RFK Jr plays medical detective as he contradicts his own department on autism
ANALYSIS: Kennedy suggested that ‘ideology’ has prevented research into the causes of autism, writes Richard Hall
Robert F. Kennedy Jr sits atop a government agency that spends $45 billion a year on medical research. The best scientists in the world, with access to the most technologically advanced equipment and cutting-edge artificial intelligence, are at his disposal.
But with confidence that only a Kennedy heir could muster, the health secretary dismissed the findings of those scientists Wednesday, instead announcing his intention to find the real truth behind what he described as an “epidemic” of autism.
"One of the things that I think we need to move away from today is this ideology that … the relentless increases are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria,” he said at a press conference, which he called to deliver his own unique interpretation of an autism study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media. And it's based on an industry canard,” he continued.
One man’s canard is another’s body of scientific evidence, because that was precisely the explanation given in the report from his own department. It noted that the likely cause for a rise in the number of children being diagnosed with autism — from one in 36 Americans under the age of 8 in 2020, to one in 31 in 2022 — was the better availability of diagnoses.
But the health secretary, who was plucked from the lunatic fringes of public health by Donald Trump and is now responsible for the well-being of 340 million Americans, was not convinced.
That is because Kennedy, like many in Trump’s cabinet of misfits, got where he is today by just asking questions. He continued to ask the same ones even when they were decisively answered. He kept going over them today, even after the answers were hand-delivered to him in a large ring-bound folder by the employees of his own department.
Before Wednesday’s press conference, he announced that he would launch a "massive testing and research effort" to determine the cause of the rise in autism rates, and promised results by September.
Pitching himself as some kind of medical detective — House M.D. but with no medical school training and the potential to do far more damage — Kennedy promised again on Wednesday to leave no stone unturned.
“It's going to be done by ... the most credible scientists from all over the world, and we're going to do it very, very quickly,” he said of his investigation.
Kennedy’s nomination as Health secretary was nearly derailed by his history of false and spurious claims about vaccines, and the bogus links to autism. Curiously, he did not list vaccines among the many potential causes during Wednesday’s press conference.
But he did insist that there must be a clear outside answer to the rise in autism diagnoses — and somebody to blame.
"This is coming from an environmental toxin, and somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food,” he said. “And it's to their benefit to say all that to normalize it, to say all this is all normal. It's always been here. That's not good for our country, and it's not good for the press to not be more inquisitive, to not be more skeptical.”
Scientists have not ruled out environmental factors playing a part in causing autism, but the consensus is that genetics is the overwhelming primary cause.
Kennedy has played down the genetic link to autism, claiming only that it ”provides a vulnerability. “
He, instead, is keeping an open mind.
“We're going to look at all the potential culprits,” he continued, listing off what he believes are the possible reasons. “We're going to look at mold. We're going to look at food additives. We're going to look at pesticides. We're going to look at air and water and medicines. We're going to look at ultrasound.”
Kennedy did not publicly entertain the idea that he could be wrong, suggesting instead that a grand conspiracy involving thousands of scientists around the world was far more likely.
“Obviously, there are people who don't want us to look at environmental exposures,” he said.
Could Kennedy really find an unknown cause for autism in a matter of months that scientists have failed to discover in decades?
“We're gonna follow the science no matter what it says. And we will have some of the answers by September,” he said, managing expectations.
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