In his recent address to both houses of Congress, President Trump brought new awareness to the number of children diagnosed with autism. “Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong,” he said in his speech to Congress last week. “As an example, not long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, 1 in 10,000 children have autism. One in 10,000. And now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36.”
That’s an alarming increase and bears further attention. But understanding the cause of this increase is paramount to solving the problem.
Allysia Finley, writing in The Wall Street Journal, believes the president is going about it all wrong. She says, “Left-wing environmentalists have long exploited parents’ anxieties by stoking fears about “environmental toxins” harming their kids. Now President Trump is taking up their cause. Something is wrong, and it’s the information that has been fed to him by “radical left lunatics” like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the label Mr. Trump applied less than a year ago to the man who is now his health and human services secretary.”
The onus for this increase has been placed on vaccines in the past, although there is no scientific evidence to support these claims. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reportedly plans to conduct a study of vaccines and autism despite countless failed attempts to find a causal link. Many toddlers show traits associated with autism spectrum disorder, such as repetitive behaviors or sensitivity to noise, around the same age as they get vaccinated. This doesn’t mean vaccines cause autism, any more than higher CO2 emissions cause Category 5 hurricanes.
Finley believes the main causes of increasing autism rates are heightened public attention and broader diagnostic criteria, which have encouraged more diagnoses of children and young adults who wouldn’t have been labeled autistic decades ago. Bill Gates notes in his new memoir, “Source Code,” that if he were a kid today he would likely be diagnosed on the autism spectrum because he was hyperfocused and struggled to read social cues. Kids may get diagnosed as on the spectrum if they are late to start talking or insist on following routines like sticking to a set bedtime. Suggesting that autism is a result of “toxins” stigmatizes people who happen to be wired differently.
The 1-in-10,000 statistic the president cited derives from a 1970 review of Wisconsin kids in the 1960s. In those days, only those who struggled to function were diagnosed. Most needed special education and accommodations, which they often didn’t get in public schools because it was expensive.
In 1973 Congress passed a law requiring schools that receive federal funds to make special accommodations for students diagnosed with disabilities, including autism. Two years later, Congress required states to identify such kids proactively and gave schools more money for each student who was diagnosed as disabled.
Whenever the government throws money at a program, you can be sure there will soon be more of that. The predictable result: a sharp uptick in autism diagnoses during the 1980s and 1990s as schools chased federal dollars. Some of these students needed special education, but many didn’t. Congress changed the funding formula in the late 1990s because many schools were diagnosing unimpaired children with cognitive disabilities to get more federal money.
Many states also give schools more money when their students are diagnosed on the spectrum. A 2022 study found states that do so had more diagnoses. According to government data, nearly 1 in 6 public-school students in 2022 were diagnosed as having a disability. But do they really? A study last autumn found that prevalence of autism more than tripled among children and young adults between 2011 and 2022. Don’t blame vaccines. Autism diagnoses increased most sharply in 2021 and 2022 even as MMR vaccination rates among kids fell.
Incentives can be powerful. Students diagnosed with autism, ADHD and learning disabilities typically get 50% more time to complete the ACT test. Some students may legitimately need such accommodations, but many are gaming the system.
An autism diagnosis can also yield more government benefits, including Supplemental Security Income. One study found that the prevalence of autism among young adults on Medicaid increased by about 50% between 2008 and 2012, which coincided with the economic downturn that left many out of work.
Finley concludes: “Jay Bhattacharya, Mr. Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, last week told the Senate that he was convinced that vaccines don’t cause autism, but that he would nonetheless “support a broad scientific agenda based on data to get an answer” to what does. By all means, study the genetic underpinnings. But please, Mr. President, don’t fuel public alarm.”
Clearly there is a need for further scientific study of the causes of autism and we should always be mindful of unintended consequences when we incentivize bad behavior. I look forward to learning more about this issue.
