RFK Jr. Commits To Knowing The Cause Of Autism By September Of This Year

Warning bells should have been going off in your head long before RFK Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic for several decades, was confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. We’re in the first few months of Trump’s second term, but already there are several health issues stemming from Kennedy’s efforts. There is a measles outbreak that appears to be growing by the day, leading to hundreds of infections and several deaths among the unvaccinated community, which Kennedy helped to foster. In the midst of that health emergency, Kennedy has also pushed alternative treatments that have made people sicker, generally children, all while he’s busy closing up treatment facilities designed to stamp out the outbreak.

But expanding the market for tiny caskets isn’t Kennedy’s main passion. That is reserved for blaming vaccines for the supposed uptick in the rate of autism diagnoses, a theory that has been debunked for several decades. The causes of autism have been studied for decades now, with the uptick in cases largely explained by a combination of genetic causes related the age of the parents and physical traits like birth weight along with wider awareness and testing for the condition. But despite all of that scientific effort that has gone on for years and years, RFK Jr. recently announced that HHS will have determined the cause of autism by September of this year.

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.

We need not look any further into Kennedy’s plan to know this is bullshit. Determining the cause, or more likely causes, of something as widespread as diagnoses for the full spectrum of conditions is a massive undertaking. One that is certainly not going to be concluded in a matter of half of a year merely because Kennedy wills it so.

But it’s actually much worse than that, such that you should already be able to see where this is heading. Kennedy offered few details about his “study”, but we already know two things. First, the organizations that have been leading the charge on autisim advocay aren’t invited to the party.

Kennedy has offered no details on how his study will be different or what researchers will be involved. Leading autism organizations, such as the Autism Society of America, have not been included in discussions about the research, said ASA spokeswoman Kristyn Roth.

Roth said many agree that more research is needed to determine what causes autism, but Kennedy’s approach has raised alarms.

Now combine that with the man that Kennedy has already employed to “study” the cause of autism and you’ll see what’s going on here.

Kennedy has hired David Geier, a man who has repeatedly claimed a link between vaccines and autism, to lead the autism research effort. The hiring of Geier, who the state of Maryland found was practicing medicine on a child without a doctor’s license, was first reported by The Washington Post.

Geier, along with his father before him, have both a checkered past in medicine along with years of promoting a link between autism and vaccines. These are people that have already drawn their conclusions. I expect any study Geier does to point to that link as a conclusion. Expectations counter to that are downright silly. Anyone with a pair of eyes can see what is happening here.

The timeline alone should tell you how unserious this all is, in terms of a scientific approach to answering a very valid medical question: where does autism come from? People living on the spectrum are just that: people. They deserve our respect and our care, not to be treated as mere pawns for a crackpot’s hobbyhorse.

Just know, whatever supposed answers we get in September, this will not be the product of good science.