Rumors about autism, a developmental disorder, have spread online for decades.
Snopes reporters have worked to dispel several of these claims, many of them centered around the longstanding and thoroughly debunked rumor that vaccines cause autism. For example, we determined that a two-decade long study from Denmark showed no link between vaccines and autism. We also investigated the origins of a misleading and faulty study that claimed to show links between vaccines and autism.
During U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, he directed Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to investigate the causes of autism — leading Snopes to investigate various claims or purported policy decisions made by Kennedy, who frequently expresses harmful and false stereotypes about autism, according to experts and advocates for autistic people.
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