Autistic people and their families in the U.S. are getting very worried about their safety. The current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr (RFK) is on
a witch hunt, targeting autistic people and claiming that autism has supposedly become an "epidemic" that "destroys families."Together with the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he is even planning to create an autism "disease"
database or registry to study autism.
Sign the petition to demand that RFK and the rest of the Trump administration stop demonizing and targeting autistic people and cease their crusade of cruelty!Back in April 2025, he and the NIH had claimed they were going to be developing a series of "national disease registries, including a new one for autism." A few days later, they responded to public backlash by
walking back this announcement, saying that actually, there would be no "registry" after all. Whether that is true or not, it seems that their underlying plan remains the same.
According to
The Independent, the NIH intends to gather the
private medical records of everyday Americans in order to amass huge swaths of information about people on the autism spectrum. Officials have indicated they are interested in collecting data from both
federal (public) and also commercial (private) databases. This could include information on prescription medications that Americans take, data from
fitness trackers like smartwatches, claims from private health insurance companies, and more.
RFK claims that autism is a "preventable disease," which he aims to eventually eradicate. He's even blamed life-saving vaccines as a supposed cause of autism. This is nonsense and not scientifically supported. Autism is as old as time. While he and Donald Trump complain that more people are getting diagnosed each year, that's only because doctors and mental health professionals are becoming more aware of the long-overlooked signals, leading to more recognition and therefore more diagnoses.
But
RFK is determined to see autistic people as "tragic" and a burden on society. During a recent press conference, he claimed: "
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." This is insulting, cruel, and not an accurate picture of most people's experiences.
Authorities under the Trump administration have
already shown that they are intent on targeting other marginalized populations, including immigrants from Latin American countries and trans individuals.
Expanding to also include the autism spectrum community is a worrying escalation. As one author for The Guardian wrote, this is "typical" of a political party that
"loathes human difference."We must demand that the Trump administration and RFK in particular stand down and stop their relentless and dehumanizing attacks on autistic people. They must keep their hands away from Americans' private, sensitive medical data. Sign the petition now!