US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged in April that answers on the causes of autism would come this month. Since then, he has dismissed senior public health officials, rejected studies disproving any link between vaccines and autism, and claimed that “interventions” are “almost certainly” driving rising autism rates. Yet the large-scale autism research effort he announced has not even begun.
Thousands of scientists from leading institutions, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Mount Sinai, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Mayo Clinic, have applied for federal grants under the $50 million initiative, according to documents reviewed by CNN. Biotechnology firms, digital health startups, counseling groups, and hospital networks are also in the running.
The National Institutes of Health is expected to name up to 25 grant recipients this month, with projects running two to three years. Some researchers said they could release early findings sooner, but none said they could deliver definitive answers in the timeline Kennedy suggested. That gap between Kennedy’s promises and the realities of the research timeline has left autism experts unsettled.
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