Autism Is on the Rise: What’s Really Behind the Increase?

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find The Environmental Causes Of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase…

Autism is on the rise: what’s really behind the increase?

RFK Jr has vowed to find out what’s responsible, but scientists say he is ignoring answers from decades of research. RFK Jr has vowed to find out what’s responsible, but scientists say he is ignoring answers from decades of research.

What Really Causes Autism and What We Should Do About It : The Hastings Center for Bioethics

I recently met Billy, a 12-year-old boy with severe autism.  He had been growing well but, at around age 3, he became increasingly delayed in speaking and walking.  As he got older, he would frequently scream unconsolably when upset. and have temper tantrums and meltdowns, spilling and throwing food all around him, and difficulty understanding spoken language or learning. Eventually, testing showed that he had an IQ of 70—in the category of inte…

RFK Jr. Fires Scientist Studying Environmental Causes of Autism

ProPublica exposed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a complete phony and know-nothing. He claims that he will get to the root causes of autism. He has said for decades that the singular cause of autism is vaccines. But he fired the scientist studying environmental causes of autism and dismantled her program. He won’t rest until he can find a scientist who agrees with him. That’s not how science works. It’s based on experimental evidence, not ideology. P…