Of course he didn't think he saw people with autism when he was in high school because at that time it often wasn't diagnosed as such. Until the 70s or so, autism was frequently misdiagnosed as a form of childhood schizophrenia, or else kids with autism were just written off as "retarded," as he so insensitively put it. When I was a kid there was a boy in my neighborhood who was a little older than me, and now I realize that he was autistic - but in those days (the '60s) everybody said he was just "retarded." You couldn't carry on a regular conversation with him, and he didn't go to school, but he could play the piano and he had this weird ability to tell you what day of the week any date in the future fell on. He was about 14 the last time I saw him, which was after his mother died of cancer, and then the family moved away. I don't know what became of him; I'm afraid he might have been institutionalized because his dad had to work and couldn't look after him and the younger siblings. In those days that's what often happened to those kids. You can be damn sure Bobby Brainworm saw kids with autism, though. He just didn't know what he was seeing and didn't bother to try to understand. BTW, the boy I knew would have been born in about 1946-47, long before the MMR vaccine came out. Autism was recognized, though not understood, long before there were vaccines. Kennedy is a dangerous fool.
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