The Conspiracy Theories of RFK Jr. and Why We Should Listen to Him Anyway
Is the science settled? Is RFK Jr. a liar? Read more to find out.
I’ve been putting this off for a long time for fear of turning people off. Though, I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that we should avoid talking about politics with those we disagree with. I feel that this lack of dialog has led to the political division we see today that threatens to tear our society apart. So whether you agree with me or not, I hope you’ll give me a listen. I’m going to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his conspiracy theories, and why we should give him a listen anyway.
I believe, wholeheartedly, that he is the best possible candidate for president of the United States. More than that, I believe that you could agree! However, he is a figure surrounded by controversy. Some people distrust anyone who comes from a wealthy political family. Some people distrust anyone who affiliates with the democratic party. Though more people, it seems, have a reflexive suspicion of RFK Jr because of his conspiracy theories around vaccines—most notably, the link between vaccines and autism.
There are many reasons I love RFK Jr. He is unwilling to resort to personal attacks on political adversaries. He is willing to admit when he doesn't know about certain topics, saying, “I need to do more research on that.” He is passionately committed to his convictions even in the face of opposition, derision, and even outright threat. He has a long-standing career of fighting big polluters in legal battles on the side of everyday people and winning. He is a recovered heroin addict and does nothing to hide this part of his personal history. He is a lover of nature. He has a committed daily spiritual practice that includes meditation. He hires advisors to his personal staff with whom he disagrees. He is compassionate to the troubles of everyday people. He is intelligent, informed, and incisive in his critiques of the status quo. He is a defender of democracy and is staunchly anti-imperialist in his foreign policy views. He has compassion for even his enemies. He is willing to change his mind and even admit when he's wrong.
These are just some of the personal qualities that I perceive and admire in RFK Jr. These are the reasons why I believe many love RFK Jr. and why he has the highest net favorability ratings of any presidential hopeful in the polls.
I have found it a bit baffling, then, when I mention his name to others and am responded to with something like suspicion. When I ask what the issue is, it's usually the same. People are suspicious that he's either an out-of-touch conspiracy theorist or an outright liar because of his views on vaccines. So while I believe there are countless reasons to love the man and support his bid for the United States, I'm going to zero in on the vaccine issue here in the hopes of alleviating any concern that he's either a nutjob or a liar. Not only is he neither of these things, but his concerns are legitimate, as I'm about to demonstrate.
His most far-out claim is regarding the link between vaccines and autism. He has been boldly claiming since at least 2006 that there isn't sufficient safety testing for vaccines in the US and he suggests a possible link between vaccines and autism. Yes, he really believes this. And no, this is not crazy.
This seems absurd to many people because we have been told repeatedly that there is no link between vaccines and autism and that any link has been disproven. Many of us have probably also heard that the original study that suggested a link between vaccines and autism was redacted for being an outright fraud.
I've listened to the brilliant Sam Harris talk about RFK Jr on his podcast. Harris suggested that RFK Jr.'s claims linking vaccines and autism are strange given that the only evidence for such a link is the aforementioned study. If that study were the only evidence, it would indeed be a strange claim. However, this isn't the case. The evidence that RFK Jr. cites for implicating vaccines for the rise in autism is varied and detailed, as articles on the website of his nonprofit, Children's Health Defense, show.
One article, published three years ago, does quite a bit to demonstrate this. I'll link the article here for anyone who is interested in reading it—which I recommend. Though, I'll mention my major takeaways here.
First of all, many of the scientists and officials who denigrate the vaccine-autism link will fiercely argue that such claims are patently absurd because such a link has already been “disproven.” This claim does much to undermine confidence in those who claim such a link is real, though the issue in this is much the same as the issue when media outlets publish scientific studies with clickbait titles. Just like the titles that oversimplify the results of a scientific study, the claim that the link between vaccines and autism has been “disproven” is wildly misrepresenting the science.
It is indeed true that there have been multiple studies done that do not show a link between vaccines and autism—but these studies are far from complete. The studies most often cited that deny a vaccine-autism link only study one of two things: either the MMR vaccine or the ingredient thimerasol.
This chart demonstrates, quite easily, how incomplete this body of research is:
On the vaccine schedule suggested by the CDC at the publishing of the article, babies receive 11 different vaccines in their first 18 months of life. One of them, Hepatitis B, is often given to babies at birth. I'll discuss this particular vaccine more later. Though the point here is that of the 11 different vaccines given to infants, only one has been studied specifically for a link between the vaccines and autism. Then there are the studies exploring the link between autism and specific ingredients. Of the 37 ingredients present in the vaccines given to infants, only one of them has been studied specifically for the vaccine-autism link. This is hardly complete. To suggest, as most of us have heard numerous times, that the link between vaccines and autism has been disproven is either the result of a profound misunderstanding of the research or an outright lie.
