President-elect Donald J. Trumpjlslot.com, who has promoted the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism for more than a decade, suggested on Sunday that he would have his choice for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., look into the issue.

“I think somebody has to find out,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” after his interviewer, Kristen Welker, brought up autism in the context of a conversation about Mr. Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines.

Mr. Trump noted that autism cases in the United States have risen in recent decades, and said he was “open to anything” when asked if Mr. Kennedy would look into it.

“I mean, something is going on,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.”

Autism diagnoses have indeed been increasing in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 36 American children now has a diagnosis of autism, compared with one in 150 in 2000. Experts attribute the rise to greater awareness and improvements in identification of children who exhibit a variety of symptoms classified together as “autism spectrum disorder.”

The theory that vaccines cause autism gained currency in 1998, after a British researcher published a medical journal article that purported to find a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism. That article has since been retracted, and its author has been stripped of his medical license.

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that there is no link, including a 2012 vaccine safety review by the Institute of Medicinejlslot.com, now known as the National Academy of Medicine, that stated, “the M.M.R. vaccine is not associated with autism.” A national study in Denmark in 2019 came to the same conclusion. Yet as recently as August, in an interview with the libertarian commentator John Stossel, Mr. Kennedy asserted, “autism is caused by vaccines.”

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