The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to award money to an institute to look into any association between vaccines and autism, according to a newly published notice.
The CDC said in the notice, which was published on Sept. 11, that it intends to award a contract to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute “for Investigation of the Association between Vaccinations and Autism Prevalence.”
It said that Rensselaer, which is located in Troy, New York, has a “unique ability to link children to maternal cohorts using proprietary databases and de-identified data sets, enabling advanced statistical analyses within the project’s timeframe.”
The timeframe was not included in the notice.
Rensselaer, which is located in Troy, New York, is aware of and appreciates the CDC’s intent to award it the grant, a spokesperson for the institute told The Epoch Times in an email on Friday.
Professor Juergen Hahn, who previously helped develop a blood test to detect autism, will be involved if the project ends up being awarded and would publish the results of his work at the conclusion of the effort, the spokesperson added.
Hahn did not respond to a query by publication time.
The CDC, which did not respond to a request for comment by publication time, intends to award the contract to Rensselaer without opening the project up to a competitive bidding process.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to unearth the causes of autism. Kennedy, who oversees the CDC, said during an August meeting with President Donald Trump and other Cabinet members that officials would announce the results of their research in September.
Rates of autism, a disorder with symptoms such as difficulty communicating, have soared in the United States in recent decades, hitting one in 31 8-year-olds in 2022, the most recent year for which data are available.
The CDC says on its website that “vaccines do not cause autism.” It points in part to a 2013 study CDC researchers carried out that determined that increased exposure to vaccine antigens did not raise the risk of developing autism.
Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy founded and chaired prior to joining the government, says on its site that “countless vaccine-injured children … developed autism after receiving routine vaccines.” The group pointed in part to filings to judges who rule on cases filed with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Judges weighing three cases put forward to represent thousands of cases filed regarding autism decided in 2009 that vaccines did not cause autism in those cases. Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a government witness in those cases, later said that there are situations where vaccinations could cause autism, particularly in children with underlying mitochondrial dysfunction, and a study examining vaccine court cases found some featuring people who were compensated for claims that included autism.