Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rings alarm on rising autism

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Thursday, April 17, 2025

A day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network survey showed a significant increase in the prevalence of autism, United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for a look at environmental factors that could be causing the neurological disorder.

Data from the  CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Tuesday shows that the prevalence of autism in the U.S. increased from 1 in 36 children to 1 in 31. The data collected in 2022 from 16 sites in the U.S. came from surveys of 8-year-old children born in 2014. The data show that the prevalence of autism is now 4.8 times higher than it was 22 years ago when the ADDM conducted its first survey. The prevalence of autism at that time was 1 in 150 children.

“Autism has increased by a factor of 4.8. That’s 480 percent. I believe the first ADDM survey was 22 years ago when [the] prevalence was 1 in 150 children. In all the core states, the trend is consistently upward and most cases now are severe,” Kennedy said at a press conference. “About 25 percent of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are non-verbal, non-toilet trained, and have other stereotypical features — headbanging, tactile and light sensitivities, stimming, toe walking, etc.”

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Kennedy argued that mainstream media has misled the public about the magnitude of the autism epidemic to avoid looking into environmental causes for the disorder. Autism spans a broad range of conditions “characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication,” according to Autism Speaks. Kennedy said it’s now time to invest in a real solution to the problem.

“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media and it’s based on an industry canard … obviously, there are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures,” he said. “It’s time for everybody to stop attributing this to this ideology of epidemic denial.”

Kennedy cited a number of research papers to drive home his point, including the work of Mark Blaxill, the father of a daughter diagnosed with autism, and co-founder of the Canary Party, “a movement created to stand up for the victims of medical injury, environmental toxins and industrial foods.”

Even though the paper was retracted in 2023 due to concerns over research methodology, Kennedy highlighted data from Blaxill’s Autism Tsunami: the Impact of Rising Prevalence on the Societal Cost of Autism in the United States, which was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

“The cost of treating autism in this country by 2035 — so within 10 years — will be a trillion dollars a year. This is added to already astronomical health care costs and then there is an individual injury. These are kids …. this is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. They can provide a vulnerability [but] you need an environmental toxin,” Kennedy argued.

Kennedy also noted that the ADDM report was two years late and his administration would make sure that tracking chronic disease will be done with real-time data.

“We are going to have updated real-time data so that people can look at this. So Americans can understand what is happening with chronic disease in this country in real-time and not have to wait two years to react,” he said. “We don’t wait two years to react to a measles epidemic and we … shouldn’t have to do that for diabetes or autism.”

Data from the report show that the prevalence of autism in boys is 1 in 20, and in California, the prevalence is 1 in 12.5.

“There’s an extreme risk for boys overall,” Kennedy said.

Minority children were also found to be more at risk of developing the disorder than white children and were more likely to suffer from more severe forms of it. Black, Asian, and Hispanic children were found to have an autism prevalence rate 3.66%, 3.82% and 3.30%, respectively. The prevalence of autism among white children was 2.77%.

“Autism destroys families and, more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which are children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old,” Kennedy said.

“These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize, we are doing this to our children and we need to put an end to it,” he insisted.

One of Kennedy’s advisers, noted autism researcher and clinical psychologist Walter Zahorodny, who directs the New Jersey Autism study, agrees.

“Autism went from being a very unusual, rare disability which affected, as the secretary said, one child in maybe 10,000 to being known in every community, every school district, every center that cares for children with disabilities. Autism is real,” he said.

“The data provided in yesterday’s report strongly suggests that not only is this a high point of autism prevalence, but in the future, rates can only be higher. Autism deserves to be treated as a real public health phenomenon, and I would say is an urgent public health crisis,” Zahorodny said.

“Autism is striking and the consequences are lifelong, so I would urge everyone to consider the likelihood that autism, whether you call it an epidemic, a tsunami or a surge of autism, is a real thing that we don’t understand and it must be triggered or caused by environmental or risk factors,” he added. “We need to address this question seriously because, in my opinion, for the last 20 years we’ve collected data but not made real progress in understanding what causes autism or how to effectively prevent it.”