( CNN ) Recently , Robert Kennedy Jr. was in Sacramento , California , to campaign against Senate Bill 227 , which makes it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinations . In his remarks at an anti-vaccination movie screening , he decided to compare `` vaccine-induced '' autism to the Holocaust . He said , `` They get the shot , that night they have a fever of a hundred and three , they go to sleep , and three months later their brain is gone , '' Kennedy said . `` This is a holocaust , what this is doing to our country . '' A few days later , he apologized to people who were outraged on behalf of the memory of the Holocaust . To many , it 's sacrilege to compare any lesser issue to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis . In a statement , Kennedy said , `` I want to apologize to all whom I offended by my use of the word to describe the autism epidemic . I employed the term during an impromptu speech as I struggled to find an expression to convey the catastrophic tragedy of autism , which has now destroyed the lives of over 20 million children and shattered their families . '' Robert Kennedy Jr. has apologized for the wrong things . First and foremost , vaccines do not cause autism . The two have nothing to do with each other . Second , he seems to think people with autism are `` gone , '' their lives `` destroyed '' and their families `` shattered . '' Autism is not a death sentence . People with autism are not missing or destroyed . They are everywhere , trying to live their lives in a society that too often demeans them as subhuman , missing or worthless . Kennedy 's rhetoric is a problem , even beyond the fraudulent basis for his claims about vaccines . People who believe autism is an environmental disease try to cure kids with quack treatments like giving them bleach-based enemas . Others , believing autism functions as a death sentence , even kill their children . I am worried about the effect of having such a powerful , high-profile member of our political class endorse this demeaning depiction of life with autism . I reached out to a number of autistic activists for comment . Ari Ne'eman , president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network , wrote , `` Robert Kennedy Jr , who has engaged with autism only to spread lies , misinformation and dehumanizing rhetoric , has never meaningfully engaged in efforts to improve the lives of autistic Americans . While his father , uncle and many others in the Kennedy-Shriver family championed the rights of people with disabilities , he has instead cast his lot with those who use pseudo-science to question our humanity . '' These are harsh words , but try to see the situation through Ne'eman 's eyes . Not only is Kennedy perpetuating a discredited theory , but he 's also suggesting that it 's better to let your children get preventable and sometimes fatal diseases than risk becoming autistic . The usual response to people like Ne'eman is that he is `` high functioning , '' but what of the burden to families who are struggling to care for less able individuals ? Henry Frost , an autistic teenager and writer , is devastated by this focus on burden . Last year , he wrote a post to other autistic children : `` Know you are not a burden or trouble for being . You are a person who has every right to be . A family that is saying love but saying you are so hard so wrong for not being as they wanted . The family is wrong . Not You . '' Meanwhile , Amy Sequenzia , an autistic activist and blogger , wrote , `` I am very disabled , have most of the usual not autism but co-occurring conditions , seizures almost every day , but am happy , proud and accomplished , with the human supports I have . That 's what is missing . Acceptance . '' As children , Sequenzia and Frost might well have been just the kinds of people labeled as `` gone , '' by Kennedy . Clearly , both are very much present . The solution lies in understanding autism and related conditions as part of human diversity . Michael S. Monje Jr. , an autistic writer and editor with Autonomous Press , wrote , `` The neurodiversity movement is a direct counter to this kind of attitude . It is a way for autistic people , as well as anyone else who experiences the world differently due to their neurology , to assert that these natural divergences in human development are just that -- natural . The fact that they are largely unsupported by our society as it is currently configured does not make them in any way less natural , less worthy , or less beautiful than other ways of being in the world . '' I wish Kennedy realized how much his apology demeaned people with intellectual disabilities , even as he defended the sacred status of the Holocaust . There is , though , one story from the Holocaust that he might do well to consider . The first group the Nazis systematically exterminated , in the infamous Action T4 , were people with intellectual and other kinds of disabilities . Thousands of children , adolescents and adults were sent to gas chambers , laying the groundwork for the later , larger scale acts of genocide . Underlying Action T4 was the belief that people with disabilities were devoid of value . We fight those beliefs by celebrating neurodiversity , not by fearmongering . Kennedy owes a lot of people another apology .
David Perry : Robert Kennedy Jr. compared autism to the Holocaust , wrongly tied it to vaccines . He says it 's sad such a prominent Kennedy demeans people with autism .