The Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy said HHS had launched, in the direction of President Donald Trump, a great research effort involving “hundreds of scientists from around the world” to examine the increase in autism diagnostics.
“In your direction, we will know this by September,” said Kennedy. “We have launched a massive effort of tests and research that will involve hundreds of scientists from around the world.”
“In September, we will know what caused the epidemic of autism and we will be able to eliminate these exhibitions,” he added.
Trump congratulated Kennedy for the September objective, speculating – without scientific support – that the answer to reduce the prices could be “you stop taking something, you stop eating something or maybe it’s a blow, but something the cause”.
The Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the interior secretary Doug Burgum attend a meeting of the Cabinet at the White House in Washington, DC, April 10, 2025.
Nathan Howard / Reuters
Kennedy and Trump both made a priority to understand what causes the increase in autism rates in the United States
Scientists have been studying the cause of autism for decades and have identified genetics and several other factors like perhaps playing a role.
It is true that the estimated autism rates have climbed over the past 20 years, but experts say that these increase rates are probably due to better consciousness, a wide definition of autism spectrum disorder and better access to services, which has led to more children withdrawn and diagnosed. It is possible that a factor still unknown also contributes to the increase.
In 2000, around 1 in 150 children in the United States born in 1992 received a diagnosis of autism. By 2020, 1 in 36 children born in 2012 has been diagnosed, according to data from the centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At the meeting of the firm, Kennedy said he thought that these rates had increased, according to new data to publish, to 1 out of 31 children.
In a later interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum by Fox News”, Kennedy said that the National Institutes of Health would supervise the study and that it would examine “everything”.
“We are going to look at everything. Everything is on the table – our food system, our water, our air, we will discover what triggers this epidemic,” said Kennedy. “We know that it is an environmental toxin that causes this cataclysm. Thanks to research at NIH, we will find an answer to this question.”
During his confirmation audience, the director of NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, said that he had “fully” supported vaccination on childhood and “generally believed” that there was a link between vaccines and autism. But he said that finding answers on the increase in autism cases was generally a vital public health objective.
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy, president of the Senate of Health Committee, encouraged Bhattacharya to examine the autism rates, but greatly dissuaded him, him and Kennedy[ing] The sterile terrain “to investigate vaccines and autism, because it had already been demystified” several times “.
“If we give up money here, it is less money that we really have to go after the real reason,” a doctor, a doctor, told Bhattacharya during his hearing. But Kennedy also made the vaccines known to the vaccine, David Geier, to study the link between vaccines and autism, the Washington Post and New York Times reported.
The concern, according to experts, is that although the investment more in research can provide answers, Kennedy has also frequently raised the issue of MMR vaccines (measles, mumps and rubella) as a link, despite dozens of studies demystifying the complaint.
The high vaccination hesitation platform has a particular risk because hundreds of measles are propagated in western Texas, largely in non-vaccinated communities, and two non-vaccinated school children have died.
Despite Kennedy’s efforts to investigate vaccines and autism, he said in an interview with CBS News on Wednesday that he had encouraged vaccination, a particularly favorable departure from some of Kennedy’s previous comments. “The government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine,” he said, although it should not be required.
