The Search for the Causes of Autism—Why it’s so Important

Finally, an Administration that Cares about Autism

This past week the National Institutes of Health confirmed that it would undertake a study to find the real cause or causes of autism and why prevalence rates continue to climb, marking a radical departure for federal health agencies and bringing to fruition a core promise made by both Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year.

It will be a landmark investigation, coming at a crucial time as vaccines in general come under more scrutiny in the post-Covid mRNA world, and as environmental toxins are increasingly eyed as a major factor in America’s chronic disease epidemic, as well as in triggering autism, including toxins in vaccines.

As the National Institutes of Health (NIH) kicks off its mission, there’s a few things conservatives need to keep in mind if we are to make the most of what is undoubtedly an historic opportunity.

The first is that all of America has been lied to about autism for decades. One of the great shocks to people’s systems in the Covid and post-Covid eras, at least to most people, is the fact that the United States government lied about so much to the American people for so long.

Lying about autism was just another on that long list. Progressive advocacy organizations verifiably also lied about the nature and extent of the disorder. Ditto for Big Pharma, all lies. Perhaps most of all, the corporate media lied about it, over and over and over again, and it continues to do so.

The first lie is that science has proven that autism is primarily a genetic condition. The second big lie is that autism at high current levels of prevalence has always existed—we’ve just become aware of it through better diagnostics. The third big lie is that no reliable scientific studies have ever shown any associative link between vaccines and autism, and, by extension, any link between heavy metal toxins, chemicals, and autism.

Second—though this isn’t the focus of this piece—in the past few years progressives have switched to an even bolder lie, namely, that autism isn’t actually a disorder at all, simply natural variations in brain function occurring in a neurodiverse population that should be welcomed as the good news it is, not as a medical condition needing to be cured or improved.

This last piece of propaganda is important to grasp, not only because falling for it could prevent many children with autism from thriving the way most can if treated properly, including help for the many who are severely disabled, but because autism has become an important element in the social justice movement’s campaign to normalize transgenderism.

Simply put, the neurodiversity crowd rejects the medical model of autism. To them, autism is not a disease or disorder, it’s simply an identity that demands inclusion and equity, just as those who deny biological sex in favor of preferred gender identities say they require inclusion and equity. Disabilities become not conditions to be treated but features to be accommodated, as in allowing biological males in women’s sports. Similarly, neurodiversity advocates say it is not the child with autism who needs to “conform,” but the world that needs to change. This despite the fact that 25-30 percent of people with autism either fail to develop functional language or are minimally verbal. This despite the fact that co-morbidities abound (up to 44 percent of children with ASD present with epilepsy, and up to 50 percent with hyperactivity disorder).

Despite the dismal statistics, the neurodiversity movement thinks autism is a civil rights issue, and they have made great strides as part of the progressive movement in influencing government policy, both here and abroad. In 2018, Britain’s Labour Party launched an Autism Neurodiversity Manifesto, with calls for ‘neurological status’ to become a protected class under British law.

Naturally, Greta Thunberg has called her autism diagnosis her “superpower.” That’s all you need to know about whether autism is a disorder or not.

The problem with all that is, as the statistics demonstrate, they are built on false premises. And yet increasingly this movement, powered by progressives, has infiltrated federal and state government autism circles here in the U.S., formally advising on autism policies ranging from community integration to funding and grants to defining and identifying groups eligible for federal aid.

The idea is to unite an array of disorders under the umbrella of one social justice movement, in which to question one narrative is to question them all. To say autism is a disorder is to admit you are a bigot, in this world view. Predictably and conveniently, the neurodiversity movement circles around to transgenderism, particularly so in autism, where transgender identity is three to six times more prevalent in the ASD population than in the general population.

To normalize one is to normalize the other, and the progressive media is in on the scam. Here’s how NPR put it: “Researchers are working to understand the connection and how society can be more accommodating to people who live at this intersection.”

Ah yes, children with autism are now intersectional. They deserve and demand equity.

Among those researchers—or at least advisors—is the Wisconsin Autism Council, created by the governor years ago. The original mission of the group, as laid out in its 2006 bylaws, was to advise on support services for children with ASD, specifically to examine provider staff training issues; to consider strategies to recruit and retain line staff; to look at better ways to outreach and recruit parents to work as line staff; and to explore alternative approaches to the current age restriction policy in the intensive phase of ASD.

Nothing less, nothing more.

But all that changed when Tony Evers was elected governor. Now the goals of the advisory council are quite different. Rather than strategies to provide supports and services, it is to empower those with autism to “navigate the system of autism supports and services,” as if those supports and services are prison cells to evade, a “system” of oppression to defeat, and to “increase provider capacity to support neurodiverse children and youth.”

