Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared to backtrack on his previously stated timeline for determining the cause of autism by September in an interview on Thursday.
Kennedy told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that it will "probably take us another six months" to uncover "the most solid information" on what has been causing autism diagnoses to spike in the United States.
During a Cabinet meeting last month, Kennedy told President Donald Trump that HHS had launched a "massive testing and research effort" to uncover the root causes of what he describes as "the autism epidemic."
"By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures," Kennedy claimed during the Cabinet meeting.
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When asked by Collins if his September timeline was still on track to be achieved, Kennedy seemed to backtrack on his original pledge.
"We'll have some of the information," Kennedy replied. "To get the most solid information, it will probably take us another six months."
According to Kennedy's new estimation, the cause of the "autism epidemic" is expected to be shared with the public sometime around March of next year.
Collins then asked the HHS secretary if it would be safe to assume that parents will not know what causes autism by September.
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"Well, we'll see," he answered. "We're going to - as I said, we're going to replicate some of the studies that have already been done that look like sound studies, and we'll know a lot from those, and then we'll know a lot more afterwards."
The journalist followed up Kennedy's response by asking if there would be a "definitive answer" to the cause of autism by September, to which he replied: "It depends what those replicable studies show."
Referencing Kennedy's prior statement that it would take another six months to uncover "the most solid information," she asked the HHS secretary what he expects to happen after those six months.
"I expect we will know the answers of the etiology of autism," Kennedy claimed.
After being asked if the timeline is now being moved to six months after September, Kennedy responded, saying, "As I said, we're going to begin to have a lot of information by September. We're not going to stop the studies in September. We're going to be definitive. And the more definitive you are, the more it drives public policy."
Collins again pressed Kennedy for a clear timeline, asking if Americans would know what causes autism by March of next year.
"As I said, it's about six months after September, a lot of these studies will begin coming back," Kennedy stated.
