Not a Debate. Just a Platform for Harm
The New York Sun wants you to believe there’s a brave new conversation unfolding about autism. But don’t be fooled. Its recent article, "Inside the Autism Debate: What We Know, What We Don’t," doesn’t spark dialogue. It sanitizes discredited rhetoric and hands a megaphone to one of its most damaging purveyors: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Let’s be clear: Kennedy isn’t entering the conversation. He’s hijacking it—again. And the Sun isn’t holding him accountable. It’s rehabilitating him.
By casting Kennedy as a thoughtful seeker of truth and the autism "debate" as a mystery worth reopening, the article subtly erases decades of harm. It doesn't mention the scientific consensus on vaccines. It doesn't feature a single autistic voice. It does, however, offer readers a familiar seduction: maybe autism has a cause. Maybe it can be prevented. Maybe someone like Kennedy is the only one bold enough to find out.
This is not reporting. It's narrative laundering. It grants legitimacy to a platform built on fear, not fact—and pretends that doing so is journalistic neutrality.
There is no "debate" over whether autistic people deserve to exist without being pathologized. There is no breakthrough waiting to be discovered that will suddenly redeem decades of Kennedy's pseudoscientific crusades. And there is no excuse for publishing this kind of soft-focus propaganda in the name of informing the public.
If you want to spotlight autism in 2025, start with autistic people. Not the ones speaking over us. Not the ones speaking for us. Us.
Because the only "debate" here is how long we’ll let power disguise itself as curiosity.