To look deeper, even the studies cited that demonstrate a lack of correlation between vaccines and autism show poor research methodologies. Some of them suffer from small sample sizes that make the studies ineffective in conclusively proving anything. Though, that's not all. In the often-cited study, “Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status among US Children with Older Siblings with and without Autism”, there is something important to note. It explores rates of autism in the “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” groups. However, the term “unvaccinated” is misleading because, in fact, those in the “unvaccinated” research group were only those who didn't receive the MMR vaccine. These “unvaccinated” individuals may have still received any or all of the other 10 vaccines recommended for infants.
Not only that, but even these studies are much more mild in their assessment of their findings than what we're told. In the study, “Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of Computerized Health Maintenance Organization Databases,” which is often cited by RFK Jr.’s detractors, the researchers conclude the following:
“The biological plausibility of the small doses of ethylmercury present in vaccines leading to increased risks of neurodevelopmental disorders is uncertain.”
That's right, uncertain. Even the researchers don't claim that the vaccine-autism link is “disproven”. Responsible scientists would then look at such a study and conclude that more research needs to be done. To suggest, in this case, that the link has been disproven is not only inaccurate, it's irresponsible.
All this is explored in far greater detail in the aforementioned article. Though I mention these to point out that, at least in these studies, the link between vaccines and autism has certainly not been disproven. Even more than that, there are actually multiple studies out there that suggest there is a link between vaccines and autism. I'll just mention one. It's in regard to the Hepatitis B vaccine given at birth I mentioned earlier.
The study in question is from 2007, titled “Hepatitis B Triple Series Vaccine and Developmental Disability in US Children Aged 1–9 Years,”. The results of the study are astounding and disturbing. The study found that as compared to children who did not receive the Hepatitis B vaccine, those who received the full Hep-B series of 3 on schedule have a 9 times greater likelihood of ending up in special education classes later in life:
“This study found statistically significant evidence to suggest that boys in United States who were vaccinated with the triple series Hepatitis B vaccine . . . were more susceptible to developmental disability than were unvaccinated boys. . . . The odds of receiving EIS [special education] were approximately nine times as great for vaccinated boys (n = 46) as for unvaccinated boys (n = 7), after adjustment for confounders.”
The researchers go on to say this:
“[The study] will be among the first university-based population studies to suggest an association between a vaccine and an increased risk for autism. And that would be in direct contradiction to all those MMR and thimerosal studies that purportedly found no such link.” (emphasis mine)
Many of those who bombard RFK Jr. with accusations of being a conspiracy theorist often call upon him to “trust the science”. Yet this is what the science actually says. At best, the science is inconclusive. At worst, the science suggests that vaccines do, in fact, cause autism and even other developmental disorders.
Now, this was a shocking discovery to me. I am not a scientist. So I, like most people, trusted the officials and those I knew when they confidently claimed the vaccine-autism link was disproven. Now I see that it was not.
I want to be clear about something, though. This is not to judge most of those doctors who have been saying this. There are very few people among us who have the time or energy to review every bit of research that is out there. We must rely on other folks to sift through and disseminate relevant information. Most of my immediate family is directly involved in the medical field. I have no doubt that they, too, wholeheartedly believe that the vaccine-autism link was disproven. They trusted the information that they had been given.
There are people, though, who are sufficiently motivated to do the research themselves. These people are, often, those who have children with autism or other developmental disorders that began shortly after vaccination. These are the people who dig deep, find troubling things, and look for solutions. According to RFK Jr.'s report, these are the troubled parents who first came to him before 2006 and urged him to look deeper into the matter.
Many of RFK Jr.'s detractors think that RFK Jr. is deliberately spreading “misinformation” about vaccines, undermining faith in the medical profession, and even spreading hysteria. I've listened to one panel discussion where many medical people talk about this. They suggest that RFK Jr. is leveraging the hysteria of troubled parents for his own personal gain. This accusation hardly seems to hold water.
In response to the concerns of these parents, by RFK Jr.'s own report, he founded the Children's Health Defense. It is on their website that I found the article I cited above. It takes only a cursory glance to discover that this organization is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. This means that their finances are publicly available and—notably—that RFK Jr. is almost certainly not getting rich off the matter.
Furthermore, RFK Jr. is a lawyer. It takes little more than a look at his Wikipedia page to see the priorities that have guided his professional life. He has a career-long history of representing everyday people in litigation of large corporations for damages to public health and livelihood caused by pollution. To put it another way, he has represented politically disempowered people in taking on the Goliath of big business to hold these businesses accountable. Is that the career history of a person who is prioritizing selfish gain at the expense of public health? If he was a lawyer up to selfish gain, there are surely easier ways to find success. One need only track the billboards on the highway to see countless examples of lawyers who are working in that business.
On the contrary, RFK Jr. has suffered because of his stance on vaccines. He has been banned from social media, publicly demeaned and defamed, and has even suffered death threats.
