Protect Our Children, Not Big Pharma

By Helena Hjalmarsson, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

                                                                                                                                                                                      –Mahatma Gandhi

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.

                                                                                                                                                                                       –Carl Sagan

Today, one in every 31 children and one in every 20 boys, has autism.

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In 1987, only 330 out of every million children were affected. With numbers escalating at this rate, it is impossible to argue that genetics are causing the increases, no matter how hard senators like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren try.

While Sanders argues that he never took corporate donations, according to OpenSecrets Sanders received $1,422,507 during the 2020 election cycle from pharmaceutical employees. Looking closer at the campaign data from that election, the job titles of the “workers” that Sanders referred to were “scientist, attorney, medical director, chemist, manager, and analyst.” During that same year, Warren received $825,188 from similar sources within the pharmaceutical industry.

The intensity of senators like Sanders and Warren to disrupt Kennedy’s research is impressive. Big Pharma would be proud.

Warren, responding to HHS Secretary Kennedy’s commitment to do research on the epidemiology of autism, stated on X, that she “won’t share Jr. 's lies about autism.”

She added, “It’s disgusting and dangerous,” arguing that “he should apologize and resign.”

Fighting against research and the idea that autism can be prevented, Warren claims to stand by “every kid with autism,” and that she is “in this fight all the way for you.”

Meanwhile, she castigates Kennedy’s desire for new research and wants to believe he’s the enemy of people on the spectrum.

“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth…for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind...Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”

                                                                                                                                                                                             –Mahatma Gandhi

Bobby Kennedy has promised to investigate the cause of autism no matter how much humiliation he has to endure in the process. The truth stands. We are facing an epidemic. The good news is, Kennedy said in his speech on the autism epidemic, it is preventable. Through careful research, we can identify what went wrong and we can change this devastating trajectory.

Who wouldn’t want to research an epidemic? Why is that dangerous and disgusting?

My oldest daughter, now 21, does not think Kennedy should resign. She suffered from profound autism since the devastating day in the fall of 2006 when, right after another batch of mandated vaccines, she had her first of countless seizures, became severely disoriented, drooled uncontrollably for two weeks, and lost her speech.

“Kennedy is a hero for aligning with autism and taking our suffering seriously,” she told me this morning when I asked her what she thinks of all this. “I see him agreeing to a lot of scorn and taking it all on. I see him allowing people to ridicule him but he is still here, fighting for this research.”

Autism is a paradox. My oldest daughter is a wonderful human. She is not only highly intelligent and articulate (she still can’t express herself verbally but uses letter boards to communicate), she is also deeply aware. But I wouldn’t wish on anyone the nightmare she has gone through since she was 3 ½.

I have and will celebrate many, many things about my daughter. But when it comes to her brain trauma at 3 ½, the endless sleepless nights, the desperate crying and screaming, the repetitive, nonsensical verbal speech, her type 1 diabetes, the isolation and exhaustion that she and everyone around her has suffered for almost two decades now, I would rather do research than dismiss her difficulties as “neurodivergent.”

Kennedy, in his speech last week on the need for researching environmental causes of autism, said:

“Autism destroys families.”

No one, who knows or lives with someone with profound autism, would contest this.

“These are children who should not be suffering like this,” Kennedy added.

What part of this statement is problematic? Why is research on this particular issue anti-science? Since when do we dismiss and even celebrate that our children suffer rather than doing what we can to stop it?

What about investigating the underlying factors behind the dramatic increase of autism is wrong and disgusting?

Why is protecting Big Pharma more important than protecting our children?

Helena Hjalmarsson, M.A., L.C.S.W., L.P., is a NeuroMovement Practitioner, Interrelational Psychoanalyst, and author of the books Finding Lina (2013), Beyond Autism (2019), and Already Whole (2022). Her practices and books are informed by the idea that everything is interconnected, the healing powers of true acceptance, and a belief in living in the now. She lives in South Salem, NY with her two daughters, Lina and Elsa.

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