Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in April that “by September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic,” setting a timeline of five months for identifying the growth of a disorder that has been heavily researched for decades across the globe.
“We are going to know by September,” Kennedy declared at a Trump Cabinet meeting, while crediting this forecast to his launch of a federal study that he reportedly tapped a fellow vaccine skeptic to oversee. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Kennedy, a prolific vaccine skeptic who along with President Donald Trump has spread widely disproven claims that the shots are linked to autism, went on to stress that autism rates are rising in the U.S., with about 1 in 31 children diagnosed today, as opposed to 1 in 10,000 “when I was a kid.”
Medical experts have primarily attributed this increase to improved diagnostic capabilities, a broadened definition of autism and increased awareness. Researchers believe there is no single cause of autism but that a combination of factors, including genetics, plays a role, as the National Institutes of Health explains on its website.
“There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this,” Trump responded to Kennedy. “You stop taking something, you stop eating something. Or maybe it’s a shot. But something’s causing it.”
It was revealed in March that a large study is being launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine potential connections between vaccines and autism, despite extensive scientific research repeatedly disproving this claim or failing to find supporting evidence.
Well-known vaccine skeptic David Geier was reported to have been hired to head the analysis. Geier — who’s been sanctioned in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license — has published papers about a “link” between vaccines and autism. Some of those papers have been retracted.
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official resigned around the same time of Geier’s reported hiring. Dr. Peter Marks cited Kennedy’s push of “misinformation and lies” throughout the nation’s health department for his resignation, which The Washington Post reported was forced upon him.