Trump health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jnr says US will know cause of autism ‘epidemic’ soon
Kennedy has long promoted a debunked link between vaccines and autism despite scientific evidence to the contrary
The United States government will identify the cause of autism by September this year, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jnr said on Thursday.
“At your direction, we are going to know by September. We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Kennedy said at a meeting of US President Donald Trump’s cabinet.
“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Trump in February ordered the creation of a “Make America Healthy Again” Commission made up of Kennedy and other secretaries to look at everything from the rates of autism and asthma in children to how much medicine is being prescribed to them for ADHD or other conditions.
Kennedy said the prevalence of autism has jumped dramatically in recent decades.
“The autism rates have gone – from our most recent numbers, we think are going to be about one in 31 from one in 10,000 when I was a kid,” he said, without offering more detail or citing the source of the figures.