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Health & Science
In a press conference, the health secretary insisted environmental factors are behind increased rates of autism. But the scientific research says it’s complicated.
Michael Conroy/AP
April 16, 2025 01:06 PM
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed on Wednesday to definitively identify what’s causing a rise in autism — and said the culprit must be environmental in origin, not genetic.
“Genes do not cause epidemics. They can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin,” Kennedy said at a press conference centered on autism rates. “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. And it’s in their benefit to normalize it.”
His remarks run counter to the current scientific consensus on the causes of autism. Scientists attribute a rise in autism diagnoses to a number of factors, including improved awareness of the disorder, better diagnostic criteria and environmental and genetic factors. They’ve warned that parsing out any single cause from the complex interplay of factors may be difficult.
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