Brenda Baletti PhD. – The Defender April 11, 2025
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a Cabinet meeting on Thursday that the government has launched a “massive testing and research effort” to determine what causes autism.
He said the effort involves hundreds of scientists globally and will be completed by September. Once the environmental causes of autism are identified, “We’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” he said.
At the meeting, President Donald Trump responded, “There will be no bigger news conference than that.” He added, “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.”
Reporting on the announcement in the mainstream media framed Kennedy as a longtime vaccine critic who has put forward the “discredited” and “debunked” theory that there is a link between vaccines and autism.
In a conversation with Fox’s Martha MacCallum, who said studies have shown there is no connection between vaccines and autism, Kennedy responded:
“The studies that they did were very very narrow. They did about 17 studies and the Institute of Medicine, which is part of the National Academies of Sciences, said that 14 of those studies are invalid. And the biggest weakness of those studies is that they never studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated, which is the only way that you can really make this determination.
“But more importantly, none of the vaccines that are given to children within the first six months of life were ever studied.”
Kennedy said the autism study, coordinated through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is not focused exclusively on vaccines. “Everything is on the table — our food system, our water, our air — we will find out what’s triggering this epidemic. We know it is an environmental toxin that is causing this cataclysm. Through research at NIH, we will find an answer to this question.”
He also said that “epidemics are not caused by genes” and that although there may be a genetic vulnerability, there also must be an environmental toxin.
In a post on X later that day, Kennedy reiterated that thanks to Trump’s Make America Healthy Again commission, “We’ll soon identify the root causes of the autism epidemic.”
Thank you, @POTUS, for another productive Cabinet meeting today. Thanks to your MAHA Commission, we’ll soon identify the root causes of the autism epidemic. Eliminating those harmful exposures will bring us one step closer to fulfilling our Make America Healthy Again promise. https://t.co/3HGn266Ubo
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) April 10, 2025
Since it was announced last month that the public health agencies were planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, mainstream media have repeated claims that the idea has been “debunked” and sought to discredit people investigating the link.
Last month, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that HHS had tapped researcher David Geier — an expert on the connections between toxic exposures and autism — to lead a study of possible links between vaccines and autism. The Post and other media outlets used the opportunity to attack Geier and the need for such a study.
This week, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) also published a hit piece on Geier, saying experts were “alarmed” by his appointment to work on the study.
Commenting on the JAMA piece, epidemiologist Nick Hulscher wrote on Substack:
“The so-called ‘alarm’ is really panic from institutions that fear what a real, independent investigation might uncover. For the first time, the vaccine safety narrative isn’t being fully controlled by Big Pharma and vaccine ideologues — they are nervous that their false religion of Vaccine Ideology is set to crumble.”
Mary Holland: Study is ‘long overdue’
Kennedy’s announcement comes during Autism Awareness Month.
Rates of autism in the U.S. have been rising for decades. Approximately 1 in 36 children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Autism prevalence in the 1990s, which was 1 in 1,000 children, already represented a tenfold increase over the condition’s estimated prevalence in the 1970s.
Since the CDC started collecting the data, prevalence estimates have skyrocketed from 1 in 150 in 2000 to 1 in 36 children in 2023.
Kennedy said the CDC will release its latest report next week, and the numbers will be even higher — 1 in 31 children, with some communities hit even harder.
The CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network releases a report on autism prevalence every two years. The network tracks autism rates among a sample of hundreds of thousands of 8-year-old and 4-year-old children across the country. Prevalence estimates are based on rates among the older cohort, who are more likely to have received a diagnosis because they are older.
Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland celebrated the news about the search for autism’s cause. Given the alarmingly high and increasing rates of autism, she said the study has been a long time coming.
“It is long overdue to hear the president and cabinet addressing the autism epidemic,” she said. “With the autism rate in 8-year-olds near 1 in 31, the rate among younger children must be higher still. This true epidemic threatens the future of the United States.”
Holland said it was notable that Trump said openly that vaccines could be causing autism. “We welcome the president’s open-mindedness and resolve to get to the bottom of autism causation in the next months.”
Reporting on yesterday’s news, most mainstream media outlets, including Newsweek and USA Today, implied there is no autism epidemic and the only reason for increasing autism rates is better diagnosis.
CNN similarly reported that increasing rates are due to better diagnosis. The outlet conceded that autism is likely caused by genetic and environmental factors, which haven’t been fully determined. CNN said the only thing definitively known about autism is that it isn’t caused by vaccines.
