Bouquets and Brickbats
To US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for embarking on a “massive testing and research effort” to help understand the causes of the alarming rise in autism, a condition that was vanishingly rare fifty years ago but now affects about 3 percent of American children under the age of 8. “Everything is on the table,” Kennedy said, during a recent interview with Fox News, “our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kinds of changes that may have triggered this epidemic.” While Kennedy critics were quick to denounce the Health Secretary for a multitude of sins, from being willing in the past to consider the possible role of some early childhood vaccines in triggering the illness to noting that some autistic children will never speak or be able to use the toilet unassisted — conditions that afflict perhaps 25 percent of children diagnosed with autism — we find the instinct to look away from a serious and increasingly common childhood …