Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday appeared to criticize people who attribute a rise in autism to better testing and genetics as "epidemic" deniers.

The comment comes after a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study credited the increase in cases to improvements in early identification of autism. Kennedy has argued that the rise could be caused by environmental toxins. 

Experts have argued over the cause of the recent increase in diagnoses, which has grown from 1-in-44 children to 1-in-31 children between 2018 and 2022. In 2003, the number was 1-in-150 children. Some experts claim that it is heavily influenced by genetics, others state it is because of advances in technology and better awareness, and some claim it is a mix of both, per CNN.

Kennedy largely rejected these explanations in his first news conference as HHS secretary, and said further autism research will fall under his new Administration for a Healthy America.

“One of the things that I think that we need to move away from today is this ideology that the autism prevalence increases ... are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria,” he said. “If the autism epidemic is because of better diagnostic criteria why are we not seeing it in older people?”

The secretary also doubled down on his take that the cases are stemming from environmental toxins, which he claimed have made their way into the mainstream U.S. food and water supply.

“Somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food," he said. “Within three weeks we're gonna announce a series of new studies to identify precisely what the environmental toxins are that are causing this.”

Dr. Walter Zahorodny, an associate professor at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School who co-authored the new CDC report, said during the news conference that there is too much about autism that experts still do not understand.

“I would urge everyone to consider the likelihood that autism – whether we 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 or risk factors,” he said. “We need to address this question seriously because, in my opinion, for the last 20 years, we’ve collected data but not made real progress in understanding what causes autism or how to effectively prevent it or treat it effectively.”

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.