In The Politics of Autism, I look at the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism
The Trump administration on Friday announced that it was appointing Brenda Fitzgerald, who has served as Georgia’s Public Health Commissioner since 2011, to be the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While Fitzgerald is widely respected in public health circles, she is highly controversial among a certain segment of President Donald Trump’s base: Anti-vaccination activists who had previously been encouraged by Trump’s public denunciations of mandatory vaccination programs.
Jake Crosby, who runs the Autism Investigated anti-vaccination website, warned Trump last week that he would be betraying his anti-vaxxer supporters if he appointed Fitzgerald to head CDC.
In particular, Crosby pointed out that Fitzgerald recently wrote that all studies that have purportedly linked childhood vaccinations with autism had been “debunked.”
