In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.
A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.
Another leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen."
He recently ran for president as an independent and endorsed Trump. RFK could get a major job in the administration.
Vaccines are some of the most successful public-health interventions in history, saving at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years. If Trump’s record is any indication, he himself may not really be the problem when it comes to vaccines. In the years of his first administration, vaccine coverage was as high as—or in some cases the highest—it had ever been (although this was more a continuation of the upward trajectory rather than a result of any particular Trump policies). Childhood vaccination rates have since slipped in the U.S. And with a second Trump term and the worrying prospect of people like Kennedy and Lapado steering or at least influencing policy, it is hard to imagine that vaccine rates won’t further decline. Certainly, vaccine hesitancy will increase—an intensification of the trend we have been seeing, in the U.S. and globally, since the start of the pandemic.
There may not be outright vaccine bans. “"I'm not going to take away anybody's vaccines,” Kennedy recently said. The problem is the doubt that Kennedy sows. Misinformation lingers. It’s been more than 25 years since Andrew Wakefield published his fraudulent paper falsely linking the MMR vaccine to autism. However, his shadow still looms large, and the U.S. has already been experiencing recent measles outbreaks, with misinformation-driven vaccine hesitancy a key factor. Globally, unfounded autism fears are still cited as a reason why some parents refuse vaccines for their children. Kennedy has made false claims that vaccines cause autism, and his misinformation super-spreading has even been linked to a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 (for which Kennedy has denied responsibility).
