Mr. Kennedy made his comments at a news conference, responding to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that rates of autism had increased to one in 31 among 8-year-olds, continuing a long-running trend.
Blaming environmental risk factors for the uptick, he accused the media and the public of succumbing to a “myth of epidemic denial” when it came to autism. He also called research into the genetic factors that scientists say play a vital role in whether a child will develop autism “a dead end.”
“Genes don’t cause epidemics,” he said. “You need an environmental toxin.”
Autism rates among children have increased nearly fivefold since 2000, when the C.D.C. first began collecting data on the condition’s incidence in children. The C.D.C.’s new report attributed some of the increase in autism’s prevalence to more screening for the condition. And researchers have pointed to several other factors, including greater awareness of what autism looks like, more access to services, more parents having children later in life and broader definitions of the disorder.
Mr. Kennedy vowed that under his leadership, the health department would focus on looking into certain substances, like mold and food additives, and parental obesity to try to reverse rising rates of autism in children.
“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,” he said.
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