And there it is: Neurodiversity. While the darker implications of what that means policy-wise has not yet become manifest in the state, here’s giving fair warning that the ideological framework has been erected, and naturally under Evers. That the council’s neurodiversity platform might be crashed by the autism research of the Trump administration is good news for those who would like to see the normalization of obvious medical disorders take a quick trip to the trash bin.

In the meantime, it’s important to understand how health agencies and advocacy advisory groups are pushing social justice and dangerous new norms as a fake answer to a real epidemic.

The social justice links will be explored in depth another time, but more to the point here is to get beyond the other longer-standing falsehoods promoted by the government and Big Pharma, and how important the NIH effort is to that.

Transparency and a Scientific Resurrection

President Trump admirably kickstarted the new approach—one relying on the scientific method—in his February 4 address to the nation, where he directly confronted epidemic deniers with the plain, blunt numbers before us.

“Autism now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States, a staggering increase from the 1980s, when the disorder was found in only one to four out of every 10,000 individuals,” Trump said. “I created the Make America Healthy Again Commission to investigate and address the root causes of our escalating health crisis, with a focus on childhood disorders like autism. As part of this effort, my administration is prioritizing gold-standard research and increasing transparency to gain new insights to aid those with ASD.”

Trump said early detection is crucial to improving the quality of life of those with ASD, and that timely intervention significantly improves long-term outcomes.

“Identifying signs of autism at the onset allows parents and healthcare providers to implement therapies and support strategies which can enhance communication and social skills,” the president said. “Loving parents want the best for their children in educational environments and so do we. By supporting our children and their families, we can help them in overcoming challenges during childhood, the most crucial stage of development.”

This autism mission is not a stand-alone crusade. Not by any means. It is an integral element, in fact, of a massive reorganization announced this month by Kennedy of HHS’s bureaucratic infrastructure and of a radical reorientation of its mission. Both prongs, the mechanics and the philosophical approach, attack the deeply embedded progressive foundation within HHS.

The new autism study is a prime example. Federal health agencies had previously attributed autism to genetic disposition and increased diagnosis and awareness, and touted its conclusions as settled science. No longer will those theses be accepted as fact; no longer will skeptics be dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

The lunatics are now running the asylum, Faucians might say, but if torturing beagles, concocting lethal viruses in insecure laboratories controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and attempting to inject every American with a modified novel drug that had demonstrated no adequate safety profile (or even effectiveness) in short-circuited clinical trials is sane, let’s at least give the loonies a chance.

As it turns out, the study of autism’s causes is just the water’s edge as a new HHS sets sail. In addition to that study, which is expected to include the potential role vaccines play in the development of the disorder, the agency is also canceling billions of dollars in grant funding for research projects the government no longer feels are warranted, including ending funding for studies that focus on the reasons for vaccine hesitancy or on increasing interest in vaccines.

Grants related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) studies are to be terminated, too, while transgender issues also do not pass scientific muster, according to an internal NIH memo obtained and published by Nature. The NIH did not respond to Nature’s inquiry about the memo, but it also did not deny its authenticity.

“Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” the memo stated. “Many such studies ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities. It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize these research programs.”

That, in plain language, is the death knell for the ideology of neurodiversity and it can’t come quick enough.

Along with the mission change—from one of touting propaganda to debating and testing competing theories—comes infrastructure change, mostly to power down the independence (which can be read as rogueness) of 13 sprawling divisions or agencies under HHS and bring them into alignment with the new mission.

From the get-go, it eliminates 8,000 jobs at the mega-agency. The number was announced as 10,000 originally but 2,000 workers were reinstated. According to HHS, the reduction in workforce alone will save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year without impacting critical services. All totaled, HHS estimates that the workforce reduction, combined with early retirement and buy outs, will reduce the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.

The focus of the newly overhauled department will be to end America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins—all of which goes to the heart of the new-found autism research.

Lie # 1: Awareness

Of course, the redrawing of mission and function will expose the lies of the previous constructs rather quickly, as its prefabricated ideological nostrums are dumped into the trash and the bureaucratic scaffolding folds like a house of cards. Panic has set in, but progressives are counting heavily that the corporate media and advocacy groups that said corporate media use to mouth their leftist preferences will remain intact.

And they likely will, so it may be a good time to look at some of the aforementioned lies that the progressive media will likely to continue to peddle.

The first is about awareness. Mention awareness to the medical establishment, to big pharmaceutical companies, to the media and their front groups, and they say it is actually the citizens who have been unaware of a disorder that has existed all along, right in front of us.

