U.S. President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a conference Thursday afternoon after releasing a highly-anticipated report about chronic childhood diseases.
"When you hear 1 in 10,000, and now it's 1 in 31, for autism, I think that's just a terrible thing," the president said, alongside Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a press conference Thursday after releasing a highly-anticipated report about chronic childhood diseases. Both Trump and Kennedy have repeated those statistics several times, despite expert pushback on their accuracy.
According to an April report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence of autism in the U.S. has increased from 1 in 36 children to 1 in 31 by age 8, with Secretary Kennedy describing the situation as an "autism epidemic" that has "run rampant."
At the Thursday afternoon conference, Trump continued to suggest that the increase in diagnoses suggests a new threat is at large. Trump said without providing evidence, "It has to be something on the outside. It has to be artificially induced."
Leaning into the MAHA movement's skepticism of Big Pharma and Big Food, Trump added, "We will not allow our public health system to be captured by the industries it's supposed to oversee, so we're demanding answers."
The Trump administration has received fierce backlash from the scientific community for many of its beliefs about health, including autism, a neurodevelopmental condition with lifelong impacts on a person's ability to interact, behave, communicate and learn.
Trump's controversial remarks come after the administration announced that it would be creating an autism registry for the Make American Healthy Again Commission to conduct research into the disease, which impacts over 5.4 million American adults and their families.
The announcement, during which Kennedy pledged to find the cause of autism by September, surged concerns among the disabled community about the country's rising affinity toward eugenics.
The 69-page report concludes that most chronic childhood diseases are linked to ultra-processed foods, chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, stress and excessive use of prescription drugs. The report also cast doubt on the efficacy of childhood vaccines.
The report will be utilized over the next 100 days by the MAHA commission as it drafts implementation plans, Kennedy said.
“We will save lives by addressing this chronic disease epidemic head-on, we’re going to save a lot more money in the long run — and even in the short run,” Kennedy said.
