RFK Jr. says we’ll know what causes autism by September. Is that realistic?

The National Institutes of Health is in the early stages of planning a new, multimillion-dollar research program to examine the spike in autism diagnoses, sources previously told The Washington Post. The agency already spends more than $300 million a year funding autism research, including studies that examine the roles of genetics and environmental factors and the way the condition is diagnosed.

Researchers worry this new effort is meant to legitimize the thoroughly debunked claims that vaccines cause autism, which Kennedy has promoted for years. Kennedy declined to disavow those claims during his confirmation hearings. Under his leadership, HHS hired David Geier, a long-discredited researcher and proponent of a connection between immunization and autism, to conduct a government study on whether they are connected.

In a Fox News interview Thursday, Kennedy disputed the research that dispels a causal link.

“We are going to look at vaccines, but we are going to look at everything. Everything is on the table,” Kennedy said. “Our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kind of changes that may have triggered this epidemic.”

Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds autism research, said the Trump administration’s autism campaign seems to be building to a predetermined conclusion.

“It would be a great disservice to our families if, despite plentiful and robust evidence to the contrary, the administration announces vaccines cause autism, declares the case closed and stops funding critically-needed autism research that is providing valuable information about the true causes,” said Singer, who has a daughter with profound autism.

President Trump himself mused Thursday that vaccines may play a role, as he has previously done.

“There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this,” Trump said in response to Kennedy at the meeting. “If you can come up with that answer where you stop taking something, you stop eating something, or maybe it’s a shot, but something is causing it.”

Trump has urged Kennedy and his team to investigate the causes of autism. An autism program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was among the few spared in mass layoffs at the agency, according to multiple employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.

Scientists have studied autism, a spectrum of disorders that inhibits language and communication and affects behavior, extensively for decades. They believe autism is caused by a mix of genetics and environmental factors before birth, such as parents conceiving children at older ages and exposure to chemicals in pregnancy. They are still trying to fully answer crucial questions, such as which genes are involved and how they are influenced by what happens outside the body.

Those are not questions that can be answered in several months, scientists say - or even longer.

“It’s like saying ‘by September we are going to know the cause of cancer’,” said Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and author of “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism,” a book about his daughter that examined the evidence around the genetic basis of the condition. “Autism is every bit as complicated as cancer, and that’s how it needs to be discussed.”

The Autism Society, an educational and advocacy organization, said Kennedy’s vow seemed unrealistic and misleading.

“We are deeply concerned by the lack of transparency around this effort - who is leading it, what methods are being used and whether it will meet established scientific standards,” Christopher Banks, president and chief executive of the organization, said in a statement.

House Democrats who oversee health agencies demanded Thursday that Kennedy explain why Geier, the vaccine skeptic, had been hired to study autism, particularly given the Trump administration’s steps to remove other experts from government health agencies.

“Your decision to direct agency resources to conduct this study - considering long-established scientific consensus affirming no link between vaccines and ASD - is particularly appalling amidst your abrupt termination of significant federal resources to state public health agencies,” Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (New Jersey), Diana DeGette (Colorado), and Yvette D. Clarke (New York) wrote to Kennedy and acting CDC Director Susan Monarez.

HHS did not respond when asked whether Geier would be involved in the broader autism study.

In response to the broader criticism of the research plan, HHS spokeswoman Vianca N. Rodriguez Feliciano said, “With autism rates rising at an alarming pace, uncovering its etiology is a national imperative. Millions of American families are urgently seeking answers, and the NIH is fully committed to leaving no stone unturned in confronting this catastrophic epidemic - employing only gold-standard, evidence-based science.”

Kennedy said the prevalence of autism has increased from 1 in 36 to 1 in 31 children, an apparent preview of an upcoming annual CDC report slated to be released Tuesday, according to two sources familiar with the report.

Autism experts say the rise could be largely the result of better screening and diagnoses. In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended universal screening of toddlers for autism. Autism has also been misdiagnosed because of overlapping symptoms with mental health conditions such as ADHD or selective mutism, an anxiety disorder.

Experts say the rise in autism prevalence could be influenced by more than just better detection. Reasons could include women taking medications during pregnancy that can affect a developing fetus and older fathers being more likely to pass on genetic mutations. The validity and extent of those factors are still being debated and studied.

In the Fox News interview, Kennedy downplayed the role of genetics and said “we know it is an environmental toxin that is causing this cataclysm.”

Alice Kuo, an autism researcher at the University of California Los Angeles, said the federal government’s last attempt to conduct a decades-long study that could better identify environmental causes of autism fell apart because of costs and complexity.

Given the challenges of preventing autism, Kuo said researchers should pay more attention to the higher rates of illness and premature death among the millions who already have been diagnosed with the condition.

“Those research dollars should be to try to figure out how to help these individuals become successful,” said Kuo, a professor of internal medicine and pediatrics.