Kennedy Vows to Research Environmental Autism Triggers

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Originally published on THE DEFENDER

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today criticized mainstream media for pushing the narrative that rising autism rates are just a result of better diagnosis.

“One of the things that I think we need to move away from today is this ideology that autism diagnosis, that the autism prevalence increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnosis, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said at his first press conference since taking office.

HHS called the press conference to share results of the latest study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on autism prevalence, published yesterday.

An estimated 1 in 31 (3.22%) 8-year-old children had an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 (2.8%) in 2020, the CDC said in its latest report from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM), which is published every two years.

Overall, the prevalence of autism in U.S. children rose approximately 17% between 2020 and 2022, continuing a decades-long trend.

The mainstream media responded in lockstep to yesterday’s report by denying that autism is an epidemic and doubling down on the argument that rising rates are simply the outcome of better diagnosis. The Washington Post called the 17% increase “small,” and The Hill labeled it a “slight” increase.

Kennedy responded today, saying the rate increases “are real,” and that each year there has been “a steady, relentless increase.” Kennedy said that while some people may be genetically predisposed to autism, it takes an environmental exposure to trigger the condition.

He added:

“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 shared data from other previous studies on autism prevalence, including a 1987 study from North Dakota, in which researchers attempted to identify every child with autism in the state. In 1987, 330 out of every 1 million kids were diagnosed with autism. “Today there are 27,777 for every million,” he said.

“If you accept the epidemic denier’s narrative, you have to believe that researchers in North Dakota missed 98.8% of the children with autism,” Kennedy added. “Thousands of profoundly disabled children were somehow invisible to doctors, teachers and parents.”

“Doctors and therapists in the past were not stupid,” Kennedy added. “They weren’t missing all these cases.”

Kennedy also underscored that a high and growing percentage of children diagnosed with autism were severe cases. In a press release Tuesday, HHS outlined specific numbers:

“The increase in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prevalence cannot be solely attributed to the expansion of diagnoses to include higher functioning children. On the contrary, the percentage of ASD cases with higher IQs (> 85) has decreased steadily over the last six ADDM reports to 36.1% in the 2022 survey. Nearly two-thirds of children with ASD in the latest survey had either severe or borderline intellectual disability (ID).”

“So we know what the historic numbers are and we know what the numbers are today, and it’s time for everybody to stop attributing this to this ideology of epidemic denial,” Kennedy said today.

He called out the National Institutes of Health for spending 10 to 20 times more on research into genetic causes than into environmental ones, and pledged that under his leadership, that will change. He said HHS will make grants available to university scientists and others to research the environmental causes of autism.

“People will know they can research and they can follow the science no matter what it says, without any kind of fear that they’re going to be censored, that they’re going to be gaslighted, that they’re going to be silenced, or that they’re going to be delicensed.”

“This is a preventable disease,” Kennedy said. “We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics.”

One of the authors of the CDC study, and head researcher of the ADDM’s New Jersey site, Walter Zahorodny, Ph.D., from Rutgers Medical School, joined Kennedy at the press conference. Zahorodny said autism should be treated “as an urgent public health crisis.”

Zahorodny said:

“There is better awareness of autism, but better awareness of autism cannot be driving a disability like autism to increase by 300% in 20 years. That’s what we saw in New Jersey. That’s what the CDC report of yesterday indicates. And that’s what, in my opinion, future reports from epidemiologists will show.”

Zahorodny said a lot of data had been collected over 20 years, indicating that the “epidemic, tsunami, or a surge in autism” is significant. But no real progress had been made in understanding the environmental risk factors.

Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker told The Defender he was “very encouraged” by Kennedy’s response to the latest autism prevalence report.

“The magnitude of the autism epidemic is staggering and the ‘better diagnosing’ reasoning for the increase in prevalence is utter nonsense and has been debunked ad infinitum.”

“Secretary Kennedy has demonstrated his commitment to address this issue directly. I look forward to not only answers but real solutions on how to clean up the mess created by a prior HHS that couldn’t care less about autistic children and adults,” he added.

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