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."
As G.K. Chesterton wrote, a madman "is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point."
[Dr. Paul] Offit said he walked Kennedy through a slew of studies, which Offit said didn’t show any harm from mercury in vaccines. He noted that by 2001, the U.S. had removed a preservative containing mercury from vaccines for young children as a precautionary measure. Still, Kennedy wrote a 2005 article linking vaccines to autism in Rolling Stone and Salon, which both publications later retracted.
A 2015 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association of the health records of 95,000 children showed the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine didn’t increase the risk of autism.
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Vaccine scientists have met with Kennedy and answered his questions on multiple occasions, people familiar with the conversations said, explaining that all vaccines go through safety testing ahead of their release and are also monitored after. Some shots for children, if tests in adults show that they safely prevent deadly diseases, don’t undergo placebo testing, because medical experts consider it unethical to withhold proven lifesaving treatment.
Vaccinologist Peter Hotez, who has a daughter with autism, also spoke to Kennedy in a series of phone calls in 2017—conversations initially brokered by Fauci.
“He had already set it in his mind that vaccines cause autism,” Hotez said, adding: “He didn’t have a lot of interest in the science, and wasn’t willing to bend.”
