Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who for years lived in Westchester County and ran for president in 2024, is under fire for comments made about autism and its potential causes in a speech Wednesday.
Kennedy, who has often drawn into question the origins of autism and decried its effects on children in the U.S., announced that his agency will study whether “environmental toxins” have contributed to the rise in U.S. autism rates.
“Somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food,” he said. “It’s to their benefit to normalize it. But that’s not good for our country.”
Earlier this month, he said in a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump that he’s aiming to know the cause of the “autism epidemic” by September, and will be able to “eliminate those exposures” that he says are behind the condition.
Of interest: RFK Jr says MMR vaccine protects from measles. What’s the vaccine rate in NY?
He also mentioned a “massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world” to find the causes of autism.
In February, Kennedy and other secretaries formed the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission, on order by President Trump, to look at everything from the rates of autism and asthma in children to how much medicine is being prescribed to them for ADHD or other conditions.
What is the cause of autism? Have autism diagnoses increased in the U.S?
The CDC says that some people with autism spectrum disorder have a genetic condition, but other causes are not yet known.
ASD diagnoses among 8-year-olds increased from 1 in 36 to 1 in 31 children from 2020 to 2022, according to data published on Tuesday by the CDC.
Learn more: RFK Jr. wants to find ’cause’ of autism. Here’s what people in autism community think
How has the autism community reacted to Kennedy’s comments?
Those on the spectrum and in the autism community didn’t react favorably to Kennedy’s comments, which included Kennedy saying that “autism destroys families.”
“None of us have been ‘destroyed,’” said Colin Killick, executive director of the Autism Self Advocacy Network in response to these comments on ABC News Wednesday. “[This language] promotes the worst kind of stereotypes about our community and promotes the lie that the lives of autistic people are not worth living.”
Cesilee Montgomery, a mom of three kids — two of whom have autism — shared her frustrations on TikTok, where she has over 24,000 followers.
“Autism did not destroy our family,” she said in a video posted late Wednesday. “It made us pivot. It helped us grow. Our children are not a mistake.”
However, Kennedy has given hope to many parents desperate for answers.
At a recent anti-vaccine autism summit in San Diego, parents of children with autism cheered as Kennedy promised via prerecorded video a future where “autism, once again, is very rare, where families with autism are well supported, where people on the spectrum are valued for the unique gifts they have to offer in our society,” according to reporting from NBC.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the agency plans to study possible environmental links to autism spectrum disorder.
Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
Kennedy, as Health and Human Services Secretary, is part of Trump’s cabinet, or his closest circle of advisers.
Kennedy, 71, is a known vaccine skeptic and, while he has recently endorsed vaccines like the MMR vaccine to prevent measles, he does not support the government mandating of them, he told CBS earlier this year.
Kennedy ran a brief presidential campaign against Trump in 2024 as an independent, but dropped out of the race in August and backed Trump.
His run stirred up a spat over whether he actually lived in Westchester County, and whether he was able to claim New York as his state of residence on presidential candidate petitions in New York and 17 other states.
National health: RFK Jr. says the government will know what caused the ‘autism epidemic’ by September
He has a home in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, but maintained last year that he rented a bedroom at a friend’s house in Katonah, which he listed as his home on his petitions.
The case went to court in New York last summer and Kennedy was eventually barred from running for president in New York, with a judge ruling that he wrongly claimed he lived in Westchester.
He had lived in Westchester for three decades prior while working as an environmental lawyer and teaching at Pace Law School.
Kennedy made the news last year in connection to a few other bizarre incidents, such as an admission that he dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park in 2014, and his daughter’s tale of how he once cut off the head of a beached whale, bungee-corded it to the roof of the family van and drove it back to the metro-New York area.
Contributing: USA TODAY Network New York State Team’s Chris McKenna and USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: RFK Jr. faces backlash over autism remarks
