During an Aug. 26 Cabinet meeting, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to fulfill his April promise that the causes of autism will be revealed next month.
During a Cabinet meeting in April, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to announce the causes of autism by September. Days before the calendar turns to that month, Kennedy reinforced that message.
Kennedy noted in a Cabinet meeting on Aug. 26 that an autism study he initiated in April had uncovered “interventions” that are “almost certainly causing” the disorder.
President Donald Trump requested a progress report from Kennedy about autism during the Cabinet meeting.
“Autism is such a tremendous horror show—what’s happening in our country and some other countries, but mostly our country,“ Trump said. ”How are you doing on that?”
Kennedy responded: “We are doing very well. We will have announcements as promised in September.”
A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 15 showed that one in 31 children in the United States has autism.
The figures, which show another jump in a long line of increases, stem from the CDC’s latest Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network survey published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The report prompted Kennedy to say that “the autism epidemic is running rampant.”
“That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992,” Kennedy said in an April 15 statement.
“Prevalence for boys is an astounding 1 in 20 and in California, it’s 1 in 12.5.”
The previous Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring report released in 2023 showed that one in 36 8-year-old American children had autism in 2020. The April 15 survey reflects a 16.1 percent increase in two years.
“The autism epidemic has now reached a scale unprecedented in human history because it affects the young,” Kennedy said in a statement on April 15.
“The risks and costs of this crisis are a thousand times more threatening to our country than COVID-19. Autism is preventable and it is unforgivable that we have not yet identified the underlying causes. We should have had these answers 20 years ago.”
The National Institutes of Health said that although autism can be diagnosed at any age, it’s described “as a ‘developmental disorder’ because symptoms generally appear in the first two years of life.”
In an address on April 16, Kennedy said that autism is an epidemic and criticized those who attribute the jump in cases largely or solely to better screening and diagnostic criteria.
“Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children,” he said.
“These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
The remarks drew criticism from some parents, who said that their autistic children are successful and not reflective of what Kennedy described.
Other parents of children with autism defended Kennedy, noting that he was accurately describing how the condition affects some families.
In a town hall with Dr. Phil McGraw on April 28, Kennedy reiterated that he was bringing attention to the plight of families who have children with “profound autism,” which he said represents about 26.4 percent of people with the condition.
“What that means is non-verbal, non-toilet trained, and all these other stereotypical behaviors like toe walking, stimming, hand flapping, et cetera,” he said.
Stimming refers to repetitive movements or verbalizations engaged in by some people with autism.
In December 2024, Trump said that he would also give Kennedy the freedom to investigate the potential link between vaccines and autism.
“When you look at some of the problems, when you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said in December.
“I think somebody has to find out. If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism.”
Kennedy has said for years that autism is likely tied to childhood vaccines and environmental factors.
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