âLove On The Spectrumâ Stars Dani And James Slammed RFK Jr.âs âExtremely Ignorantâ Comments About People With Autism, And Everyone Needs To Hear What They Said
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The Secretary of Health and Human Services claimed that âenvironmental toxinsâ are to blame for the increased rate of autism diagnoses in children. He said, âAutism destroys families, but more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like thisâŠThese are kids, many of them were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when theyâre 2 years old.â
RFK JR: And these are kids who will never pay taxes, theyâll never hold a job, theyâll never play baseball, theyâll never write a poem. Theyâll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted pic.twitter.com/8T3hcYYn9O
â Acyn (@Acyn) April 16, 2025
As an FYI, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that this increased rate (which equates to more than 3% of children) is due to an increase in âaccess to identification among previously underserved groups.â In other words, more children are being tested for autism, hence the rise in diagnoses.
RFK Jr. also said, âThese are kids who will never pay taxes, theyâll never hold a job, theyâll never play baseball, theyâll never write a poem. Theyâll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize, we are doing this to our children.â
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Several internet users quickly labeled RFK Jr.âs comments âvileâ and âdisgustingâ â and now, Love on the Spectrum stars Dani Bowman and James Jones are weighing in on the discourse, too.
Charley Gallay / Getty Images for Netflix
If you didnât know, Love on the Spectrum is a Netflix reality show that follows adults with autism navigating the ups and downs of dating.
Contestant Dani described RFK Jr.âs remarks as âcompletely falseâ during a recent chat with NewsNation, per Variety. âAutistic people have the same hopes, dreams and yes, the same awkward dating moments as anyone else,â she said. âTo generalize and say none of us can work, date or contribute to society, is completely false. I have a job. I do pay taxes. Iâve dated. I have a masterâs degree.â
Jerod Harris / Getty Images for Netflix
âWanting to cure autism implies that our way of being is wrong and it isnât. We donât need to be fixed. We need to be supported. But the answer isnât erasing autism, itâs building a more inclusive world for all of us,â she added.
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Meanwhile, James called RFK Jr.âs comments âextremely ignorantâ and âdownright offensiveâ in a TikTok video shared earlier this week.
âI am old enough, I am of sufficient age that I can remember a time when society did not have a very thorough understanding of autism or similar forms of neurodiversity,â he said. âSo, I am very displeased, very disheartened to hear someone make comments of that nature.â
