Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will study if vaccines cause autism, despite many existing studies already showing that there is no link.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed the effort in a statement overnight, saying that the agency was planning not to leave a stone that is not returned. “
“As President Trump said it in his spouse in the convention, the autism rate among American children has skyrocketed. The CDC will not leave any stone not returned to his mission to understand what is going on,” the statement said. “The American people expect high quality research and transparency and this is what CDC offers.”
Nixon did not answer questions about how the study would be conducted and how it would be different from the many studies evaluated by peers already published.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., American secretary for health and social services, made money through books and speeches that denigrate the safety of vaccines and he refused to say during his confirmation hearings that vaccines do not cause autism despite many high -quality studies finding no link of this type.
File – A panel marks the entry of the centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Atlanta, October 8, 2013. (AP photo / David Goldman, File)
David Goldman / AP
He said during the hearing that autism rates “went from 1 in 10,000 … and today in our children, it’s one in 34.” His claims were repeated by President Donald Trump on Truth Social.
It is not known where Kennedy obtained his statistics 1 in 10,000. In 2000, around 1 in 150 children in the United States born in 1992 was diagnosed with autism compared to 2020, during which one in 36 children born in 2012 was diagnosed, according to data from the centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last month, last month, after his confirmation as HHS secretary, Kennedy said he had planned to “investigate” if the time for infant vaccinations and anti-depression drugs are among several “possible factors” in the country’s problem with chronic diseases.
“Nothing will be prohibited,” said Kennedy at the time.
It is correct that around 1 in 36 children in the United States reach autism and that rates increase over time. There is probably a real increase in autism rates in the United States, but another reason why the prevalence of autism increases is that doctors and parents improve to identify and diagnose autism in children.
The causes of autism are complex and always explored. Many autistic children who can be linked to genetic differences. In addition, the risk seems to be higher in children who have undergone complications at birth and those born of older parents. For others, the cause is not known.
Mary Kekatos of ABC News contributed to this report.