It’s genetic, they say. It’s just better diagnosis, they say. That’s the only reason we see 1 in 36 children with autism today when we saw only 1 in 10,000 just four decades ago. It’s not that 277 children with autism per 10,000 weren’t always there, the establishment tells us between giggles, it’s that we didn’t see them. If it were not for the medical establishment’s amazing new powers of diagnosis, they tell us, we wouldn’t see them now.

If anything, this view goes, we should get down on our hands and knees and thank the establishment, not disparage it.

Never mind that no one in the 1950s and 1960s spotted enough kids with such obvious social and behavioral deficits that it sparked a nationwide search for answers. Yes, there were some who were mislabeled with other diagnoses of mental illness, and clearly better diagnostics has captured some who fell between the cracks, but the major hypothesis—that the mass of cases we see today always existed—simply does not pass common-sense observations, as Jill Escher has argued as president of the National Council on Severe Autism.

Escher ran a calculation, using CDC numbers, finding that some 58 percent of children with autism have observable intellectual disabilities (ID). That means that about 1.75 percent of all children born in the 1950s would have had observable autism, Escher wrote, but the total number identified as having autism or other related disorder back then was only .05 percent. That means, as Escher writes, that the other 1.7 percent of all children were simply missed altogether, children who “no one noticed were substantially disabled by autism (or any related label).”

Is that remotely possible? Escher asked.

In 2009, science researcher Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto and her co-author, Lora Delwiche of the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences, added heft to the argument for a true increase in prevalence, finding in a rigorous study of birth and census records that only about a third of autism cases could be accounted for by better diagnostics and other factors not indicative of a true increase.

Hertz-Picciotto observed that between 1990 and 2006 the number autism cases exploded by almost 600 percent in California: “Autism incidence in children rose throughout the period. Cumulative incidence to 5 years of age per 10,000 births rose consistently from 6.2 for 1990 births to 42.5 for 2001 births.”

Hertz-Picciotto set out to test popular explanations.

“Some have argued that this change could have been due to migration into California of families with autistic children, inclusion of children with milder forms of autism in the counting and earlier ages of diagnosis as consequences of improved surveillance or greater awareness,” Hertz-Picciotto wrote.

Their study analyzed data collected by the state of California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) from 1990 to 2006, as well as the United States Census Bureau and state of California Department of Public Health Office of Vital Records, which compiles and maintains birth statistics, correlating the number of cases of autism reported between 1990 and 2006 with birth records and excluding children not born in California.

“The proportion diagnosed by age 5 years increased only slightly, from 54 percent for 1990 births to 61 percent for 1996 births,” the study stated. “Changing age at diagnosis can explain a 12 percent increase, and inclusion of milder cases, a 56 percent increase.”

But those were small percentages compared to the size of the overall increase seen in the state, Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said.

Bottom line? The researchers contended that the rise in autism diagnoses could not be attributed to diagnostic substitution, and that a real epidemic was underway. So that’s the tanker for of Lie # 1.

Lie #2: It’s genetic

The medical establishment and their good donors in the pharmaceutical industry want us all to know that autism is primarily genetic. Here’s how the UCLA School of Medicine puts it in an article featured on its website:

No evidence, eh? Seriously?

Actually, scientific evidence is everywhere. A growing body of work—the latest from last year—indicates that environmental factors play a critical role in the development of ASD, or autism spectrum disorder.

None of which is to say there aren’t genetic predispositions, or even cases of purely genetic-based autism. It’s that environmental pollutants can trigger more genetically predisposed individuals, at least according to these peer-reviewed studies. At some point, too, the toxic brew that is everyday life in society overwhelms even those mildly predisposed.

For instance, a 2024 analysis found significant links between toxic environmental exposures and autism, this time a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of cohort studies published in BMC Public Health. The study was undertaken by Tatiana Duque‑Cartagena of the School of Medicine at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil, and colleagues. It found positive associations between the development of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and exposures to nitrogen dioxide, copper, mono-3-carboxypropyl phthalate, monobutyl phthalate, and PCB 138, as well as with such pollutants as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, metals, and more.

As with other studies, the researchers did not exclude genetic factors in autism prevalence, but they pointed to the interaction between genetic and environmental factors as key.

“Environmental pollutants, including toxic metals, are linked to epigenetic modifications and de novo mutations, potentially contributing to ASD onset,” the study stated. “These pollutants, particularly during gestation and postnatal periods, pose health risks and are associated with ASD. Toxic heavy metals can disrupt enzymatic functions, interfere with cell signaling, and trigger oxidative stress, potentially leading to cell death pathways.”

