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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared Wednesday that autism is an “epidemic” caused by “environmental toxins” in the U.S. During his first press conference as HHS secretary, Kennedy vowed to identify the cause of rising autism prevalence, which he referred to as a “preventable disease.”
“Autism destroys families,” Kennedy said during the press conference at the Department of Health and Human Services’ headquarters in Washington D.C. “And more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, our children.”
The announcement came one day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report showing autism diagnoses in the U.S. have increased from 1 in 36 children in 2020 to 1 in 31 in 2022. While the CDC report indicates higher diagnosis rates are likely due to increased early identification and better autism screening methods, Kennedy brushed off this connection as ideological.
“We need to move away from the ideology that the autism prevalence increase are simply artifacts of better diagnosis,” he said.
Kennedy declared with certainty that “environmental factors” are driving the increase of autism, not genetics.
“This is coming from an environmental toxin and somebody made it and put that environmental toxin into our air or water or medicines or food,” Kennedy said.
In his previous role as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy repeatedly claimed that autism is caused by childhood vaccines, which scientists have concluded is wholly untrue. Kennedy did not mention vaccines during the press event.
“Obviously there are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures,” Kennedy said. “If the epidemic is an artifact of better diagnostic criteria or better recognition, then why are we not seeing it in older people? Why is this only happening in young people?”
Kennedy broadly characterized kids on the autism spectrum as displaying behaviors seen in a smaller group of the autism community, those who are considered severe or with profound autism.
“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 never use a toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said.
But experts who have long studied and served the autistic community say Kennedy’s characterization of autism and those on the spectrum is doing more harm to the autism community.
“As a professional, he does not understand autism,” said Mary Hellen Richer, CEO of Autism Connections, an organization that helps to support the Greater Cincinnati autism community. “I think this is the biggest misguided approach to talking about autism that we have had since I’ve been in the world of autism, which is over 10 years now.”
Since 1971, Autism Connections has connected Greater Cincinnati people with autism and their families with resources and information about employment, therapy, peer support and more. Oftentimes, Autism Connections is the first point of contact for families navigating autism for the first time, according to Richer.
“Our longest-running service to the autism community and the community at large is our resource helpline,” Richer said. “It is a phone and email program that you can ask any autism question. […] We get a lot of questions about people wanting a diagnosis.”
Better diagnosis
As Cincinnati’s oldest autism organization, Richer said Autism Connections has spent decades adapting to evolving research on diagnoses, which has shifted in recent years.
“We have learned how to better diagnose,” Richer said. “We have learned how to better understand autism. The more research we do, the more we understand autism, the better we get at diagnosing.”
During the Wednesday press conference, Kennedy admitted there may be “small slivers of the autism epidemic that can be attributed to better recognition and better diagnoses,” but he said some studies suggest only about 10% to 25% of new cases reflect diagnostic improvements. Richer pushed back, telling CityBeat that shifts in the way autism is classified are also behind the increasing numbers.
“For many, many years, we were diagnosing Asperger syndrome; we were diagnosing profound autism; we were diagnosing Rett syndrome,” Richer said. “There were a number of things that are now under the umbrella of autism. When it was finally put together, that this is all part of the autism spectrum; of course the numbers changed.”
Implicit bias in diagnosing autism has also played a role, according to Richer, particularly for Black and brown children. This is also backed up in the CDC’s latest autism diagnosis rate report.
“When the numbers 1 in 36 came out, that was the first time we were diagnosing Black and brown children at the same rate we were diagnosing our white children,” Richer said.
Speaking about the rising rates of diagnoses, Kennedy claimed there are virtually no adult or elderly autistic people in the country.
“I asked [Walter Zahorodny] before we came out here, ‘Have you ever seen anybody our age — I’m 71 years old — with full-blown autism? Head-banging, non-verbal, non-toilet-trained, stimming, toe-walking, these other stereotypical features?'” Kennedy said. “Where are these people? You can’t find them.”
“Have you looked that hard?” Richer said. “Because there are individuals who have severe or profound autism of all ages. Period. They are out there. They’re living at home [with family]; maybe they’re living in group homes or in other places, but they’re out there. I know some of them.”
Mischaracterizing autism
Beyond Kennedy’s disregard for older people on the spectrum, Richer is alarmed that Kennedy never mentioned the word “spectrum” at all. Instead, she said his speech characterized all people with autism as head-banging, non-toilet-trained people with bleak futures.
“He took a series of characteristics that are not necessarily found in every autistic person, nor in every autistic individual who would be labeled as severe or profound,” she said. “It’s not a linear spectrum. When I think about it, it’s a three-dimensional spectrum of all kinds of things.”
Kennedy’s framing of autism and his plan to identify its “cause” have alarmed those who rely on Autism Connections, Richer told CityBeat.
“My phone was blowing up yesterday with people being concerned and scared and feeling misrepresented,” she said. “I really thought by now we’d be beyond the ‘autism as a disease, autism is bad’ — all the stuff that basically was strongly implied yesterday. I thought we’d be talking about, how do we increase support? How do we build best life? How do we do those things? But we’re not.”
Structural barriers
Kennedy’s remarks never touched on the structural challenges facing people on the autism spectrum or their families, like funded support.
“When I talk to families who have children with severe, profound autism or young children with autism, they want to know that they can get the therapies they need, that they can get the supports they need, that they can get the financial support they need,” Richer said. “We need early intervention. We need diagnosis earlier. We need supports earlier. We need supports longer.”
Studies show that support into adulthood is lacking; autistic adults face higher-than-average poverty rates and higher suicide rates than their neurotypical peers. Richer worries Kennedy’s descriptions of people with autism will only create more stigma, including around employment.
“Because the portrayal of that is frightening, right?” she said. “What do you mean I’m going to employ people who are not ‘toilet trained?’ I’m not saying he said that, but, wow, that is not a hard leap in my mind from what he did say, you know? We already have issues with individuals not wanting to disclose that they have autism because they get judged.”
Stigma is one of the reasons Autism Connections conducts workplace trainings to demystify working with people on the autism spectrum. Richer said a safe and fulfilling job for people with autism benefits everyone.
“There’s actually research out there that says that teams that have a neurodivergent individual on a team, that team is more creative, more effective and more efficient,” she said. “I promise you, if we learn more about autism here in our own community and we get to know more people with autism here in our own community, you will find that they are some of the most wonderful, fun, funny, intelligent, caring people that you’ve ever met, and that does not matter where they fall on the spectrum.”
Follow CityBeat’s staff news writer Madeline Fening on Instagram. Got a news tip? Email mfening@citybeat.com.
This article appears in Apr 16-29, 2025.