Let’s just presume for argument’s sake that the Trump administration and its chief flunky at the Department of Health and Human Services are actually serious about identifying a definitive cause of autism by September, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this month.
I know. That’s a bit of a big ask. If they were actually serious about what Kennedy described as “a massive testing and research effort,” involving “hundreds of scientists from around the world,” would they have spent their first 100 days choking off funding for testing, research, and scientists?
Doubtful. Perhaps that’s why Kennedy gave no details for the project and revealed no budget for it.
But let’s presume that Kennedy’s latest conclusion that an environmental toxin causes autism is found to be correct by September.
Kennedy made his pop culture chops spreading the irresponsible conspiracy theorist nonsense that vaccines cause autism, but his reformist views casting suspicion over environmental factors has been shared by the NIH itself, which is on record naming prenatal exposure to pesticides and air pollution as potentially causative.