The Neurodiversity Bullies Who Silence Autism Parents

Activists are silencing parents and researchers who speak out about severe autism.

When HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to the podium for his first press conference, the media should have listened. Instead, they sharpened their knives. In what may go down as one of the most important public health addresses in recent memory, Kennedy didn’t mince words: autism is an epidemic, and we’ve been asleep at the wheel. He cited a new California survey showing autism now affects one in every 12.5 boys. Even more shocking, he revealed that 25% of diagnosed children are nonverbal, not toilet trained, and suffer from behavioral symptoms so severe that many will never be able to live independently. These are not just children with social quirks. These are children in crisis.

Rather than lead with Kennedy’s sobering statistics or engage with the urgency of his message, the media misrepresented his words, ignored the data, and filled their stories with boilerplate quotes from activists who insist that autism needs no cure, no cause, and apparently no serious discussion. This wasn’t journalism. It was damage control—on behalf of a powerful and increasingly militant movement that has become known, loosely, as the anti-neurodiversity intimidation complex.

Make no mistake: this is not about the original neurodiversity movement, which began as an effort to reduce stigma and increase inclusion for people with mild autism. That movement had merit. But what we are dealing with now is something very different. This new, radicalized strain sees any effort to understand, treat, or even describe the hardships of severe autism as a form of violence. They claim to speak for “the community,” but they viciously attack anyone—especially parents—who doesn’t toe their line. They dox. They harass. They call employers. They pressure conferences to disinvite speakers. And above all, they work overtime to erase the stories of the families most affected.

Parents of profoundly autistic children—those who are changing diapers on teenagers, calming self-harming episodes, and navigating a system with no safety net—have been told they’re “ableist” for simply describing their reality. Some have lost jobs after sharing their struggles online. Others have been publicly shamed and discredited for supporting medical research into the causes of autism. A 2023 study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders found that 40% of these parents had experienced harassment or ostracism in autism support communities. Many of them have retreated from public life entirely, exhausted not just by their caregiving, but by the constant threat of being labeled enemies of inclusion.

So who are these enforcers of orthodoxy, and what do they want? Unlike many grassroots movements, the anti-neurodiversity activists are unusually well-connected. They have media allies, nonprofit influence, and in some cases, access to government grant money. Their goal is ideological dominance: to redefine autism not as a disability spectrum that includes both high-functioning and profoundly impaired individuals, but as a difference—something to be celebrated, never questioned, and certainly never treated. They oppose cure research, dismiss environmental triggers, and are openly hostile to the idea that autism could have anything to do with toxins or changes in the modern environment. They cling to a genetic explanation, despite overwhelming evidence that genes alone cannot account for the meteoric rise in cases.

This is not harmless. It is dangerous. When parents are silenced, research stalls. When dissent is punished, science becomes theology. We now have a generation of children who are completely dependent on care, and another generation of parents who are being told to suffer quietly—or else. Even Robert Kennedy, now one of the most powerful health officials in the country, found his message buried, distorted, and reframed as some sort of fringe conspiracy.

But if the numbers Kennedy cited are even close to accurate—and all signs suggest they are—we are looking at a national emergency. Something happened in the late 1980s. Autism rates began to climb. The EPA published a report in 2010 identifying 1989 as a likely inflection point, and yet, for fifteen years, no one has bothered to follow up. Why? Because the very question has been deemed offensive. Because those who dare to ask it are accused of “harming autistic people.” And because a loud, well-organized minority has convinced the media and many institutions that even researching causes is a betrayal.

This must end.

If society has any hope of addressing the autism crisis, we need to start by defending the right to ask uncomfortable questions. We need to protect parents from online mobs, from professional retribution, and from the twisted idea that being honest about their child’s suffering is some form of hate speech. We must redirect research funding to where the need is most urgent—profound autism—not just diversity messaging. And we must force the institutions that have allowed this silence to persist to reckon with what they’ve done.

Kennedy’s press conference was not a declaration of war—it was a cry for sanity. For twenty years, we’ve been collecting data, but doing nothing meaningful with it. We can’t afford another twenty years of silence, intimidation, and narrative control.

The people being shouted down aren’t extremists. They’re exhausted. They’re doing the hardest job imaginable, and they’ve been abandoned by a culture that cares more about optics than outcomes. It’s time we stood with them.

Before it’s too late.