WASHINGTON — Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested on Wednesday that the surge in autism diagnoses is being driven by environmental factors, publicly contradicting a recent study led by one of the agencies under his direction.
In his first press briefing since being confirmed to his administration position, Kennedy asserted that the recent rise in autism rates was linked directly to “environmental toxins” found in the air, food additives and even some medicines. As a result, Kennedy said his department would launch a series of studies to uncover what those toxins are with an ambitious timeline to publish results by September.
“This is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure,” Kennedy said. “It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. It can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin.”
While Kennedy did not specify what environmental factors he believes are the root cause of autistic disorders, the secretary went so far as to suggest that the toxins may be manufactured.
“There are industries — somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food,” Kennedy said. “And it’s to their benefit to to normalize it, to say, ‘Oh, this is all normal. It’s always been here.’ But that’s not good for our country.”
Kennedy’s remarks come in response to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday that in 2022 found a sharp increase in autism rates among children over the last two decades.
The study found that among 8-year-olds, 1 in 31 were diagnosed with autism in 2022 compared to just 1 in 36 in 2020. That number is five times higher than the autism rates in 2000, which is the first year the CDC began collecting data.
However, the agency emphasized the rise is likely due to better screening and diagnostic tests and doesn’t necessarily mean autism itself is becoming more common. Other researchers say the surge could also be attributed to diagnostic expansions capturing milder cases and that decreased stigma around the issue could lead to more tests that may have otherwise gone unchecked.
Kennedy pushed back against that conclusion, decrying some researchers and the mainstream media for perpetuating what he called “epidemic denial.”
“One of the things I think that we need to move away from today is this ideology that the autism prevalence increases, the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said. “There is a steady, relentless increase. This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media, and it’s based on an industry canard. Obviously, there are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.”
Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that the recent rise in autism rates are linked to vaccines despite a lack of evidence from several studies conducted over the last few decades. Still, the secretary has made the developmental disorder a top priority, greenlighting a federal study to revisit those claims — and tapping a prominent vaccine skeptic to oversee the effort.
Some doctors have acknowledged there may be some environmental factors contributing to autism rates, or genetics, but they stress there is no connection to vaccines.
“We can account for a lot of the increase but perhaps not all of it,” Catherine Lord, an autism researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The New York Times. “But whatever it is, it’s not vaccines.”