Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has controversially claimed a list of environmental “toxins” could be fueling what he termed a “tsunami” of autism across the United States.
At a press conference Wednesday, Kennedy announced plans to commission studies investigating potential links between autism and factors including mold, pesticides, food chemicals, and medicines.
Kennedy implicated ultrasound scans as a potential contributing factor, noting the technology’s widespread adoption coincided with a rise in autism diagnoses starting in the 1980s.
Kennedy dismissed explanations attributing the rising autism rates primarily to improved screening and diagnostic criteria, arguing these factors only account for “10 to 20 percent” of the increase.
“Doctors and therapists in the past weren’t stupid. They weren’t missing all these cases,” he stated.
He also pushed back against genetic explanations, asserting, “genes do not cause epidemics,” and insisting the cause “must be triggered or caused by environmental or risk factors.”
“The epidemic is real,” Kennedy told reporters. “It’s time for everyone to stop attributing this rise to epidemic denial… External factors, environmental exposures, that’s where we’re going to find the answer.” He promised forthcoming details on the studies within weeks and pledged “an answer for the American people very, very quickly,” potentially by September.
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These claims come shortly after a CDC report indicated autism prevalence among US children rose to one in 31 in 2022, a significant increase from one in 36 in 2020 and vastly higher than estimates from the 1960s and 70s (around 1 in 5,000).
However, the authors of the CDC report suggested the trend “might be due to differences in availability of services for early detection and evaluation and diagnostic practices,” a view Kennedy directly contradicted.
Kennedy’s stance has drawn criticism from scientists and autism advocates, who label his focus as harmful and misleading. Mainstream scientific consensus views autism as a complex neurodevelopmental condition influenced largely by genetics, alongside various other contributing factors.
Kennedy also appeared to link the issue to corporate interests, suggesting industries profit from the environmental toxins he believes are driving autism diagnoses, echoing his known skepticism towards vaccines and artificial food ingredients.
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