Research by autism experts, including authors on the CDC’s autism report, have found claims that better diagnosis alone accounts for the skyrocketing rates are wrong. The rates of children with severe autism are increasing, and rates among minority children are growing disproportionately.
“It seems reasonable to ask that public health officials stop downplaying the ongoing increase in U.S. ASD prevalence and start taking their own data seriously,” Cynthia Nevison, Ph.D., has written about these claims.
The ongoing study announced by Kennedy appears geared toward providing the answers these researchers have been looking for.
Yet another whitewash. Food, water, air and the environment have all been systematically poisoned and the scum at the top already know this. Additionally ALL injections are weapons.
How is it, for example, that Kennedy does not talk about chem-trails; very obvious effort to destroy local environments, yet it is ignored. ???
There is plenty of direct correlation between implementation and subsequent mass requirements, coupled worth the statistics by decade of the ride in numbers of autism, to know precisely that it’s the intentional poisoning via vackseens. But just like the C shot, they’ll never fully admit it and so most of the sheep will always disagree that these shots are bad.
These studies are all to buy time and appease the ignorant masses. There is no need for any vaccines for no so called virus has ever been proven to exist and that includes HIV and Polio. If this traitor kennedy who is being blackmailed by the criminal deep state has changed his mind back and forth on the need for vaccines therefore he has been officially discredited by many people – yes no one in the right mind believes him. Still, with all the injuries and deaths that have occurred from those injected with bioweapons covid19 vaccines and the data is available to prove such – how come he has not stopped these poisonous vaccines. People should know by now that big pharma is about colossal profits (67 billions dollars on annual sales) and not about health – get that into your head, ignorant masses. Yes, these new studies are just to hand out millions if not billions of dollars to tribal members who will come up with exactly the answers that they covertly have been instructed to say by big pharma. Mr kennedy stop with the lies and deceptions so you can have your big salary – can you live with yourself?
No doubt it’s “vaccines”! Autism simply didn’t exist before the avalanche of “vaccines” for kids! I was a kid in the 50’s & 60’s. Autism didn’t exist. I took 3 “vaccines” as a kid; Smallpox, Polio (bogus) & Whooping Cough. That’s IT! Today they’re jabbing kids with over 60 by the time they’re done with the schedule.
Big Jew Pharma has done everything in its power to promote these toxic jabs and they even financed Bullshit “studies” saying it’s not “vaccines” causing autism. Looks like more candidates for the firing squads! Vaccines are Bullshit! Never take them!
Thank You !
For too long we’ve relied on the media and “state shills” to do our thinking for us. Don’t fall for the lies and character assassination.
Think for your self.
He knows what is causing it, does he honestly believe any investigation will lead to the truth coming out ?. The pharma crime cartels would be finished, damages into the trillions would be pursued. Just can’t see it, they will probably blame it on something, or drag it out for years, just don’t think the blame will land where it should.
They already know that various vaccines and the bunching of vaccines to babies and young children is the leading cause of autism, so why all the red tape with the corrupt appointees of the corrupt establishment which has being doing it best to dumb us down and kill us off both in order to make a certain class of people more dominant and to denude the intelligence and virility of our nations for their pseudo globalist cause? Of course as they delay Kennedy from making “official” what is already well known through independent and reliable medical science he comes closer and closer to being knocked off just like his father and his uncle.
Eliminate sodium fluoride from tap water & toothpaste.
Eliminate the production of ‘modified food starch’ & maltose dextrose.
Allow parents to choose which vaccines, if any or none, for their children.
Problem mostly solved!
he cowardly dont concentrates on covid fraud
since he knows DARPA/CIA/Sanhedrin + his
boss Trump is involved
@ Fred
Yes, but kennedy is pushing the MMR vaccine, because he isn’t ‘anti-vaccine’ which he himself stated and which probably has something to do with his zionist affiliations, climate change hysteria, epshteen trips, drug addictions and general duplicity..which one would expect from an establishment asset…that thinks the State (there is only the State, the so called deep state is a fiction and exercise in distraction) has the right to force inject you with dog shit…
and which quite evidently kills more children than measles which is just a mild childhood illness…there was a paper that linked cancer in later life to not contracting childhood measles..which should probably have read more along the lines of childhood vaccines give you cancer..
which is unsurprising because that is what they are intended to do..and provably so..
Kennedy’s a disgusting toad voiced reprobate.. he should be dropped into Gaza sans parachute from a black hawk..
It is increasingly easy for ” The authorities” to say “Don’t worry, we will investigate the matter” when they know the matter inside-out and wish to buy more time