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Kennedy also moved to cut funding for various autism programs, and tasked discredited researcher with finding “link” between autism and vaccines
By G. A. McNeeley
Photo, left: cc via Bing
April 27, 2025 (Washington D.C.) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, has pledged to find the “cause” of autism, while he and other members of the Trump Administration have reduced funding for autism research at the same time.
He has also put a researcher in charge of finding the cause of autism. previously disciplined for practicing medicine without a license in a debunked autism study with unapproved treatments that caused harm to patients.
Kennedy, who’s also spread debunked claims about vaccines causing autism, has also suggested “compensating” American families with autism.
Meanwhile, The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is collecting private medical records from federal and commercial databases to give to Kennedy's effort to “study” autism, according to CBS News.
What Has Kennedy Said About Autism?
"The more than 25% of people who have severe autism will never go on a date, write a poem, live independently, or have a job," Kennedy said in a post on X. "We need to identify the exposures that are causing this epidemic and compensate the families of the injured."
The comments drew wide-reaching accusations of ableism from Americans with autism, their loved ones, and advocacy groups, according to USA Today.
Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnoses are based on challenges with social skills, communication, and repetitive behaviors. It’s a spectrum, which means symptoms vary widely.
Some are unable to communicate at all, while others are highly successful in specific areas of life.
Kennedy later clarified that he was referring to a specific quarter of those diagnosed with autism, according to USA Today.
"There are many kids with autism who are doing well. They’re holding down jobs, they’re getting paychecks, they’re living independently," Kennedy told Fox News. "But I was referring specifically to that 25% – the group that is nonverbal."
Photo, right, cc by SA: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has likened her autism to a "superpower", crediting her success to her focused interests
The National Autism Association estimates that about 40% of children with autism don’t speak, according to USA Today.
When referring to what he believes is the “cause” of autism, Kennedy said, “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," during a news conference at the HHS headquarters.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that some people with autism have a genetic condition, while other causes are unknown, according to USA Today. The CDC is part of HHS.
The CDC also says that studies have looked at whether there is a connection between vaccines and autism, and the studies continue to show that vaccines aren’t associated with autism.
The CDC found that 1 in 31 children were diagnosed with autism by the age of 8 in the United States in 2022, which is an uptick from 1 in 36 children in 2020.
Many researchers attribute the rise in diagnoses to more widespread screening and the inclusion of a broader range of behaviors to describe the condition, according to USA Today.
Kennedy Cuts Funding For Some Autism Programs
“Funding for autism research is actually disappearing at a time when we see the director of HHS talking a lot about autism as though they think it is important,” Micheal Paige Sandbank, autism researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told TIME.
One of the biggest funders of autism research has historically been the Department of Education’s (DOE) Institute of Education Sciences, Sandbank added. The institute was gutted by the Trump Administration, with a skeleton staff remaining, according to TIME.
Many researchers who focus on autism had their doctoral studies funded by a development program within the DOE. That program could’ve helped train the next generation of special education teachers, speech language pathologists, and occupational therapists to work with autistic students in the classroom. The program is the Personnel
Development to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities.
Kristen Bottema-Beutel, professor of special education at Boston College, said she applied for a grant within that program in November, and received an email in April saying that the DOE wouldn’t fund the grant.
Bottema-Beutel and her colleagues hoped to fund 12 doctoral students with disability-related interests in a collaboration between Boston College, Boston University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston, according to TIME.
Charting My Path for Future Success, another DOE program, also lost funding. It helped students with autism transition from high school into college and work. Students were upset that the program disappeared, because it matched them with trained instructors who checked in with them and their families to assist in that transition, according to TIME.
The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University lost $7.7 million in funding because its grant application (which was initially approved) included the terms “inclusion” and “accessibility,” according to Jessica Schonhut-Stasik, who runs communications for the Frist Center and was a student in the program. The program offered grants for neurodivergent students or people studying neurodivergent students, Schonhut-Stasik added.
The DOD also funded autism research, Sandbank says, but a reorganization there has left future projects in jeopardy. Their funding was through Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. In each of the last five years, the Autism Research Program under that bucket received $15 million dollars, according to DOD press releases.
Personnel cuts to departments are also slowing the process of getting grants approved, according to David Mandell, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Staff are overworked and unable to process the grants quickly, and these department changes are making it difficult for researchers to propose studies or plan at all, according to TIME.
“Everything is in a constant state of flux,” Mandell told TIME. “I can’t plan a study if I have no idea if it will be consistent with the Administration’s priorities a month from now. It has a huge chilling effect.”
Mandell and other autism researchers say they’re worried about the effects of further Trump Administration cuts. People with autism also heavily rely on special education and Medicaid. The Trump Administration has vowed to get rid of the DOE, and Congress may have to consider cutting Medicaid funding to pay for tax cuts, according to TIME.
NIH Is Collecting Private Medical Data
The data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy's autism studies to study "comprehensive" patient data with "broad coverage" of the U.S. population, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a presentation to the agency's advisers.
Medication records from pharmacy chains, lab testing and genomics data from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, claims from private insurers, and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers will all be linked together, Bhattacharya added.
Additionally, a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data. Advocacy groups and experts have called out Kennedy for describing autism as a "preventable disease," which they say is stigmatizing and unfounded, according to CBS News.
Bhattacharya added that the research using the data will be "the highest quality proposals" that will range "from basic science to epidemiological approaches, to other more applied approaches.”
"There's a range of manifestations ranging from highly functioning children to children that are quite severely disabled. And of course the research will account very carefully for that," Bhattacharya added.
Between 10 and 20 outside groups of researchers will be given grant funding and access to the records to produce Kennedy's autism studies, according to CBS News.
While the selected researchers will be able to access and study the private medical data, Bhattacharya said they will not be able to download it. He promised "state of the art protections" to protect confidentiality.
"What we're proposing is a transformative real-world data initiative, which aims to provide a robust and secure computational data platform for chronic disease and autism research," Bhattacharya added.
Researcher disciplined for practicing medicine without a license in autism study that harmed children is tasked to find autism’s cause
The CDC, under Kennedy’s direction, is expected to hand over multiple sets of vaccine safety data to a discredited researcher with a history of claiming that vaccines cause autism (a claim which has been fully debunked), according to NBC News.
David Geier, who shows up in the HHS directory as a “senior data analyst,” will reportedly analyze that data.
Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting CDC director, called Geier a “deeply irresponsible choice” to lead this effort as he has “no medical degree and a long history of pushing discredited theories about vaccines and autism.”
David Geier and his father, Mark Geier, were a pair of researchers known for their poorly designed and retracted studies using government safety data that have spread misinformation about vaccines, according to NBC News.
The Geiers claimed at an Institute of Medicine panel in 2004 that the CDC data showed vaccines were linked to autism, which was refuted by scientists at the meeting, according to NBC News.
The Geiers conducted research from a makeshift laboratory in their Maryland basement, and promoted an unproven treatment for autism that cost families tens of thousands of dollars and included injections of Lupron. In children, the side effects include bone damage, heart issues and seizures. They diagnosed kids with precocious puberty without proper tests and misled parents into thinking they were signing up for an approved autism therapy.
In 2011, the Maryland Board of Physicians found that the Geiers violated standards of care. In 2012, Mark Geier, who theorized that autism resulted from an interaction between mercury and testosterone, was stripped of his medical license by Maryland regulators. Maryland regulators have also disciplined David Geier for practicing medicine without a license.
Sources:
https://time.com/7279068/trump-administration-autism-research-cuts/
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/rfk-jr-autism-study-medical-records/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna198214
Comments
HIPAA laws...
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