United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced a large-scale federal initiative aimed at identifying the factors behind what he called the “autism epidemic,” with findings expected by September 2025.

RFK Jr. made the promise while speaking during a televised Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday. Kennedy, who has previously been accused by critics of promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines, said the new research effort would involve “hundreds of scientists from around the world.”

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“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic. And we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy promised. He stressed the urgency of the project, citing a sharp increase in childhood autism diagnoses over recent decades, rising from “one in 10,000 when I was a kid.”

Better detection and scientific advances could be one of the reasons autism rates have gone up. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently estimate that 1 in 36 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which is a dramatic increase. Improved awareness and expanded diagnostic criteria may have helped, but that is quite the increase.

“That is a horrible statistic, isn’t it? 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, you stop eating something, or maybe it’s a shot – but something’s causing it,” Trump added.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) already invests over $300 million annually in autism research, primarily focusing on genetic factors and prenatal environmental influences. Kennedy did not elaborate on the scope of the “massive testing and research effort” being rolled out or what specific exposures might be targeted.

Kennedy, the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, has gained prominence in the US for questioning the safety and effectiveness of childhood inoculations and promoting the claim that they are linked to autism – a theory widely rejected by the scientific community. –RT

After Kennedy endorsed Trump’s campaign last year, the president vowed to give him broad authority over healthcare policy, saying he would let Kennedy “go wild.”