In a 2021 meta-analysis, researchers led by Dr. Heather Volk of the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said the body of evidence was striking that toxic chemical exposure is associated with ASD. The researchers acknowledged that scientists have long recognized that genetic factors contribute to autism etiology, as indicated in family, twin, and genetic studies. Yet, Volk and colleagues wrote, some of those studies’ conclusions have been flawed.

“Yet twin studies, from which heritability estimates are primarily derived, may inflate the role of genetics as both gene-only and genetic-x–shared-environment influences are summarized as genetic,” the researchers wrote.

Indeed, the researchers wrote, the environment may act in concert with genetic risk pathways or affect the intrauterine environment directly. A large body of evidence, Volk and her colleagues wrote, including decades of research on lead and child IQ, indicate a link between toxic environmental exposures and poorer neuro-developmental outcomes.

“In animal models and human studies, several toxic chemicals have been implicated in ASD and ASD-related traits and biological markers,” they wrote.

What’s more, the researchers wrote, evidence is emerging that other toxic chemicals are associated with autism or autism-related behaviors, notably phthalates, ubiquitous chemicals that cause a decrease in testosterone.

Beyond the more recent studies cited by Volk and her colleagues, other studies have pointed to environmental factors in autism, particularly since 2010.

A 2010 study by Dr. Dennis Kinney, “Environmental Risk Factors for Autism” concluded there was growing evidence that increased risk for autism was significantly associated with de novo mutations caused by preconceptual environmental exposure. Another Hertz-Picciotto study released in 2014 found that pregnant women who lived in close proximity to fields and farms where chemical pesticides were applied experienced a two-thirds increased risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder or other developmental delay.

“We mapped where our study participants lived during pregnancy and around the time of birth,” Hertz-Picciotto said. “In California, pesticide applicators must report what they’re applying, where they’re applying it, dates when the applications were made and how much was applied. What we saw were several classes of pesticides more commonly applied near residences of mothers whose children developed autism or had delayed cognitive or other skills.”

Indeed, after Hert-Picciotto published her 2009 study showing a true increase in autism, she wrote: “It’s time to start looking for the environmental culprits responsible for the remarkable increase in the rate of autism in California.”

In another study, researchers combed 100 million U.S. medical records and found that autism and intellectual disability rates were correlated at the county level with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males, which they said was an indicator of possible congenital exposure to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides.

According to the study, autism rates, after adjusting for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geopolitical factors, rose by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations. Intellectual disability rates increased 94 percent.

“Autism appears to be strongly correlated with rate of congenital malformations of the genitals in males across the country,” study author Andrey Rzhetsky, a professor of genetic medicine and human genetics at the University of Chicago, said. “This gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong.”

Though autism and intellectual disability have genetic components, Rzhetsky said environmental causes are thought to play a role, and his team analyzed an insurance claims dataset that covered nearly one third of the U.S. population. They used congenital malformations of the reproductive system in males as an indicator of parental exposure to toxins.

In 2012, Hertz-Picciotto and her team published another study designed to evaluate occupational risks and their association with ASD. Based on a pilot sample of 174 families, in which the parents of children with ASD and a control group of unaffected children reported their occupational exposure to 49 chemical agents suspected or that had been found to be associated with adverse pregnancy neurologic or physical outcomes, the study found that parents of ASD children were more likely to have had occupational exposure to lacquer, varnish, and xylene. Asphalt and solvents exposures were also strongly linked with ASD.

In 2014, another study linked industrial chemicals and autism. The report, produced by the Harvard School of Public Health and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, fingered neurotoxins as a factor in other childhood disabilities, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia.The researchers say a new global prevention strategy to control the use of the substances was urgently needed. The study was published online in the February 2014 issue of Lancet Neurology.

“The greatest concern is the large numbers of children who are affected by toxic damage to brain development in the absence of a formal diagnosis,” Philippe Grandjean, the study’s lead author and an adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard, said. “They suffer reduced attention span, delayed development, and poor school performance. Industrial chemicals are now emerging as likely causes.”

Lie # 3: No correlation between vaccines and autism

So now let’s consider lie number 3: According to the corporate media, there’s absolutely no evidence—none—linking vaccines and autism.

Here’s how NBC News put it a few years back: “The controversy over the mumps-measles-rubella vaccine began about 20 years ago after a study suggested a link to autism,” it stated. “As NBC News has continued to report, the research was later completely discredited and study after study since has shown no link.”

In 2019, the Autism Science Foundation put it this way:

Just in December The New York Times led with this headline: “Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is?”