Now, I tend to avoid explanations of what's going on in the world that depend upon an assumption of anyone's negative intent. However, it's helpful to track where one's selfish motivations might lie.
Some of the biggest detractors of RFK Jr.'s claims are Paul Offit and Peter Hotez. Both of these men hold patents for vaccines. These men are definitely benefitting personally from their stance on vaccines. I will not accuse them of lying or self-serving. However, it's clear that they have far more to gain professionally from defaming vaccine skeptics than RFK Jr. does from founding a nonprofit to promote an extremely unpopular view.
Finally, I want to share something of a more personal nature regarding my own journey in exploring these issues. As mentioned before, I'm not a scientist. I'm not particularly practiced or fluent in the language of scientific research. It takes me a long time to interpret what I read in scientific journals and to sift through the vast amounts of data and scientific jargon. When I listen to those people who defame RFK Jr., I often end up feeling either demeaned or even more confused about the data.
It seems to me that the “trust the science” statement is really rhetoric that means “trust the scientists.” Sam Harris, in his podcast, suggests that it's absurd that RFK Jr. says, “I'm not a scientist, but I understand science.” There's an attitude there that seems to suggest that everyday citizens couldn’t possibly read and interpret scientific data for themselves. It seems to me that statements like this actively discourage everyday citizens from trying to discern the truth for themselves.
This is very different than what I feel when I read or listen to folks who do suggest a vaccine-autism link. Rather than telling me to trust the officials, these people communicate with me as if I'm an intelligent person who is capable of discerning the truth for myself. I'm given data that is explained to me in clear English, with sources cited and I'm encouraged to do my own research. I feel respected by such people. I feel emboldened and empowered. While not denying the limitations of my education, I'm encouraged to a sense that I can discern the truth. I don't have to purely depend upon the academic gatekeepers of the science, but can rather look at the data myself. The result of this is that rather than feeling confused and disoriented; I feel informed, empowered, and clear.
Some might suggest that this emotional reasoning precludes me from an objective, rational understanding of the data. However, I would suggest that each one of us is, in fact, intelligent enough to understand the data. More than that, I'll suggest that discerning truth from falsehood is an innate human quality—a mechanism that our ancestors depended on in order to survive. The perception of truth, though, is not a purely intellectual thing, but an intuition of the body. Think of the times you've been lied to by someone. How did you know it was a lie? If you're anything like me, something just felt off. Many of us have had the experience of dismissing such intuitions to our own detriment. Perhaps many of us have done so here, resulting in a widespread misunderstanding of the science to the result that children are suffering and vaccine manufacturers are making money off of our mistake. This is precisely what RFK Jr. suggests.
Now I think most people who believe that the vaccine-autism link has been disproven are not lying, but are simply mistaken. However, I have come to believe that there are people who are deliberately lying and that the financial interests of large institutions support the maintenance of that lie. Furthermore, I believe that the deception around vaccines and autism is only one instance of a massive body of deception—and probably not even the most damaging one.
It's clear, I think, to all of us that our world is in dire straits. The social fabric appears to be falling to pieces. The climate is in chaos. We are on the potential brink of WWIII.
It seems extraordinarily important in this time that we all take the time to think clearly and to question our own assumptions—even that of so-called “common sense.” If common sense was totally accurate, would we be living in such dire circumstances?
It has been disturbing to me how much of the political landscape is filled with corruption, childish power struggles, personal attacks, and destructive ideology. To me, RFK Jr. is a shining beacon of sanity, value-driven conviction, and compassion. I've listened to many hours of his interviews at this point, and these qualities shine through consistently.
Yet, there are still so many people who have been reluctant to listen to him for fear of being deceived into his crazy vaccine-conspiracy ideology. Though, I hope I've demonstrated clearly enough that his vaccine ideas are far from crazy and are, in fact, grounded in the science his detractors call him to trust. If you've been reluctant to lend him your ear because of this, I hope you're now ready to give him a shot.
He stands firmly on a platform of the values of honesty, transparency, conversation, compassion, and faith. His vision for America and the world is one that I believe the vast majority of us would be thrilled to live in. I want to give his vision a chance, but we can only travel there together. RFK Jr. only has hope for the presidency if we are willing to offer our support.
So I ask you, if you've been reluctant to hear him out, please do give him a listen. His vision is grounded and hopeful and he appears to have the conviction to fight for it on our behalf. And I'll tell you now, among all the things he stands for in his presidential bid, very little of it has anything to do with vaccines and autism.
Give him a listen. A good place to start is here:
20-minute CNBC Interview
2.5 Hour Lex Fridman Podcast Interview
Thank you, for taking the time to listen to me. May we make our way together to a more beautiful world.
Wonderfully written and well thought-out! Thank you for sharing this, hoping as well that more people can open their minds and hearts to this information🤞🏽
At first I was intimidated by the length, but this was really well done and I'm glad I read it. It was a good use of my time. And my stance has swayed a little.