New CDC Report Shows Autism Now Impacts 1 in 31 American Children

The figure represents a 16.1 increase compared to the same CDC report released two years ago.

A sign at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 15 showed that 1 in 31 children in America has autism.

The figures, which mark another jump in a long line of increases, stem from the CDC’s latest Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network survey published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The report prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to say that “the autism epidemic is running rampant.”

“That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992,” Kennedy said in an April 15 statement.

“Prevalence for boys is an astounding 1 in 20 and in California, it’s 1 in 12.5.”

The previous ADDM report released in 2023 discovered that 1 in 36 8-year-old American children had autism in 2020. The April 15 survey reflects a 16.1 percent increase in two years.

The new ADDM report was conducted in 2022 across 16 sites in 14 states and surveyed 8-year-old children born in 2014.

The new autism prevalence is also 4.8 times higher than in the first ADDM survey 22 years ago, when 1 in 150 children had autism.

“The autism epidemic has now reached a scale unprecedented in human history because it affects the young,” Kennedy said in his April 15 statement.

“The risks and costs of this crisis are a thousand times more threatening to our country than COVID-19. Autism is preventable and it is unforgivable that we have not yet identified the underlying causes. We should have had these answers 20 years ago,” Kennedy added.

Autism Society of America spokeswoman Kristyn Roth told the Associated Press that more research is needed to find what causes autism, but she is alarmed about Kennedy’s approach.

“There is a deep concern that we are going backward and evaluating debunked theories,” Roth said.

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication, according to Autism Speaks.

“There are many different factors that have been identified that may make a child more likely to have ASD, including environmental, biologic, and genetic factors,” the HHS website reads.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault system for compensating individuals injured by certain vaccines.

This eliminated the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury claims.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Oval Office in Washington on Feb. 13, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In the early 1990s, just 1 in 10,000 children were diagnosed with autism. In the first decade of this century, the estimate rose to 1 in 150. In 2018, it was 1 in 44 before reaching 1 in 36 in 2020.

Last December, President Donald Trump said that he would also give Kennedy the freedom to investigate the potential link between vaccines and autism.

“When you look at some of the problems, when you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said in December.

“I think somebody has to find out. If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism.”

Kennedy has said for years that autism is likely tied to childhood vaccines.

The NIH supports and funds research into autism, as well as potential new vaccines.

Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that he would revamp the NIH to focus on the causes of autism, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopmental diseases instead of developing drugs and serving as an incubator for pharmaceutical products.

In February, after the Senate confirmed Kennedy as health secretary, Trump established the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which the White House stated would investigate the “root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.”

At Trump’s April 10 cabinet meeting, Kennedy announced that HHS has “launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world” to determine what has caused autism rates to spike in recent years.

“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures,” he noted.

For parents and vaccine safety advocates such as Scott Shoemaker and MaryJo Perry, extensively studying potential links between childhood vaccines and autism is long overdue.

Shoemaker told The Epoch Times that his son was diagnosed with autism at the age of 15 months.

“The bottom line is we want the truth,” said Shoemaker, who is president of Health Freedom Ohio. “We want safe products for our kids. We don’t want big pharma to just say vaccines are safe and effective.”

According to Children’s Health Defense, there has not been a double-blind placebo-controlled safety study on infant vaccines.

“That needs to happen,” Perry told The Epoch Times. “There is no liability and no accountability for pharmaceutical companies. That needs to change.”

Perry, who is president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, said that all vaccines should undergo extensive safety studies and results should be “accurate and transparent.”

“If it’s good and safe, parents will use it,” she said. “You won’t have to coerce parents if it’s good and safe.”