Autism researchers and experts call the effort, which is short on detail, misguided and unrealistic.
spoiler

US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has pledged “a massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism in five months.

Experts cautioned that finding the causes of autism spectrum disorder – a complex syndrome that has been studied for decades – will not be straightforward, and called the effort misguided and unrealistic.

Kennedy, who has promoted debunked theories suggesting autism is linked to vaccines, said during a cabinet meeting on Thursday that a US research effort will “involve hundreds of scientists from around the world.”

“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy said.

Autism diagnoses have increased sharply since 2000, according to government figures, and by 2020 the rate among 8-year-olds reached 2.77%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Scientists attribute at least part of the rise to increased awareness of autism and an expanding definition of the disorder. Researchers have also been investigating environmental factors.

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), a government agency, spends more than $300m (£230m) per year researching autism.

The NIH lists some possible risk factors including prenatal exposure to pesticides or air pollution, premature birth or low birth weight, maternal health problems and parents conceiving at older ages.

Kennedy did not give details on the research project or how much funding will be devoted to autism research.

Since being sworn in two months ago, the former environmental lawyer has slashed the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the NIH, CDC and other government health organisations that oversee food and drug safety and conduct disease research.

“We’re going to look at vaccines, but we’re going to look at everything,” Kennedy later said during an interview with Fox News about the scope of the undertaking. “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.”

In a statement the Autism Society of America called Kennedy’s plan “harmful, misleading, and unrealistic”.

“It is neither a chronic illness nor a contagion,” the society said.

Christopher Banks, the society’s president, questioned whether the research efforts would be transparent and said claims that autism is solely caused by environmental factors were “misleading theories (which) perpetuate harmful stigma, jeopardize public health, and distract from the critical needs of the autism community.”

Kennedy has also alarmed some over his hiring of David Geier, who has been described by some as a conspiracy theorist, to research vaccines and autism, and on Thursday Democrats in the US House of Representatives wrote to HHS “to express our urgent concern” over the selection of “a biased and discredited individual”.

Geier is a leading vaccine sceptic who was fined by the state of Maryland for practicing medicine without a medical degree or licence and prescribing dangerous treatments to autistic children.

The discredited idea that childhood vaccines are linked to autism first gained mainstream attention after a paper published in 1998 in the medical journal The Lancet by British doctor Andrew Wakefield.

Wakefield was later found to have financial conflicts of interest and the UK’s General Medical Council found that he falsified his results. The research paper was retracted.

  • ThermonuclearEgg [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    100·
    6 days ago

    The BBC article is making him look better than it really is. The Hill headlined their article: “RFK Jr.: ‘By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic’” and made sure to clarify:

    Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic who helped found one of the most prominent anti-vaccine organizations, has spent decades religiously promoting the theory that childhood vaccines have led to an increase in autism and chronic illnesses, despite studies repeatedly showing otherwise.

    He’s going to say it was the vaccines (since he has been promoting that idea for decades), because not only will this nonsense from the 2000s not die (spoiler alert: there’s no epidemic, it’s actually just that it’s being identified more, like the old thing with left handedness), but it’s now being promoted at the highest levels of government. Of course, this debunked “theory” comes with a nice helping of dehumanization that autistic people are subhuman, right?

    • erik [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      72·
      6 days ago

      100% he basically just gave himself half a year to dick around at the office and then just stroll in once September rolls around and say vaccines.

    • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      38·
      6 days ago

      I’m not confident it will be “lol vaccines mabbe idk?” because that’s only the grift that got him into office. There’s a hard ceiling to antivax shit. It’s solidly pseudoscientific and no study they produce would stand up to scrutiny. There are immediate public health consequences which turn the vast majority of the population- only like 16% of US adults are antivax- against them with no ability to control the narrative. The opposition from the pharmaceutical industry will be big and targeted at the republican candidates threatening their profits while democrats are happy to accept that lobbying and fund their research.

      The grift where he really stands to profit and avoid public opposition is with the food supply. People already tolerate extremely abusive migrant/prison/child labour to provide food which everyone across the political spectrum hates. It’s fully rational and scientific to want to dismantle the food production system of this country. If you’re providing cheap eggs during the bird flu pandemic you’ve caused or healthy tomatoes when outdoor agriculture collapses due to defunding NOAA, otherwise normal people will turn a blind eye to how those foods got there. He has so much more potential to use this as a cover for pushing really dark policies against a larger outgroup. He’ll get a huge amount of money from the private prison industry that’s acting as his Wellness SS in the camps. If he finds a way to use this report as a launching point for that, it’s going to go a lot further than him just throwing slop to the antivaxxers who only got him a participation trophy in the 2024 election.

      • ThermonuclearEgg [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        21·
        6 days ago

        Sure, I definitely think he will do other harmful stuff.

        However, the US public does like genocidal stuff like dehumanizing. If he doesn’t do the vaccines thing, he could come up with another “conclusion” to this “investigation” that’s much worse to support terrible things

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    40·
    6 days ago

    different ways of parenting

    This one seems especially ominous to me. I’m not familiar with his base’s position on parenting beyond being parental rights demons. Is this pro-child abuse, anti-public and progressive charter schools, anti-divorce, or something benign like restricting access to electronics? The food system reference is going to be him recommending his wellness concentration camps, water and air are going to be recommendations to further deregulate environmental protections, and he’ll obviously try to polish up antivax pseudoscience. The evil intent in all of those is clear. “Different ways of parenting” is so ambiguous in what it will be targeting.

  • lib1 [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    37·
    6 days ago

    I’ve considered getting my son tested for autism but I’m worried about what that would lead to in this administration. Talk of work camps does not bode well and neither does this bullshit

    • Lerios [hy/hym]@hexbear.netEnglish
      33·
      6 days ago

      yeah, mood. i have been told that i most likely have adhd and literaly had appointments to get it diagnosed before covid cancelled that and honestly i’m glad it did. being on-record as disabled seems kind of dangerous

    • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      21·
      6 days ago

      If there are any outspokenly progressive physicians in your area, you might be able to discuss that with them and have an informal consultation that isn’t charted explicitly or formally diagnosed until it’s safe to do so. But going that route you probably wouldn’t be able to get prescription meds or state/school recognition of the disorder.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      I recommend going to a neighboring country for a test like that. Dont give them your name. Pay in cash.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    6 days ago

    you know, like 2000 years ago there were no written instances of domestic violence. now there are a lot. i wonder what changed?

    probably the kids today are playing too much pacman, asking too many questions, and aren’t drinking enough of my patent medicine. blam, Lawyer Science.