RFK Jr. softens pledge to find autism cause by September

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is walking back the timeline on his promise to find the cause of autism spectrum disorder.

Kennedy said during an interview with CNN late Thursday that the new deadline will be around March of next year at the earliest.

Kennedy was pressed on "The Source with Kaitlan Collins" about his testimony during a House Appropriations Committee hearing earlier this month, when he doubled down on his commitment to find the cause of autism by September.  

“We will have some studies completed by September, and those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done. We’re also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of scientists. We’re going to send those grants out to bid within three weeks,” he told Collins.  

Kennedy added that he expects the results of those completed replication studies to begin to be finalized six months after September.  

“As I said, we’re going to begin to have a lot of information by September. We’re not going to stop the studies in September. We’re going to be definitive. And the more definitive you are, the more it drives public policy.”  

Kennedy in April first vowed to discover the reason for rising rates of autism spectrum disorder. He announced that the HHS would launch a “massive testing and research effort” to find the cause of the condition.  

He brought up the effort again during a press conference a week later when he suggested, without providing evidence, that rising rates of autism stem from “environmental toxins” in food and medicine.  

Kennedy said at the time that the HHS would have “some answers” about the cause of autism spectrum disorder by September after reporters pressed him about the deadline during the press conference.  

His remarks to CNN came shortly after President Trump said autism must not occur naturally.

"It has to be something on the outside, has to be artificially induced, has to be,” Trump said at a Make America Healthy Again Commission event.