. But like, for the average everyday person who their kid just got diagnosed or they're trying to get IEP accommodations or whatever, if they see on TV the Health and Human Services secretary say this, even if it is somebody who works for Donald Trump, even if it's a Democrat, there's this expectation that government data.
- [46:00]
Jane Marie
Are accurate, that he's, that he's drawing.
- [46:02]
Eric Garcia
That he's drawing upon, that he's drawing upon expertise that it's not just him. I remember around Covid, like, there was a lot of talk about, like, would you take the vaccine under Donald Trump? And I was like, sign me up, man. I'll go get vaccinated at a Trump golf course, man. These agencies are supposed to be seen as nonpartisan. So even if for any issues that people might have with Donald Trump, they should be able to trust their government on this information and this data. And so what I worry about is that just him having this perch gives credibility to these ideas.
- [46:37]
Jane Marie
Right, right. That's what I'm worried about as well, is that he's in charge.
- [46:42]
Eric Garcia
Yeah.
- [46:43]
Jane Marie
And he's espousing clearly disproven theories about the origins of autism and then this promise that he's going to find the environmental cause. And that worries me a lot because does that mean that we don't vaccinate any. Anyone anymore?
- [47:03]
Eric Garcia
Yeah.
- [47:03]
Jane Marie
And then we all just have polio.
- [47:06]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. Or, like, you know, I mean. And I think we should also take into account the Department of Health and Human Services is a sprawling bureaucracy. I'm sorry for being, like, wonky.
- [47:16]
Jane Marie
No, yeah.
- [47:16]
Eric Garcia
Like, I'm talking like. Like, this could. Includes the cdc, which is like, tracks infectious disease, tracks pandemics. Is our main. Is almost on the front line of combating the pandemic, as we saw during COVID This is the nih, which is the biggest financial benefactor of autism research, not just in the country, but arguably the world. This is Medicare and Medicaid, and they.
- [47:43]
Jane Marie
Also work in conjunction with all of our kind of emergency services, like fema.
- [47:48]
Eric Garcia
Right.
- [47:50]
Jane Marie
They're everywhere.
- [47:51]
Eric Garcia
Fema, the Pentagon, it determines. You know, when I mentioned Medicare and Medicaid, I'm talking about what are the. What are the kind of treatments and therapies that are covered under insurance?
- [48:01]
Jane Marie
Yeah. RFK is in charge of that now.
- [48:04]
Eric Garcia
Yeah. Like, this is a huge bureaucracy. This is a huge, huge government entity. And he has a lot of discretion. Like, I don't think people recognize how much discretion he has as Secretary of.
- [48:17]
Jane Marie
Health and Human Services and meaning that he could say to Medicare and Medicaid, oh, we are no longer covering such and such treatment or vaccines or the.
- [48:32]
Eric Garcia
Exact opposite, which is that he'll mandate coverage for, like, I don't know, like, collation therapy or, like, that's where you're supposed to.
- [48:41]
Jane Marie
That's when people have mercury poisoning, correct?
- [48:45]
Eric Garcia
Yes, correct. Yeah. Metal poisoning. Yes.
- [48:47]
Jane Marie
Yes. But that's meant for acute cases, not just a kid who chewed on a windowsill for a Second. Second.
- [48:55]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, exactly. But, but like, I mean, but like that, that's the point that I'm trying to make, is that it is. He has the ability and the discretion to reallocate billions of dollars with a.
- [49:09]
Jane Marie
B, you know, to his crusade.
- [49:12]
Eric Garcia
To his crusade, correct. Yes.
- [49:14]
Jane Marie
Yeah.
- [49:14]
Eric Garcia
You know, that's the point that I want to make. You know, him promoting misinformation from his perch is in and of itself bad, bad, but it is also the authority he has vested in him through that, that agency.
- [49:28]
Jane Marie
Besides recommending chelation therapy to detoxify folks, are there other things that he could do to change our health national.
