WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation’s top health agency will undertake a "massive testing and research effort" to determine the cause of autism, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday.
RFK Jr. says HHS will determine the cause of autism by September
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation’s top health agency will undertake a "massive testing and research effort" to determine the cause of autism, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday.
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic who has pushed a discredited theory that routine childhood shots cause the developmental disability, said the effort will be completed by September and involve hundreds of scientists. He shared the plans with President Donald Trump during a televised Cabinet meeting.
Trump suggested that vaccines could be to blame for autism rates, although decades of research have concluded there is no link between the two.
"There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this," Trump told Kennedy. "If you can come up with that answer, where you stop taking something, eating something, or maybe it’s a shot. But something’s causing it.”