Washington DC - US authorities are conducting a large-scale study that should, in several months, reveal the cause of the autism "epidemic," Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday.

"We've launched a massive testing and research effort that's going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world," Kennedy said at a televised cabinet meeting chaired by President Donald Trump.

"By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic. And we'll be able to eliminate those exposures."

Kennedy said the prevalence of autism has jumped dramatically in recent decades.

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"The autism rates have gone – from our most recent numbers, we think are going to be about one in 31 from one in 10,000 when I was a kid," he said, without offering more detail or citing the source of the figures.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently puts the rate of autism in children in the US at one in 36.

"That's a horrible statistic, and there's got to be something artificial out there that's doing this," Trump commented.

Once a celebrated environmental lawyer who accused climate-change deniers of being traitors, for the past two decades, Kennedy has promoted conspiracy theories linking childhood vaccines to autism and even questioning whether germs cause disease.