To set the record straight, or at least to fill it out completely, while NBC was right to assert that study after study has shown no link—many of them funded by pharmaceutical companies—there is also a parade of studies that do show a link. A few reporters and scientists have called attention to them, especially former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson who has led the way in calling out this lie, and the University of Northern Iowa, but the mainstream media has mostly ignored them.

Indeed, the University of Northern Iowa’s posting of “Autism Relevant Vaccine Dangers in Scientific Literature” lists more than 30 studies and papers examining the issue.

Before proceeding to the studies, a few caveats. First, often times those who suggest a potential link do not posit the danger in the vaccine itself but in preservatives that contain chemicals such as aluminum and mercury (which is still in a number of vaccines despite assertions to the contrary) as well as the accumulated assault upon underdeveloped immune systems represented by a five-fold increase in the prescribed and advised childhood immunization schedule.

There are also those who believe that vaccines merely represent one of the triggers of autism—one of the straws that breaks the camel’s back—in a society that assaults our immune systems daily with toxic chemical and other exposures. And its not just autism that is the bad outcome, but multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune disorders.

Here’s another caveat about all those reports in the corporate media. When the media reports studies showing no link, they often imply that they have proven there is no link. That’s not the case: No study has ever proven that autism is not caused by vaccines. None. Showing no correlation and proving no link are two different things. Similarly, the studies that do show a statistically significant link also do not prove that vaccines cause autism. They provide mostly correlational rather than causal evidence. Still, the correlations are significant in those studies.

Finally, in the inner circles of the science catacombs, both sides call out the scientific quality of the other side’s studies, citing what they claim are methodological or other scientific flaws. It is beyond this article’s scope to get into that analysis. The point is that there are at least 30 peer-reviewed studies that do show a correlation between vaccines and autism, perhaps more studies than those that show no link. Some have stood the test of time; others have been criticized. Yet, rather than debate them openly, the media and the science establishment publicly act as if they do not exist.

But here are some of those still standing.

In a University of Pittsburgh study in 2008, “Pediatric Vaccines Influence Primate Behavior, and Amygdala Growth and Opioid Ligand Binding,” macaques were administered the recommended infant vaccines, adjusted for age and thimerosal dose (exposed), or saline (unexposed).

“Compared with unexposed animals, significant neurodevelopmental deficits were evident for exposed animals in survival reflexes, tests of color discrimination and reversal, and learning sets,” the study stated.

A 2011 study by Lucija Tomljenovic, “Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?” decided that they just might. The University of British Columbia study showed that children from countries with the highest ASD prevalence appear to have the highest exposure to aluminum from vaccines; that the increase in exposure to aluminum adjuvants significantly correlates with the increase in ASD prevalence in the United States observed over the last two decades; and that a significant correlation exists between the amounts of aluminum administered to preschool children and the current prevalence of ASD in seven Western countries, particularly at 3-4 months of age.

In 2010, a study out of Stony Brook University Medical Center, by Carolyn Gallagher and Melody Goodman, found that boys vaccinated as neonates (newborns) had threefold greater odds for autism diagnosis compared to boys never vaccinated or vaccinated after the first month of life.

Over time Attkisson has also offered up a sampling of studies: A 2011 study from Australia’s Swinburne University supported the hypothesis that sensitivity to mercury, such as thimerosal in flu shots, could be a genetic risk factor for autism; a Journal of Immunotoxicology review in 2011 by a former pharmaceutical company senior scientist concluded autism could result from more than one cause including encephalitis (brain damage) following vaccination; and a 2011 City University of New York correlated autism prevalence with increased childhood vaccine uptake.

These are just a sampling of more than 30, and all can be examined.

This is the kind of long overdue examination the Trump-Kennedy team will be undertaking. Maybe all those studies showing a link will turn out to be as invalid as their opponents make them out to be. One thing is sure, they won’t be treated as if they don’t exist.

If people had predicted two years ago that the Make America Great Again movement and the Make America Healthy Again movement would have united in a massive and fundamental push against corporate America’s food and pharmaceutical cartels, I would have simply sighed and said, ‘Oh, if only it could be so.’

Yet here we are. It is so. We have in place some of the best minds of science and medicine and policy we could imagine—not just Kennedy but Dr. Jay Bhattacharya running the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Marty Makary running the FDA—both stalwarts when it came to challenging government narratives during Covid.

This team is aware all right. They are aware of the gaslighting that has gone on now for decades. Theirs is not an academic exercise, for it will allow the world to once and for all identify the triggers that have led to the epidemic and to make policy actually based on the science, not on the ideology of corporate America’s profits and of progressive collectivism.

It’s an exciting time.