The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched a "massive testing and research effort" that will determine "what has caused the autism epidemic" by September, its Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday.

"By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures," Kennedy said in a cabinet meeting.

The number of autism diagnoses in the US has been rising for decades. About 1 in 36 children were identified with autism spectrum disorder in 2020. That's up from 1 in 150 children in 2000, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"The NIH (National Institutes of Health) is fully committed to leaving no stone unturned in confronting this catastrophic epidemic — employing only gold-standard, evidence-based science." HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement Thursday.

But experts are highly skeptical of Kennedy's claims that he will be able to determine the causes of autism in just a few months.

After spending decades researching the genetic and neuroscientific causes of autism, "the idea that we can suddenly find the causes by September is unrealistic," said Geoff Bird, a cognitive neuroscientist and autism expert at University of Oxford and University College London, UK.

There are many different signs of autism, and people don't necessarily experience them in the same way . For some, social communication can be challenging or even overwhelming. Others might have........

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