The mainstream media has ignored the autism “epidemic,” Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned Tuesday at his first press convention.
“This epidemic denial has grow to be a function within the mainstream media,” Kennedy mentioned.
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s newest examine discovered that the prevalence of autism spectrum dysfunction diagnoses had elevated from 1 in 36 eight-year-olds to 1 in 31 from 2020 to 2022, based on figures printed by the CDC on Tuesday.
“Medical doctors and therapists prior to now weren’t silly,” Kennedy mentioned. “They weren’t lacking all these instances. The epidemic is actual.”
The environmental lawyer-turned presidential candidate-turned secretary of the Division of Well being and Human Companies mentioned he ordered the Nationwide Institutes of Well being to check environmental components, exposures, and exterior components that would trigger autism. By September, we’ll know the reason for autism, he has mentioned.
“That is a person tragedy as nicely,” Kennedy mentioned. “Autism destroys households, and extra importantly, it destroys our biggest useful resource, that are youngsters. These are youngsters who shouldn’t be … struggling like this.”
“These are children who, lots of them, had been totally useful and regressed due to some environmental publicity into autism after they had been 2 years previous. And these are children who won’t ever pay taxes, they’ll by no means maintain a job, they’ll by no means play baseball, they’ll by no means write a poem, they’ll by no means exit on a date,” Kennedy mentioned. “Lots of them won’t ever use a bathroom with out help. And we’ve to acknowledge we’re doing this to our youngsters, and we will’t put up with it.”
The HHS chief desires to research why autism is “solely occurring to younger individuals.”
“Clearly, there are industries, that is coming from an environmental toxin, and anyone made a revenue by placing that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our meals, to say, oh, to normalize, to say, ‘Oh, this entire regular that’s all the time been right here,’ however that’s not good for our nation, and it’s not good for the press to not be extra inquisitive and never be extra skeptical,” Kennedy mentioned.
In two to a few weeks, HHS will announce a brand new sequence of research to determine exactly what environmental toxins might be contributing to the surge in autism instances.
“The difficulty that we all know is, genes don’t trigger epidemics,” he mentioned. “You want a toxin. And we’re going to take a look at all of the potential culprits. We’re going to take a look at mildew. We’re going to take a look at meals components. We’re going to take a look at pesticides. We’re going to take a look at air and water and medicines. We’re going to try ultrasounds.”