The centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) will study whether vaccines cause autism, although numerous existing studies already show that there is no link.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon confirmed the effort in a statement overnight, saying that the agency plans to leave “without stone without moving.”
“As President Trump said in his joint speech to Congress, the Autism rate in American children has shot. CDCs will not leave stone without moving in their mission to discover what is happening exactly,” the statement said. “The American people expect high quality research and transparencies and that is what CDCs are delivering.”
Nixon did not answer questions about how the study would be asked and what would be different from the numerous studies reviewed by already published peers.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States, has earned money through books and speeches that belittle vaccine safety and refused to say during their confirmation audiences that vaccines do not cause autism despite the fact that many high quality studies do not find such a link.
Archive: A sign marks the entrance to federal centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, on October 8, 2013. (AP Photo/David Goldman, Archive)
David Goldman/AP
He said during the audience that autism rates “have gone from 1 in 10,000 … and today in our children, it is one in every 34 years.” His statements have been repeated by President Donald Trump in Truth Social.
It is not clear where Kennedy got his statistic of 1 in 10,000. In 2000, approximately 1 in 150 children in the United States born in 1992 were diagnosed with autism compared to 2020, during which one in 36 children born in 2012 was diagnosed, according to data from the centers for disease control and prevention.
Last month after his confirmation as secretary of the HHS, Kennedy said he planned to “investigate” if the moment of children’s vaccines and prederentry medications are among several “possible factors” in the problem of the nation with chronic diseases.
“Nothing will be out of the limits,” Kennedy said at that time.
It is accurate that approximately 1 in 36 children in the United States have autism, and that rates have increased over time. It is likely that there is a genuine increase in autism rates in the US, but another reason why the prevalence of autism is increasing is because doctors and parents are improving to identify and diagnose autism in children.
The causes of autism are complex and are still exploring. Many children with autism that can be linked to genetic differences. Separately, the risk seems to be greater among children who experienced complications at birth and those born to older parents. For others, the cause is not known.
Mary Kekatos of ABC News contributed to this report.
