RFK JR. promises to find the cause of autism by September – experts have doubts

The United States Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised that the best health agency of the country will identify the cause of autism by September, an announcement that has aroused a wave of concern between medical experts and supporters, who question the feasibility and focus of the research.

Kennedy – a vaccine critic for a long time that has pushed a discredited theory that the childhood routine blows cause autism – said Thursday that the effort will involve hundreds of scientists. He shared the plans with the President of the United States Donald Trump during a television cabinet meeting.

Trump suggested that vaccines could be responsible for autism rates, even if decades of research concluded that there is no link between the two.

“There must be something artificial out there that is doing it,” Trump said to Kennedy, later saying: “Maybe it’s a shot. But something is causing him.”

There is a scientific consensus that childhood vaccines do not cause autism. The reconstruction of this land increases alarm bells, says Kristyn Roth, spokesman for the Autism of America company.

“There is a profound concern for the fact that we are going back and evaluating the brazen theories,” Roth said to the Associated Press, adding that the main autism organizations have not been consulted on planned research.

Autism is a development condition that has a variety of symptoms that may include delays in language, learning and differences in social or emotional skills. Individuals with autism can also have a wide range of support needs. Around Two percent Canadian are autistic, according to children and young people, according to the Canada public health agency.

Research decades, including studies on twins, have shown that genetics plays an important role in autism, but that there is no specific “autism gene”. The United States National Institutes of Health, which already spends over 300 million dollars of US annual research, also list some possible risk factors such as prenatal exposure to pesticides or atmospheric pollution, extreme prematurity or low birth weight, some maternal health problems or parents who conceive in old age.

It is “an exquisitely complex condition”, Dr. Melanie Penner, a senior clinical scientist and pediatrician of development at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, told the CBC News.

“Everything we know about autism suggests that this has a truly complex and multifactorial origin that differs from child to child. So we must invest in sciences capable of understanding that nuance, of understanding all that complexity.”

Kennedy did not offer further details on how his study will be conducted or what researchers will be involved on.

It seems absurd to suggest that a single cause for a condition with such a strong genetic component could be found within a few months, says Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Pediatric Hospital in Philadelphia. The reason why Kennedy could see him as a feasible, offit suspects, is because Kennedy presumably believes he already knows the cause.

“He thinks that vaccines cause autism. And no matter how many studies are done to show that he is wrong, he does not believe them,” said Offit, who is also a professor in pediatrics at the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

Offit claims to believe that Kennedy’s final goal is to make the vaccines “less available, less supportable and more frightening”.

“This is what he is doing and thinking differently did not pay attention to who he is and what he has done in the last 20 years.”

Before Kennedy’s confirmation as a secretary of the United States health, Waves of Health Professionals urged the senators to vote against the appointment – with a letter signed by over 800 health experts that highlight that the lack of health skills of Kennedy and “unfounded and marginal convictions could significantly undermine public health practices”.

Increase in the diagnosis rate

Trump and Kennedy both expressed concern about the increase in the autism diagnosis rate, which Kennedy called “epidemic”.

But experts say that diagnoses have increased due to a expansion of the definition of autism, as well as efforts to increase awareness.

For decades, the diagnosis was administered only to children with serious problems that communicate or socialized, and it was thought that it was very rare. But about 30 years ago, the diagnostic criteria have been expanded when scientific understanding has evolved to see autism that occurs on a spectrum. The lighter autism cases are much more common than the serious ones.

With an improvement in screening and autism services, the diagnosis is also happening more and more in the younger age. And a greater defense to fight “a long history of under recognition of autism in girls and women, different people and in racial groups” has led to an increase in diagnoses in these groups, said Penner.

However, the supporters of the anti-Vaccini, including Kennedy, said that vaccines are the fault. The theory derives largely from a 1998 document, in the medical magazine The Lancet, which was later withdrawn as fraudulent.

Anne Borden King, co-founder of Autistics 4 Autistics: Auto-Advocacy in Canada, says that it is extremely stigmatizing when the discussions on autism focus on a “cause” or a “care”.

“We don’t want to be prevented. We want services that are actually useful for autistic people,” he said.

“My question, as a lawyer, is as much more than these chases of wild geese we must continue, when what we could really do is to put all those scientists at work, and all that money for job research, looking at research that actually improve the quality of life for autistic people who are here and now.”

Kennedy’s project has already started. The Department of Health and Human Services assumed David Geier, a man who once was fined by the state of Maryland for practicing medicine with a child without a doctor’s license and repeatedly claimed a link between vaccines and autism, to guide the federal research effort.

The department did not immediately respond to a commentary request.