RFK Jr pledges to find the cause of autism by September
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. […]
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.”
I don’t think I’m being too unrealistic or controversial if I say right now the answer will, in fact, just turn out to be vaccines:
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.
Vaccines. I’m calling it now. In fact, probably anyone with any sense looking at this story knows where it’s going to go, I don’t think I’m seeing anything that no one else is seeing here. I’ll be surprised if it turns out to be anything else, and even if it does, vaccines will still be the main culprit. Come back in September and we’ll see if I’m right.
