Trump Claims Autism Artificially Induced Citing External Factors

President Donald Trump has asserted that autism does not occur naturally and must be caused by external, artificial factors, citing inflated statistics about the rise in autism rates from one in 10,000 to roughly one in 31 children. Speaking at the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission event alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, Trump suggested that modern medicine and environmental factors like artificial food dyes and chemicals could be contributing causes. The MAHA Commission's report points to issues such as ultra-processed foods, environmental chemicals, digital behavior, and overmedicalization as harming children's health but stops short of recommending specific regulatory actions. Medical experts have pushed back against Trump and Kennedy's claims, attributing the rise in autism diagnoses largely to improved screening and diagnostic criteria rather than an actual increase in cases. The administration is working to phase out eight common petroleum-based food dyes due to concerns about their health effects on children, echoing part of the commission's recommendations. Despite the lack of scientific evidence linking vaccines or food additives to autism, the report and Trump’s remarks have reignited fears of legitimizing debunked conspiracy theories.