WASHINGTON—The spike in autism has been caused by environmental factors as opposed to genetics, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on April 16.

“We have really good genetic markers now, and they provide a vulnerability. But those genetic markers alone are not going to dictate your destiny. You need an environmental toxin,” he said.

Kennedy revealed that new studies on the environmental causes would be announced in two to three weeks.

“This has not been done before,” the health secretary said.

Walter M. Zahorodny, an associate professor at Rutgers University who co-authored the report, offered support for Kennedy’s position.

“I would urge everyone to consider the likelihood that autism, whether you call it an epidemic, a tsunami, or a surge of autism, is a real thing that we don’t understand, and it must be triggered or caused by environmental risk factors,” he said during the briefing.

The jump in autism prevalence “is a true increase,” Zahorodny said.

“There is a better awareness of autism, but a better awareness cannot be driving a disability of autism to increase by 300 percent in 20 years,” he said.

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurological and developmental disorder that impairs people’s ability to socialize, communicate, learn, and behave.

Diagnosis typically takes place in early childhood.

Symptoms include an inability to maintain eye contact and not noticing other children.

The CDC’s website reads, “Many different factors have been identified that may make a child more likely to have ASD, including environmental, biologic, and genetic factors.”

Those factors include being born to older parents and having certain genetic conditions, such as fragile X syndrome, according to the agency.

Kennedy said on April 16 that autism is an epidemic and criticized people who attribute the jump largely or solely to better screening and diagnostic criteria.

“Doctors and therapists in the past were not stupid,” he said. “They weren’t missing all these cases. The epidemic is real.”

Kennedy went over research from the past, including a study from North Dakota that sought to determine the rate of developmentally disabled children and determined that it was 3.3 per 10,000 children.

“If you accept the epidemic deniers’ narrative, you have to believe that researchers in North Dakota missed 98.8 percent of the children with autism,” he said.

Few details have been made public, including which scientists are participating in the project, beyond the Department of Health and Human Services’ confirmation of the involvement of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“The NIH is fully committed to leaving no stone unturned in confronting this catastrophic epidemic—employing only gold-standard, evidence-based science,” a spokesperson for the department told The Epoch Times in a recent email.

The NIH did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Kennedy said at the Cabinet meeting that the causes would be determined by September.

On April 16, he said that his department would disclose more information about the research in the coming weeks.

“We will have some of the answers by September,” Kennedy said. “It will be an evolving process. We’re going to remove the taboo. People are going to know that they can research and follow the science, regardless of what it says.”