Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now admits his bold claim that he would uncover the cause of the autism epidemic in America in just a few months is not going to happen.

He made the claim in front of President Trump at a cabinet meeting at the White House last week. “By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures,” Mr. Kennedy said.

He clarified his statement at a rambling press conference on Wednesday morning. “We will have some of the answers by September,” Mr. Kennedy now says.

Scientists have been working for decades to try to find what factors might contribute to autism but the cause or causes remain unclear. Mr. Kennedy has long blamed vaccines for autism. He once claimed there was a link between the condition and a preservative that is used in vaccines. He later claimed MMR shots caused a spike in autism cases.

Dozens of major studies have found no connection between MMR vaccines and autism. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy would not say that vaccines do not cause autism.

Mr. Kennedy says that cases are rising at an alarming rate and rates of autism have increased to 1 in 31 in 8-year-olds from 1 in 36 two years ago. 

He says the chances of a boy in America developing autism is now 1 in 20. California, which he says has the best data collection program, has a rate of 1 in 12.5 boys.

“This is part of an unrelenting upward trend,” Mr. Kennedy says. “This is catastrophic for our country.”

He says children are non-verbal in about 25 percent of the cases and show “stereotypical” symptoms like not being able to be toilet trained or banging their heads.

There is speculation that autism rates have simply grown as doctors spend more time looking for it and diagnosing the condition but Mr. Kennedy says the increases should not be attributed to better diagnosis, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria.

“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media,” Mr. Kennedy says. “There are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.”

Calling autism a preventable disease, he insists that they will find an environmental cause behind the increase in cases and says he will be announcing studies in the weeks ahead to uncover the cause.

Mr. Kennedy claims the cost of treatment in the U.S. will hit $1 trillion a year within a decade.