The US Minister of Health promises to find out the cause of autism by September
Experts described Kennedy’s efforts to be misleading and unrealistic.
Washington. American health minister Robert F. Kennedy younger has committed himself to « massive testing and research efforts » to determine the cause of autism within five months, writes the BBC server.
Experts warn that finding the causes of autism spectrum disorders – a complex syndrome that doctors have been exploring for decades – will not be easy and efforts have been described as misleading and unrealistic.
Kennedy, who promotes refuted theories claiming that autism is related to vaccination, said in the government meeting on Thursday that US research effort will « include hundreds of scientists from around the world ».
« By September we will know what caused an autism epidemic and we will be able to remove it, » he said. He had previously declared that the authorities would examine food, water, air and ways of raising children.
The American autistic society described Kennedy’s plan as « malicious, misleading and unrealistic ». « It is neither a chronic disease nor an infection, » she said in a statement. Chairman of Christopher Banks has challenged the transparency of research and said that claims that autism is caused exclusively by environmental factors are « misleading theories that maintain harmful stigma, threaten public health and distract from critical needs of autism community ».
According to government data since 2000, the diagnoses of autism in the US have been rapidly added. By 2020, it reached almost 2.8 percent of autism among eight -year -olds, reporting the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Scientists attribute part of the increase in increased awareness of autism and expanding the definition of this disorder. They also examine the impact of the environment.
The US National Institute of Health (NIH) gives more than $ 300 million a year to research autism. According to him, risk factors are, for example, exposure to fetal pesticides or polluted air, premature birth or low birth weight, health problems of the mother or conception at an older age.
