Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a significant commitment at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting at the White House, saying that his agency will “know what has caused the autism epidemic” by September.
Kennedy said that HHS had launched, at President Donald Trump’s direction, a large research effort involving “hundreds of scientists from around the world” to look into the rising rates of autism diagnoses.
“At your direction, we are going to know by September,” Kennedy said. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world.”
“In September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” he added.
Trump commended Kennedy on the September goal, speculating — without scientific backing — that the answer to driving down rates could be “you stop taking something, you stop eating something or maybe it’s a shot, but something’s causing it.”
Kennedy and Trump have both made it a priority to understand what’s causing the rise in autism rates in the U.S.
Scientists have been studying the cause of autism for decades, and have identified genetics and several other factors as possibly playing a role.
It is true that estimated autism rates have climbed in the past 20 years, however experts say these rising rates are likely largely due to better awareness, a wide definition of autism spectrum disorder, and better access to services, leading to more children being screened and diagnosed. It’s possible that a yet-unknown factor is also contributing to the increase.
In 2000, approximately 1 in 150 children in the U.S. born in 1992 were diagnosed with autism. By 2020, 1 in 36 children born in 2012 were diagnosed, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At the Cabinet meeting, Kennedy said that he believes those rates have risen, per new data to be released, to 1 in 31 children.
In a later interview on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” Kennedy said the National Institutes of Health would oversee the study and that it would look into “everything.”
“We’re going to look at everything. Everything is on the table — our food system, our water, our air, we will find out what’s triggering this epidemic,” Kennedy said. “We know it is an environmental toxin that is causing this cataclysm. Through research at NIH, we will find an answer to this question.”
In his confirmation hearing, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said he “fully” supported childhood vaccination and didn’t “generally believe” there was a link between vaccines and autism. But he said finding answers on the rise in autism cases generally was a vital public health goal.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate health committee, encouraged Bhattacharya to look into autism rates, but strongly dissuaded him and Kennedy from “plow[ing] the barren ground” of investigating vaccines and autism, because it had already been debunked “multiple times.”
“If we’re pissing away money over here, that’s less money that we have to actually go after the true reason,” Cassidy, a doctor, told Bhattacharya during his hearing.But Kennedy has also brought on a well-known vaccine skeptic, David Geier, to study the connection between vaccines and autism, the Washington Post and New York Times have reported.
The concern, experts say, is that while investing more into research could provide answers, Kennedy has also frequently raised the question of MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccines as a link, despite dozens of studies debunking the claim.
The elevated platform for vaccine hesitancy poses a particular risk as hundreds of measles cases are spreading across western Texas, largely in unvaccinated communities, and two unvaccinated school-aged children have died.
Despite Kennedy’s efforts to investigate vaccines and autism, he said in an interview with CBS News on Wednesday that he encouraged vaccination, a notably supportive departure from some of Kennedy’s past comments.”The government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine,” he said, though added that it shouldn’t be mandated.
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