It’s Time to Change the Public Discourse About Autism

By Jonathan Rose, Ph.D.
Special to Vibrant Life

Jonathan Rose, Ph.D., holding up a copy of his co-authored book, Love in the Age of Autism, which was published yesterday, June 10, 2025. Photo courtesy of James Lattanzio Photography

On 5 January 2022, my wife Gayle DeLong lost her seven-year battle with breast cancer.

She left behind a diary of the last two years of her life (2020-2021), which she fully intended to publish.

I read it when she was almost on her deathbed, at her request. My last promise to her was that I would see it through to publication.

Gayle’s diary was published yesterday by Anthem Press under the title Gayle chose: Love in the Age of Autism.

The diary absolutely stunned me, for three reasons.

First, it was an intensely romantic and intimate record of our marriage, where our love sustained us through all the trials and heartbreak of raising two autistic girls.

Second, as a professor of history, I immediately recognized that it was a profoundly insightful human document of two devastating plagues—the COVID lockdowns and autism epidemic.

Historians today increasingly use the diaries of ordinary people (the most famous example is the diary of Anne Frank) to understand how great historical events impacted individuals, tracking their lived experiences day to day without the benefit of hindsight.

And third, I realized and hoped that this book might change the whole public discourse surrounding the autism epidemic.

Celebrating neurodiversity does people with severe autism a disservice

That discourse has so far been dominated by the “neurodiversity” paradigm. Those who champion neurodiversity argue that autism is “just a different way of thinking,” not really a disorder, but a harmless quirkiness which demands only “acceptance” by the larger society.

According to this logic, there has been no real increase in autism. Autism was “always there” and the reason we are hearing so much about it is simply a matter of “increased awareness” and “better diagnosis.”

This is nonsense. Every educator, medical doctor, and parent who is paying attention to the scientific research and clinical outcomes knows that the rise in autism is real.

Indeed, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently challenged all that complacency, arguing that the increase in autism is enormous and all too real, and that the impact of autism on the human mind is often absolutely devastating. For that he was slammed by the mainstream media and mainstream autism organizations.

My wife Gayle worked with RFK, Jr. on vaccine-injury issues. Her book (for which I contributed some introductory chapters and my daughter Jennifer wrote the postscript) shows that the autism rate has leapt upward by several orders of magnitude, a staggeringly real increase that could not possibly be explained away as “better diagnoses.”

Future historians of the autism epidemic will wonder how anyone could have possibly believed that it wasn’t an epidemic.

Gayle DeLong, Ph.D., with her daughter Jennifer Rose on the day Jennifer’s book “It’s Not a Perfect World But I’ll Take It” was published

Impressively talented

Love in the Age of Autism doesn’t deny that some autistic individuals are impressively talented.

Our daughter Jennifer Rose, for instance, is a successful author who published her first book when she was still in college.

But Gayle’s musings show that autism can be a heavy burden even for “high-functioning” individuals like Jennifer.

And it is debilitating for those who are lower-functioning, such as our younger daughter Flora.

As Jennifer herself put it, handicapped individuals can achieve great things: one of them became President of the United States.

But, she writes, “When we celebrate the achievements of Franklin D. Roosevelt, we celebrate the great things he did despite having polio. We don’t celebrate polio itself. After all, when we celebrate a disability, we forget the burdens it imposes on people.”

Various studies, including this one and this one, have estimated that autism will, on average, reduce your life expectancy by one-quarter to one-half. Given the burdens severe autism imposes, including a greatly reduced life expectancy, why aren’t we fighting to prevent autism the way we fought polio?

Jennifer and Flora Rose in 2007

Losing friends

As for “acceptance,” yes, you often lose friends when your children receive an autism diagnosis, and finding playdates for your kids can be very difficult.

But that’s not the worst of it.

There are many behaviors that we cannot accept in autistic individuals because they are destructive to themselves or others—wandering into a pond and drowning, walking heedlessly into traffic, disrupting a class, violence toward others, self-abuse, suicide, and often deadly seizures.

Violent towards family members and caregivers

Love in the Age of Autism devotes some discussion to a taboo subject, the fact that two out of three autistic young people are violent toward family members or caretakers.

Frankly, this book drags out into the open a painful reality that many in the autism community don’t want to talk about.

We also argue, contrary to the medical consensus, that adverse reaction to vaccination is a major cause of autism, though not necessarily the only cause.

In two other important departments, Love in the Age of Autism proposes a radical paradigm shift.

When a mother discovers that her child is autistic, she is likely to be overwhelmed by a sense of guilt or maternal devotion, and to feel that she must devote all her energies to caring for that child.

Often, she gives up her career, and often she gives up sex (even Jenny McCarthy, for a while).

Gayle did not. She was a consummate professional woman, who would not have been able to survive if she had been cooped up at home all day with the kids.

And as much as she admired Jenny McCarthy, she was determined to enjoy her husband to the hilt.

So, Gayle and I divvied up parenting duties while we both continued to work, and we figured out ways of indulging in passionate monogamy almost up to the very end.

Disastrous for autism families

Gayle’s diary shows that the COVID lockdowns were disastrous for autism families, shutting down schools and other essential services that families with children with special needs rely on.

As the arbitrary restrictions were ramped up day by day, Gayle immediately recognized that they would not stop the spread of the virus, but they would almost overnight transform America into a totalitarian society based on mass surveillance and censorship.

The hysteria would divide families, turn neighbor against neighbor, and persecute the unvaccinated.

There would be a giant transfer of wealth from the middle and working classes into the pockets of a tiny multibillionaire elite.

Governors and bureaucrats who really did not know how to handle the crisis would assume “emergency” powers and issue pointless, contradictory diktats.

Gayle was right

The first academic histories of the pandemic are just now being published—notably In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee—and they confirm after the fact what Gayle recorded as it was happening.

As a historian, I am proud to say that Gayle was, from the start, on the right side of history.

Gayle’s diary emphasizes her relentless efforts to ensure that her family’s diet was organic and detoxifying. She even washed the red dye off Advil. She did not live to see RFK, Jr. in a position of real political power, but his victory vindicates her nonetheless.

It’s time to change the public discourse around autism. Brain damage is not a gift. Neither is uncontrollable rage, an inability to speak, wearing diapers at age 25, or dying before age 40.

No child deserves that.

I believe that if enough people read it, Gayle’s diary will give us the final push that gets us over the tipping point to a new and real understanding of autism.

Editor’s note: Reading this book, talking to your friends about this book, sharing this article, asking your local library to order copies so more people can read it, and buying a copy (or two) from your local bookseller or via this Amazon referred link will help more people understand how much families are affected by severe autism, and move the conversation forward about the link—yes, there is one—between vaccines and autism. Profits from the book go to support Jonathan Rose’s daughter Jennifer. If you’re interested in more tips on how to help publicize a friend’s book, or your own, I think you’ll find this article, this one, and this one helpful.

About the authors of Love in the Age of Autism:
Jonathan Rose, Ph.D., is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. He has published several books, among them The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and The Literary Churchill, as well as articles on the history of autism.

Gayle DeLong, Ph.D., was an associate professor of International Business and Finance at Baruch College, which awarded her the Abraham J. Briloff Prize in Ethics for her article “Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Safety Research.” She applied her statistical skills to studying and publishing articles on vaccine injury.

Jennifer Rose is the author of two books: It's Not a Perfect World, But I'll Take It: 50 Life Lessons for Teens Like Me Who Are Kind of (You Know) Autistic (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016) and Manimal Crackers (GenZ Publishing, forthcoming).

Jennifer Margulis talking via Zoom with Jonathan Rose, who is in his home office.

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