Former Food and Drug Administration vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks weighed in on Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s remarks about finding a cause of autism, saying giving people false hope is “wrong.”
Marks joined CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, where host Magaret Brennan asked him about Kennedy’s claim that the world will find the cause of the “autism epidemic” by September.
“I’m not aware of what is being discussed there, and I would just say the following: So, I’m somebody who in my career as a physician taking care of patients and there are people probably who are hearing me now who know that I cared for leukemia patients for a significant number of years,” Marks began.
“Giving people false hope is something you should never do,” he continued, adding, “You can be incredibly supportive of people, but giving them false hope is wrong.”
His remarks come after Kennedy said the HHS has launched a “massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of rising childhood autism rates.
Kennedy said hundreds of scientists worldwide would be involved in the process and that answers would come in the fall.
“If you just as me, as a scientist, is it possible to get the answer that quickly? I don’t see any possible way,” Marks said of the September timeline.
Kennedy is a longtime vaccine critic and helped found the most prominent anti-vaccine organizations.
Scientists like Marks don’t know what causes autism, but they are researching many possibilities. Marks noted that while it’s currently unknown, he knows vaccines do not cause it.
“He may be aware of a bunch of research that I’m not aware of, and that’s why I’m going to be respectful here,” Marks said of Kennedy.
“The piece, though, that I will … put to you that I will not accept as a cause of autism is the NMR vaccine, or for that matter, any of the other vaccines we use,” he continued.
