Autism Doesn’t Need Curing — Policy Does
Their Crisis is Not Ours
On September 22, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., unveiled a plan to fight what he called the “epidemic of autism.” Days later, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), joined by a coalition of disability organizations, released a response. The distance between the two was not just about evidence. It was about who gets to define us — and who gets erased when they do.
A Fever Dream of Bad Science
At the White House, President Trump and Secretary Kennedy offered the country a cocktail of misinformation. Tylenol causes autism, they said. Vaccines cause autism, they repeated. A chemotherapy drug could “treat” autism, they promised. These aren’t harmless missteps. They are scripts written to turn our lives into pathology.
The truth is simpler and harder to spin: autism has always existed. Long before Tylenol, long before the current vaccine schedule, long before the medical marketplace found ways to profit from panic. Our existence is not a side effect. But when leaders call autism an epidemic, the story they’re selling is that autistic people are a problem to be eliminated.
A Counter-Frame with Teeth
ASAN’s statement doesn’t just disagree — it refuses the frame entirely. Autism is not a disease. Autistic people need supports, not cures. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), legally mandated to meet, has been silent for years under this administration. That silence is not neutral. It is a deliberate exclusion of autistic input from the very spaces designed to hold it.
Coalition letters can sometimes feel hollow. This one didn’t. It was led by an autistic-run organization. It was joined by groups across the disability community. And it was paired with a plain-language explainer, so the very people being discussed could access and engage. That is what credibility looks like: not just authority, but accessibility.
How Harm Reaches the Ground
When misinformation takes the microphone, the damage does not stay abstract. Pregnant women are told to ignore their doctors. Parents are seduced into chasing treatments with no evidence. Vaccine rates drop, putting children and immunocompromised people at risk. And neighbors who hear “epidemic” learn to become uncomfortable around or even fear aut loathe autistic kids instead of welcoming them.
This is how ableism travels: through policy speeches, through headlines, through the quiet reinforcement of fear. It shapes what medications people take, how children are treated, and whether autistic lives are seen as futures to support or mistakes to prevent.
Questions That Cut Deeper
If autistic people held the microphone, would anyone call our existence an epidemic? If science has spoken for decades, why do politicians still resurrect myths for applause? What futures are lost each time billions of dollars are funneled into cure projects instead of communication access, housing and supports that let us live fully? Who benefits from this endless cycle of crisis, if not the industries built on our supposed brokenness?
The Real Epidemic
This moment is not about Tylenol or leucovorin. It is about who is allowed to narrate autism in the public square. The epidemic is not autism. The epidemic is deficit framing, recycled through press conferences and dressed up as policy. It is the steady drumbeat of leaders who prefer us silent and compliant or gone.
ASAN’s answer matters because it doesn’t just correct the record. It asserts a different truth: autistic people are here, we are organized and we are watching. Autism doesn’t need erasure. Autism doesn’t need a cure. Policy does. Until leadership stops writing our existence as a crisis, we will keep answering back — not to convince, but to refuse. Because refusal, too, is a kind of survival.