Isabella Cueto , 2025-04-16 16:53:00
WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the country will soon know what is causing a rise in autism rates, but there is little sign he has a team in place yet. Nearly two dozen prominent voices from mainstream autism research and in the anti-vaccine world said they have not been approached by Kennedy, and have no details about the proposed studies.
On Wednesday, the health secretary appeared at a press conference alongside Walter Zahorodny, director of a New Jersey autism surveillance study. They highlighted a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that suggests autism prevalence rose to 1 in 31 among 8-year-olds — a benchmark Kennedy used to justify more research.
“This is part of an unrelenting upward trend,” Kennedy said at the event, during which he called autism a preventable disease. “Within three weeks, probably — we’re hoping two weeks — we’re going to announce a series of new studies to identify precisely what environmental toxins are causing it. This has not been done before, and we’re going to do it in a thorough and precise way. And we’re going to get back to the American people with an answer very, very quickly.”
Kennedy said the studies would look at mold, pesticides, food, air, water, and medicines, with a particular focus on exposures that increased during the late 1980s (around when the U.S. saw a large uptick in autism diagnoses). Parental age and health status would also be studied, he said. The studies will supposedly involve university researchers around the world and arrive at “some of the answers” by September.
But even Zahorodny, who was featured at the press conference, had no clue about Kennedy’s new autism research initiatives. “I’d like to learn about them, too. Before Monday, I never had contact with HHS or Mr. Kennedy,” Zahorodny told STAT before the conference.
Other researchers in the world of autism — who study drivers, risk factors, and predictors of the disorder — responded similarly when asked by STAT if they were involved in the project. Experts at 10 specialized autism research groups across the country said they had not been approached by HHS officials about it. Even members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which harmonizes and guides autism research across federal health agencies, knew nothing about Kennedy’s project.
“It has been radio silent since January,” said Helen Tager-Flusberg, a public member of the committee and director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University. “If the IACC is not involved in this, I don’t know who is at the federal level.”
On Wednesday, Kennedy said Jay Bhattacharya, the leader of the National Institutes of Health, would lead the grant-making process alongside his close collaborator, Martin Kulldorff, a researcher and science contrarian who has raised questions about vaccine safety. STAT reached out to Kulldorff for comment. The pair would be in charge of finding and funding researchers for the project.
Leaders of several groups, including the Autism Science Foundation, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and Autism Speaks said they had not been contacted or received any information from Kennedy about the study. “The scientists ASF works with have NOT been contacted, trust me, I’ve asked around,” Alycia Halladay, chief science officer of the Autism Science Foundation wrote in an email to STAT. Halladay also serves on the IACC.
STAT asked the Department of Health and Human Services for a list of researchers involved and for a clinical trial registration number. An HHS spokesperson did not provide answers to those questions, responding instead with a verbatim remark Kennedy made on Fox News.
STAT also asked whether the work was separate from analyses being conducted by the presidential “Make America Healthy Again” commission that Kennedy leads, but received no response. HHS did not say how much research funding would be devoted to the study, or how many researchers would be funded. Kennedy has said the project would involve researchers from around the world.
Some in the field of autism research have deep misgivings about the study, in part because of the expedited timeline. Typically, it takes researchers years to conduct and deliver results on even a simply designed study. What Kennedy proposes is much more complicated: figuring out what environmental toxins — a vague catch-all term that can include anything from air pollution to mold and, by his definition, vaccines — are driving autism diagnoses.
“It would take me until at least September” to assemble the team, Tager-Flusberg said. “If, on the other hand, you want to do some so-called study using records to confirm your beliefs, probably that’s something you could do by September. But that’s not what we call science.”
She, along with many others, fear Kennedy’s project is being designed to implicate vaccines, despite decades of studies showing no link between childhood immunizations and autism spectrum disorders. Experts in the field believe autism is driven by a combination of factors, with genetics playing an important role. (Indeed, studies have found many autistic children begin demonstrating signs of the condition just months after birth, before receiving vaccines.)
And, researchers say, while the prevalence of autism is higher now than in decades past, we don’t know how much the actual incidence of the condition has increased over time. More diagnoses are being made at the milder end of the spectrum, and earlier on, which is actually a good thing, some experts say: Autistic people are being referred to support services and other tools instead of waiting a long time for answers.
For those in Kennedy’s original camp — fervent vaccine skeptics — a new study of autism has the potential to affirm their long-held theories about the harms of shots. (This idea was only made more real when it was reported that Kennedy hired anti-vaccine researcher David Geier to lead a study on autism and vaccines.)
“We are hopeful that the current federal initiative to identify environmental toxins that contribute to autism will fill in scientific knowledge gaps,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the vaccine-criticizing group National Vaccine Information Center. Fisher, whose advocacy started against the DPT vaccine, helped create the federal vaccine injury compensation program that is now maligned by Kennedy and others. Her group has long pushed the idea that vaccination is associated with chronic disease and disability.
Still, even well-known researchers who cast doubt on vaccine safety — who Kennedy has cited in his books and other media — are in the dark about the new project. STAT asked 11 authors embraced by the anti-vaccine movement if they were involved; all six who responded said they hadn’t been approached by Kennedy or HHS.
Anthony Mawson, whose work comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children Kennedy cited during his confirmation hearing to lead HHS, said he hasn’t heard anything. He later followed up by email, asking a STAT reporter how he could apply to become involved in the project.
Peter McCullough, who gained fame during Covid and has sustained a following of vaccine-doubters since, told STAT he was dubious (despite frequently drawing a link himself between vaccines and autism). A definitive study would take up to 20 years and involve tens of thousands of patients, he said.
“I am concerned a short study done fast will likely conclude there is no connection,” he told STAT.
Daniel Payne contributed reporting.
STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.
