Autistic People Aren’t Monsters Or Magical: The Telepathy Tapes Are Just as Bad as RFK

By Asha Dore | May 2, 2025 | 11:40am

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Healthcare Autism

Autistic People Aren’t Monsters Or Magical: The Telepathy Tapes Are Just as Bad as RFK

The most popular conversations about autism in the US right now center on two extremes: How autistic people “destroy families” – or that they have magic powers. The truth is nuanced and refusing to accept people for who they truly are is both misleading – and potentially dangerous.

RFK’s recent comments about neurodivergence – which is not a disease and cannot spread – make it seem like a villain that needs to be vanquished. This was met with enormous backlash from neurodivergent folks, caregivers, doctors, therapists, and community advocates. Shea Belsky, an autistic self-advocate said, “his recent comments…are in direct opposition to my own lived experiences. Some of the kindest, smartest, and most empathetic people that I know are autistic.”

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“Autism doesn’t destroy families, exclusion does. Inequity does,” said Kwesi Neblett, a health advocate and father. “What they need is early, accurate, and culturally informed care rooted in respect, not panic.”

On the other side of the hammer, The Telepathy Tapes – a wildly popular podcast that aired in fall 2024 and continues to grow with at least 15 million downloads by May 2025 – claims that people who are significantly impacted by autism are telepathic. This theory centers on a treatment method called Facilitated Communication (FC) and its offshoots, which have been definitively and repeatedly discredited for decades.

Since it emerged in 1977, FC has never been scientifically backed. It’s been debunked by dozens of peer-reviewed studies, and ten major organizations that work with or support autistic people hold longstanding opposition statements, including The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, The American Speech-Language Hearing Association, The American Psychological Association, and others. In 2024, a comprehensive review affirmed that the evidence against facilitated communication continues to grow.

Further, FC has created massive harm and division in families that use it. In the 1990s, several children made sexual assault allegations through FC, which were later proven false. Several people have used FC to commit crimes. In the most famous case, a Rutgers professor initiated a sexual relationship with a disabled man using FC.

So how does FC work, and why is there so much potential for harm? The American Speech-Language & Hearing Association describes FC as “a technique that involves a person with a disability pointing to letters, pictures, or objects on a keyboard or on a communication board, typically with physical support from a ‘facilitator.’ This physical support usually occurs on the hand, wrist, elbow, or shoulder… or on other parts of the body.” This method is designed for people who have low to no verbal language, who do not write or read, and who typically do not live independently. Research has repeatedly shown the words and sentences elicited in FC come from the facilitator – not the autistic person.

But the message isn’t delivered through telepathy. It’s more like a Ouji board or ventriloquist. The message in the facilitator’s mind is delivered through the body of the disabled person via cueing: A facilitator touches the hand or arm of the disabled person, and through that physical guidance, that person points to letters or pictures to spell whatever the facilitator wants to say. “I’ve seen families go through real heartbreak because of facilitated communication,” said Dr. Firuza Aliyeva, a Board-Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. “They’re told they’re finally hearing their child’s real thoughts, only to find out later it wasn’t true. This is painful. It breaks trust between parents, professionals and even the child and delays getting the right support that could actually help the child thrive.”

I currently live and work at the intersection of all these realities because in addition to being a SLP and raising two kids with these diagnoses, I am neurodivergent. I, too, have seen FC cause rifts, frustration, and devastation in families. I’ve also worked with people across the spectrum, from birth to middle age, since I was in undergrad. Regardless of their diagnoses, each of my clients, students, and children is unique. There is one truth that has echoed through my personal and professional experience: putting people who are different from you on a pedestal is as harmful as assuming their incompetence.

As a parent, I know the isolation and sometimes relentless work required to manage medical appointments, modify my home, and learn and practice new therapies with my kids. I’ve also counseled families through the grief, confusion, and joy of having a kid with needs they didn’t expect. In some parts of the country, therapeutic services are not robust. Sometimes, hope is scarce. But the desolation of these kinds of experiences doesn’t happen because our kids are autistic. It happens because essential services lack funding, and because people are sometimes afraid of what they don’t understand.

We don’t understand because most of what we see and hear about autism is misinformation.

People who aren’t embedded in the world of autism see kids who walk on their toes or constantly play with a fidget, and they might feel like that world is unknowable. I imagine most people want to help, feel they need to repair disabled people, or find out what happened that made them so different. I imagine this comes from an attempt at compassion. We don’t have an easy answer for why autism exists, and it’s perhaps hard for folks to imagine what it might be like to be autistic.

When RFK claimed the antivax mantle, making childhood immunizations the culprit of all neurospicy brains, he tidied up the complexities of autism, implying both that autistic brains have been damaged by the onslaught of early immunizations and that there’s an easy fix – eliminate or significantly reduce childhood vaccines.

Other than the obvious public health crises that this “solution” would instigate, RFK’s antivax rhetoric emphasizes the ableist principle that he later strongly implied: people with autism are scary. They need to be changed, fixed.

The Telepathy Tapes confirms this rhetoric by claiming that a real, powerful version of autistic children are trapped inside a seemingly disabled shell. Further, those inner children are even more pure, even more skilled than us normies on the outside.

The only difference between RFK’s implied distaste for autistic kids and The Telepathy Tapes’ gushing admiration is the method. Both parties aren’t accepting these kids for who they are, acknowledging their intrinsic humanity or value, or thinking strategically – and scientifically – about what support they need to have the most fulfilling lives.

Here’s the real situation: In 2025, 1 in 31 children have a diagnosis of autism by age 8, up from 1 in 44. But, without looking at the history of autism diagnosis, these numbers give a false picture: What’s actually spreading is evidence-based, accurate evaluation and diagnostic methods and early intervention – which are all dependent on health and education programs that Republican lawmakers are threatening to cut.

As research, public health initiatives, and accurate diagnostic measures grew and spread, clinicians and doctors were able to develop – and test – methods of supporting people impacted across the spectrum. The probable causes of autism, like hundreds of other childhood diagnoses, were identified: It emerges from the intersection of genetics and environment. “Of the hundreds of families I have served as a therapist and diagnostician, I have yet to meet an adult seeking an assessment who is the first in their family to exhibit traits,” said Kory Andreas, a licensed therapist. “Rising autism rates are not evidence of an epidemic, they’re evidence of visibility, better education among professionals, and better identification. What RFK got catastrophically wrong is the entire framework: Autism doesn’t need prevention. It needs affirmation. It needs accommodations. It needs safety and supports.”

If we can believe that disability is caused by a villain that needs to be vanquished, we can ignore the real villains: politicians who cut public health measures and severely limit research funding. If we can believe in a magical being trapped inside a person with significant challenges, we don’t have to face the actual traps in our society: We are often afraid of disability and illness. We sometimes forget that people with disabilities are still whole and human. While it’s true that sometimes, supporting them is difficult, and there can be significant grief, people with disabilities are loveable. We give back to our families and communities in real, measurable ways.

“Autism isn’t the crisis,” Kwesi Neblett said. “The crisis is a public narrative that keeps failing to meet difference with dignity.”