Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday he thinks his agency’s forthcoming report on autism will reveal an “aggregation of causes” that lead to the neurological disorder.
“This is a crisis,” Kennedy said in a “Fox & Friends” interview. “There is not a single cause. There are many, many — there’s an aggregation of causes.”
“And we are now developing evidence, sufficient evidence, to ask for regulatory action on some of those, or at least recommendations,” he continued.
Kennedy, in April, vowed to find the cause of growing rates of autism, calling it an “epidemic” that “dwarfs the COVID epidemic.”
On Tuesday, Kennedy told Fox News his agency is on track to identify “interventions” that he said are “certainly causing autism,” as well as possible ways of addressing them by September.
President Trump asked Kennedy for a progress update during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, saying, “The autism is such a tremendous horror show. What’s happening in our country and some other countries, but mostly our country. How are you doing?”
“We are doing very well,” Kennedy responded. “We will have announcements as promised in September, finding interventions, certain interventions, now that are clearly almost certainly causing autism. And we’re going to be able to address those in September.”
Kennedy has long claimed that environmental factors, or vaccines, are likely culprits behind the rising rate of autism diagnoses, arguing research to back this up has been blocked by federal authorities.
Some health experts say the rising rates are more likely a result of better autism detection since the diagnosis was first developed, and a broadening of criteria in recent years. The first time someone was diagnosed with autism was in 1943.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says 1 in 31 children and 1 in 45 adults in the U.S. have autism, significantly higher than the 1 in 150 rate reported just a few decades ago.
Kennedy said Thursday he suspects the rate is even higher, noting California “has the best data collection system” and reports autism rates in children of up to 1 in 19, including in some part of the states, where 1 in 12.5 boys have autism.
Kennedy is embroiled in a separate controversy over firings and resignations at the CDC, where the director was pushed out Wednesday. Kennedy has defended the shake-up.