- [49:39]
Eric Garcia
Like our, well, like, I mean, I don't know if you saw yesterday Jay Bhattacharya, who's now the head of the nih, was talking about, like, collecting health data of autistic people. So that's something that we would have to take into account. Bhattachary says that new data would allow. This is from CBS News. New data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy's autism studies to study comprehensive data with broad coverage of the US Population for the first time. The NIH says, He said the idea of the platform is that existing data resources are often fragmented and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will pay multiple times for the same data resource. So basically it's going to create the, this centralized hub for sharing information about autism.
- [50:20]
Jane Marie
So HIPAA's done?
- [50:21]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, yeah. So like, they're saying like a swath of confidential medical data to, to, to link together for the first time. So, like, that's what, that's what Bhattacharya said.
- [50:30]
Jane Marie
Why don't they understand that that's what research studies are? I mean, I'm not saying you unders, you, you would know the answer to this.
- [50:37]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, no, no, I mean, I, I, I know, but like, you know, the point being is that, like, I mean, well, Bhattacharya was also like the COVID fringe person on the fringes with COVID Yeah. So, like, a lot. I mean, it's important to recognize a lot of these folks gained prominence during COVID 19. And then it's important to recognize that a lot of the COVID conspiracy theorists cut their teeth in the autism vaccine pant.
- [51:00]
Jane Marie
Why would he want to basically violate HIPAA and compile health data from folks who have been diagnosed as autistic rather than spend money continuing very fruitful research and studies that are done ethically?
- [51:21]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, well, like, I mean, I think that to them, this is the way that they can look into the epidemic and why the numbers are so high. Yeah, but I mean, and again, it's a complete disregard for the actual research and the actual study science. There are real legitimate things that we should be looking at when it comes to autism. For example, like I think something like a third of all autistic people will develop epilepsy. And, and look, epilepsy can be deadly, right?
- [51:56]
Jane Marie
Yep.
- [51:56]
Eric Garcia
You can die from seizures. You know, heart disease is one of the biggest killers of autistic people without intellectual disability followed by suicide. We should be focused on, you know, what are the best long term care and support services that autistic people need.
- [52:11]
Jane Marie
Yeah, the fallout is immense.
- [52:14]
Eric Garcia
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like this is going to take away really crucial resources when we have such limited time.
- [52:28]
Jane Marie
I really appreciate you giving us your time and I find this endlessly fascinating and something that we'll keep returning to because I like science.
- [52:38]
Eric Garcia
Me too.
- [52:38]
Jane Marie
I'm a big fan of science.
- [52:41]
Eric Garcia
Same, same.
- [52:42]
Jane Marie
But Eric, again, thank you so much for giving us your time.
- [52:46]
Eric Garcia
Thank you so much.
- [52:47]
Jane Marie
Keep fighting the good fight.
- [52:48]
Eric Garcia
Thank you.
- [52:55]
Jane Marie
The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere, produced by me and Dan Gallucci. Our Tip line is 323-248-1488 if you want to tell your story foreign.
- [53:29]
Podcast Host
This podcast is brought to you by Aura. Imagine waking up to find your bank account drained, bills for loans you never took out, a warrant for your arrest, all because someone stole your identity. Hackers aren't waiting. Why are you? That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Your personal data is a goldmine for hackers, and Aura helps lock it down. Aura monitors the dark web, blocks data brokers from selling your information. Includes a VPN for private browsing and a password manager to secure your accounts before criminals break in. For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free@aura.com safety. That's Aura.com safety to sign up and start protecting yourself and your loved ones. That's a U r a.com safety terms apply. Check the site for details.
- [54:23]
Eric Garcia
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hey, guys. Welcome to Giggly Squad, a place where we make fun of everything, but most importantly ourselves. I'm Paige Desorbo. I'm Hannah Burner. Welcome to the squad. Giggly Squad started on Summer House when we were giggling during an inappropriate time. But of course, we can't be managed. So we decided to start this podcast to continue giggling. We will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching fashion trends pep talks where we give advice, mental health moments and games and guests. Listen to Giggly Squad on ACAST or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:02]
Jane Marie
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.