The US government launches a new research initiative autismusing medical data from a million Medicare and Medicaid Recipients.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He announced a plan on Wednesday, which includes an agreement on the division of data between the national health institutes (NIH) and Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS).
CMS keeps data for almost 150 million Americans. Although the scale of data is huge, experts careful that it is unlikely to reveal the root causes of autism.
“We use this partnership to detect the root causes of autism and other chronic diseases,” Kennedy said in the statement.
The agreement will be “in accordance with applicable privacy laws for the protection of American sensitive health information” HHS The statement said. The Health Department did not answer additional questions about the program.
Kennedy’s comments caused an alarm among autism researchers, which are afraid to use the study to support the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Kennedy, a long-year critic of the vaccine pushed that theory, although the research has not found the relationship between vaccines and autism for decades. President Donald Trump He also suggested that vaccines could be guilty of autism rates.
Using the data, the Agency is on which researchers will focus on the trends of autism diagnostics, health outcomes from medical or behavioral outcomes, access to demonstration and geographical loads and health systems.
The problem is that this is not the type of data needed to answer questions about autism, said Helen Tager-Flusberg, Professor Emerita University of Boston Who runs a new coalition of the Autism of Scientists, which is pushed to return to Kennedy’s characteristics.
“Plenty of research was done at the moment we know a simple magical bullet,” she said, warned that this type of data gathers would not help in the type of research that is most needed – in genetics and other prenatal incoming factors.
Kennedy focused a health department to take far-reaching research efforts to identify the causes of autism, a complex disorder that affects the brain. Announcing his plans last month, Kennedy said he planned to submit answers about what causes autism through September. Since then, he said that the department would determine at least “some” causes.
His research directive comes as speeds of autism in the USA, and the control centers and preventing the reporting of 1 American children, said the increase is the result of increased awareness of the disorder, especially among people who exhibit milder symptoms of autism.
Kennedy refused to explain in public performances, describes autism instead as “a fierce disease” that causes ecological factors.
Autism is not considered disease, but a complex brain disorder. Those who spent decades explored autism did not find any cause, although genetic factors were connected to that. In addition to genetics, scientists have identified different possible factors, including the age of the child’s father, home weight and whether she had diabetes or exposed to certain chemicals.
The new platform that plans to launch around autism will be “pilot”, which will be used to study chronic conditions and treatments, the Agency said.