Factchecking the Trump administration?s Autism claims

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine sceptic, as the Secretary for Public Health might not be the most ?out there? thing the Trump administration has done but it certainly raised some eyebrows. Since his appointment Kennedy has been on a mission to ?Make America Healthy again? and has set his sights on finding ?the cure? for Autism. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that can affect how someone communicates, socialises, learns and behaves. In the 1980?s one study estimated that 4 in 10,000 (1 in 2500) children in Wisconsin had an Autism diagnosis. Recent data from the Centres for Disease control states that 1 in 31 eight year olds in the US have the condition. Why have the numbers gone up? Is it due to environmental toxins as Robert Kennedy suggests or does the answer lie in the counting? Presenter/Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Studio Manager: Andrew Mills Editor: Richard Vadon

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why do some big successful brands go bust?
0:05.0	Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.
0:11.0	I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.
0:15.0	They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.
0:19.0	And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?
0:25.4	It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.
0:30.3	Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.8	Hello and thank you for downloading the more or less podcast.
0:37.2	We're the program that looks at the numbers in the news and in life.
0:40.7	And I'm Lizzie McNeil.
0:42.6	Donald Trump has done many interesting things in this time as president.
0:48.0	And one such interesting thing was hiring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an outspoken vaccine skeptic, as his health secretary.
0:56.7	I don't think people should be taking advice, medical advice from me.
1:00.9	Uh, isn't that sort of his job?
1:03.8	Anyway, there is one particular cause that he has committed himself to.
1:08.4	Autism destroys families.
1:11.6	More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource which are our children.
1:15.6	The World Health Organization estimates that the global autism rate is around 1 in 100.
1:21.6	In the US, that number is 1 in 31, a rate that RFK has sworn to lower.
1:28.8	0.7 children had autism in every 10,000.
1:34.0	That's less than 1 in 10,000.
1:37.2	Today we're at 1 in 31.
	...

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