The US Department of Health and Human Services has launched a “massive testing and research effort” involving hundreds of scientists worldwide that will determine “what has caused the autism epidemic” by September, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday. But experts expressed doubt that the research would be done in good faith, given Kennedy’s history of linking autism and vaccines despite strong evidence that the two are not connected.
“We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” he told President Donald Trump in a Cabinet meeting. “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
The president responded that “there will be no bigger news conference than that,” suggesting “there’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this.”
Rates of autism in the US have been rising, to about 1 in 36 children being identified with autism spectrum disorder in 2020, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy suggested Thursday that newer numbers may show “they’re going up again,” to about 1 in 31. In 2000, the rate was 1 in 150.
Researchers who study autism say that rates are on the rise for a few reasons, including increased awareness, broader definitions of what constitutes autism, improved screening tools and processes, and earlier detection. Its cause isn’t fully understood, but factors including genetics as well as advanced parental age, prenatal exposure to air pollution or certain pesticides, and other environmental influences are thought to play a role.
What doesn’t: vaccines.
“No link has been found between autism and vaccines, including those containing thimerosal, a mercury-based compound,” according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Yet Trump seemed to offer an implication about where Kennedy’s “massive testing and research effort” could lead.
“If you can come up with that answer, where you stop taking something, you stop eating something, or maybe it’s a shot,” he told Kennedy on Thursday. “But something’s causing it.”
Kennedy’s history of anti-vaccine advocacy is well-documented, and despite pre-confirmation promises to Sen. Bill Cassidy – the Republican doctor who helms the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee – that he wouldn’t dismantle the US system for approving and monitoring the safety of vaccines, Kennedy’s actions as the nation’s top public health official have done little to suggest a change in viewpoints.
Kennedy directed the CDC to study vaccines and autism last month, despite the agency’s own research showing no link. Under his watch, the top vaccine regulator at the US Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Peter Marks, was forced out, writing in his resignation letter that Kennedy “wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.” And the department has hired as a senior data analyst David Geier, a self-proclaimed autism expert who published a since-retracted paper with his father, Mark Geier, purporting to show links between vaccines and autism.
Kennedy has also downplayed a fast-growing measles outbreak centered in West Texas that has killed two unvaccinated children.
Asked Thursday on Fox News about the child who died of measles last week, Kennedy claimed that “she had a lot of complications that could have killed her,” although the Texas health department has noted that neither child had any previously reported underlying conditions.
Kennedy added, “We need to do better at treating kids who have this disease and not just saying the only answer is vaccination.”
And although Kennedy this week gave his strongest endorsement yet of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, telling CBS News, “We encourage people to get the measles vaccine,” he’s also lauded doctors in Texas who are providing treatment including budesonide, a steroid typically used for asthma, and the antibiotic clarithromycin.
At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, Kennedy claimed that measles cases in the US “have now plateaued,” despite them growing by between 19% and 36% a week in Texas over the past month, with new outbreaks popping up in Indiana and Ohio. And he said “we’re trying to refocus the press” on the “chronic disease epidemic,” first citing children with diabetes before moving to autism.
Kennedy doubled down on Fox News, claiming that previous vaccine safety studies were insufficient.
“We’re going to look at facts,” he said. “We’re going to look at everything. Everything is on the table: our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kind of changes that may have triggered this epidemic.”
HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement Thursday that “The NIH is actively investigating the root causes of autism, as directed by the Presidential Commission to Make America Healthy Again. With autism rates rising at an alarming pace, uncovering its etiology is a national imperative. Millions of American families are urgently seeking answers, and the NIH is fully committed to leaving no stone unturned in confronting this catastrophic epidemic – employing only gold-standard, evidence-based science.”
Advocates for the autism community met Thursday’s announcement with skepticism.
The Autism Society of America called Kennedy’s claim “both unrealistic and misleading.”
“Leading disability organizations, the scientific community, and credible medical experts all agree: we need more rigorous, science-based research – not speculation, less transparency, or oversimplified timelines,” the society said in a statement. “We are deeply concerned by the lack of transparency around this effort – who is leading it, what methods are being used, and whether it will meet established scientific standards.”
The health secretary’s comment about eliminating “exposures” that cause autism “really is giving the game away,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.
“They’re not going in with an open mind, going, ‘oh, I wonder what causes autism.’ They’re going: ‘We’re going to prove that it’s caused by a certain thing.’ ”
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has previously objected to Kennedy’s nomination to lead HHS and spoken out against the agency’s hiring of Geier.
The Maryland Board of Physicians disciplined Geier in 2011 for practicing medicine without a license. That same year, the Maryland regulators revoked his father’s medical license, saying he “endangers autistic children and exploits their parents.” At least six other states followed suit.
On Thursday, House Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee launched a probe of Geier’s involvement in the HHS autism study.
Meanwhile, health researchers said that Kennedy’s deadline of September – five months from now – is a sign itself of the unseriousness of the endeavor.
“Even developing a research program would take longer than five months,” said Dr. Lisa Settles, director of Tulane’s Center for Autism and Related Disorders, who’s spent more than 20 years in autism research. “So how are you going to develop this program, collect the data and analyze the data in five months? That’s not really feasible. … I definitely don’t feel like the research that would be proposed at this point in time would be free of bias.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, is a vaccine researcher who wrote a book about his daughter, called “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.” He pointed out that autism’s causes have been “well-studied by the NIH and their grantees to the various academic health centers, and we have a lot of information. So I don’t understand what sudden new information [Kennedy’s] going to obtain by September.”
More likely, Hotez said, the answer is preordained – and wrong.
“He’s already got his predetermined framework for what he says causes autism when it’s actually none of those things, because autism begins in early fetal brain development before kids ever even see vaccines,” he said.
HHS recently cut its staff by 25% in a dramatic restructuring that’s eliminated entire departments, leading some public health experts to question how the administration could truly lead an expansive global study amid the drive to reduce federal costs and staff.
“I don’t know how you can do it if they’re cutting all the budget in NIH. Where’s the money coming from?” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, which called on Wednesday for Kennedy to resign or be fired. “And how you coordinate a worldwide study when you’ve walked away from [the World Health Organization] and you’ve alienated all the researchers around the world?”