RFK on Autism

 Interviewer: If you go back to just 2016, eight years ago, it was one in 54. If you go to 2000, it was one in 150. What was the number when you were a kid, and what do you think is going on?

RFK Well, there's really good data on that. There were many studies in the peer-reviewed literature. Probably the most important study was the biggest epidemiological study in history at that time in Wisconsin. It looked at 900,000 kids. It was published in a high-gravitas journal, peer-reviewed study, and they found the rate to be 0.7 out of 10,000, so less than one in 10,000. The CDC data that we released this week shows one in 31, but it's a state-by-state data, and the worst state is California, which actually has the best collection methodology, so they actually probably reflect what we're seeing nationwide. In California, it's one in every 20 kids and one in every 12.5 boys, and if you look at the minority numbers, which we don't do very well, it's much worse, and the low-functioning autism, in other words, people who have full-blown autism, which is about 25% of the population of that kids with autism, about 25% of them are nonverbal, non-toilet trained. They have all these stereotypical behaviors, head-banging, biting, toe-walking, stimming, and that population is growing higher and higher, so it's becoming a larger percentage, so we're seeing much, much more -- many more cases that are now linked to severe intellectual disability. The media has brought into -- bought into this industry canard, this mythology, that we're just seeing more autism because we're noticing it more. We're better at recognizing it, or there's been changing diagnostic criteria.

There is study after study in the scientific literature going back decades that says that that's not true. In fact, California legislature in 2013 asked the MIND Institute at UC Davis to look exactly at that topic. They said, "Is it real, or are we just noticing it more?" And the MIND Institute came back and said, "Absolutely, this is a real epidemic. This is something we've never seen before." But anybody with common sense, would notice that because the autism -- this epidemic is only happening in our children. It's not happening in people our age. And if it was better recognition, you'd see it in 70-year-old men. And I'll say this, I want to be very careful when I say it, because I've never seen a person with full-blown autism. I've seen many people with Asperger's and, you know, on the spectrum who are my age. I've never seen anybody with full-blown autism. That means nonverbal, non-toilet trained. It's that you don't see these people walking around the mall because they don't exist in our age.

President Trump asked me to find out what's causing it. And I'm approaching that agnostically. I'm looking -- we are looking at everything we're going to do. We're going to be very transparent in how we design the studies. We're going to farm the studies out to 15 premier research groups from all over the country. And we're going to be transparent about our protocols, about the data sets, and then every study will have to be replicated. We're going to look at mold. We're going to look at the age of parents. We're going to look at food and food additives. We're going to look at pesticides and toxic exposures. We're going to look at medicines. We're going to look at vaccines. We're going to look at everything.

I think we'll have some preliminary answers in six months. But it will take us probably a year from then before we can have definitive answers because a lot of these studies will not go out until the end of the summer.