What happens in the USA to disabled people reverberates in Canadian policies and classrooms (Part 1 – RFK Jrs history)

I do not know where to begin addressing the many calamitous policies being imposed on disability communities in the USA under the new Trump regime, and how these are impacting Canada’s disabled community. I do not know how to explain the myriad ways misinformation is being spread from the very top of the governmental structure, influencing the way Canadian disabled people are being treated in profoundly negative ways. The problem is that a lot of this is based on observation. I do not have solid data to prove that one thing is negatively impacting the other, so one might counter that both may be influenced by the same trends. However, over the next several posts, I am going to endeavour to demonstrate that government-directed rhetoric in the USA is influencing trends that, in turn, are bleeding over into Canada, rather than the other way around.

It is impossible to discuss this topic without mentioning Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has become synonymous with the phrase “Make America Healthy Again.” RFK Jr. ran against Trump, going so far as to compare Trump to Hitler, calling him a threat to democracy and a bully. This was while running a presidential campaign driven by conspiracy theories and fueled by misinformation. Shannon Bond included the following in an article titled RFK Jr. is building a presidential campaign around conspiracy theories:

“Wi-Fi causes cancer and ‘leaky brain’…Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings…Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender…Aids may not be caused by HIV…vaccines cause autism (Shannon, 2023).”

Each piece of misinformation cited above had unique repercussions for the disability community in the USA, and arguably, spreading outward to countries like Canada.

The first bit of misinformation in the quotation served to increase distrust in technology. Distrust in technology is often warranted. However, along with this general mistrust came undercurrents of antisemitism. It was implied that prominent Jewish entrepreneurs were responsible for the promotion of various kinds of supposedly cancer-causing technology.

Misinformation about antidepressants being to blame for school shootings shifted blame from guns to a sector of the population that is more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. It allowed policymakers to suggest increased surveillance of disabled people with the pretext that such surveillance was in the interest of public safety.

The idea that chemicals in the water supply could cause children to become transgender, of course, added to growing anti-trans rhetoric. The misinformation that AIDS may not be caused by HIV is referred to as “AIDS Denialism.” It has led people to mistrust science and reject scientifically rigorous studies and treatments in favour of unproven pseudoscience.

The final bit of misinformation has had the most profound impact on the neurodivergent community: That vaccines cause autism.

This misinformation received a significant boost when Andrew Wakefield, a former doctor who has since lost his license for his actions, published a poorly conducted and misleading research paper in The Lancet in February of 1998. The respectability of this medical journal gave undeserved credibility to Wakefield’s article. The historical context of mothers having been told they caused their children’s autism through cold and distant personalities, causing the children to be unable to bond with them, made Wakefield’s suggestion that there was something else to blame for autism well-received.

Wakefield’s research was based on a cherry-picked sample of 12 children, without a control group, and involved manipulated data. This is not a research study that would normally be accorded serious scientific weight. However, as previously stated, many parents were primed to jump on anything that shifted blame away from something they did wrong and offered the possibility that some kind of action could prevent a child from becoming autistic. Wakefield drew attention to his study with a pre-publication press conference, which resulted in a media frenzy. He followed this with numerous public appearances, advocating his ideas to those in positions of power and influence, and aligning himself with prominent public figures.

RFK’s advocacy against vaccines goes back as far as 2005, but it is built upon Andrew Wakefield’s thoroughly debunked 1998 article from The Lancet. RFK began to promote the disproven connection between the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism, despite the 1998 study being retracted in 2010 and Wakefield subsequently losing his medical license for unethical behaviour and fraud. In the years that followed, Kennedy’s organization, Children’s Health Defence, continually promoted misinformation produced by Wakefield through methods like the creation of the anti-vaccination film called Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe in 2016.

This background helps us understand the perspective RFK Jr. brought to the table when he aligned himself with Donald Trump in exchange for being named the Chief of Health and Human Services. This appointment has had devastating impacts on disability communities in the USA that have radiated outward to other countries, including Canada.

In future follow-ups to this post, I will attempt to demonstrate some of the damage caused not only by RFK Jr., but by many of those in power in the USA, on disability communities in the USA and subsequently other countries such as Canada.