RFK Jr.: A Threat to Public Health

 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 is now Trump's nominee to head HHS.

Gabriel Schoenfeld at The Bulwark:

To be sure, in lobbying for his confirmation Kennedy has said that “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.” He also says he aims to improve the science of vaccine safety and wants nothing more than to provide “good information” so people “can make informed choices.”

But in light of some of his other pronouncements, this is all disingenuous. One piece of his “good information”—repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox News—is that vaccines cause autism. This theory was first popularized by the British doctor Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet in 1998. But Wakefield was discredited and his Lancet paper was retracted because it was fraudulent. Despite numerous studies that have since found no link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy has persisted in trumpeting his view, and gone even further to claim that “no vaccine is safe and effective.” Notably, the lawyer Kennedy selected to screen candidates for positions at HHS has filed a petition to the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. On social media, Kennedy has called COVID shots “a crime against humanity.” Estimates are that COVID vaccines have prevented 3.2 million deaths in the United States alone through 2022.

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Even if, unexpectedly, RFK Jr. did absolutely nothing to hinder the development and distribution of vaccines, the mere elevation of someone with such views to a position of national authority would undermine public confidence in vaccines and increase vaccine hesitancy, with severely deleterious consequences for public health. If vaccination rates decline sufficiently, diphtheria, measles, yellow fever, shingles, and many other infectious diseases now relatively dormant may roar back into prominence.

Barbara Pfeffer Billauer at the American Council on Science and Health:

As we can see, vaccination has become politicized. With an upper echelon of federal health officers and officials outright fear-mongering or disparaging vaccines, we can expect more vaccine-resistant converts. Those who have always championed vaccine aversion will undoubtedly be emboldened; many on the fence will be converted. In 2018, the PEACH pamphlet featured two groups whose services included securing religious exemptions. Now that exemption is easier (and cheaper) to obtain and the wavering feeling supported by the highest level government officials, we can expect even greater numbers of unvaccinated - with dire repercussions.

 

Louisiana Government Buys Into Lies About Autism and Vaccines

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Some of the spreaders of misinformation have credentials.

And some of the credentialed spreaders now hold office.

Rosemary Westwood at Louisana Illuminator:

A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events.

Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — and at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop.

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Gov. Landry also appointed Dr. Ralph Abraham, a family medicine doctor, to be the state’s surgeon general. That position co-leads the Department of Health, and is tasked with crafting health policy that is then carried out by the departmental co-leader, the secretary.

Dr. Wyche Coleman, an ophthalmologist, was named deputy surgeon general.

At a Sept. 26, 2024 legislative meeting on the state’s handling of the COVID pandemic, Abraham and Coleman repeated misinformation about COVID vaccine safety and the debunked link between vaccines and autism.

“I see, now, vaccine injury every day of my practice” from COVID vaccines, Abraham said.

Abraham said masking, lockdowns and vaccination requirements “were practically ineffective,” that COVID vaccine adverse effects have been “suppressed,” that “we don’t know” whether blood from people who’ve been vaccinated is safe for donation and that “we hope and pray” COVID vaccines don’t increase the risk miscarriages.

Surgeon General Abraham also said “there’s nothing wrong” with Louisiana conducting its own research into whether childhood vaccines cause autism.

“You could probably fill Tiger Stadium with moms who have kids that were normal one day, got a vaccine and were then autistic after,” said Deputy Surgeon General Coleman at that meeting.

Those public comments by Abraham and Coleman are inaccurate and alarming, according to public health experts.

FAPE in the LRE

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is not a civil rights law.  It is a "conditions of aid" law.  If Congress follows Project 2025, it becomes a "no-strings" block grant, which would remove conditions of aid and gut the laws's requirements.

 Yell, M. L., & Bradley, M. R. (2024). The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act: Clarifying the Relationship Between Free Appropriate Public Education and Least Restrictive Environment. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194241305352

Abstract

In 2025, the Individuals with Disabilities Education (IDEA) will have been the primary law driving the field of special education for 50 years. A contentious area of disagreement has been the relationship between two primary mandates of the law: the obligation of schools to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to eligible students with disabilities and the obligation to place these students in the least restrictive environment (LRE) appropriate to each student’s individual needs. The conflict over LRE can be traced throughout the history of IDEA, in debates referenced as “mainstreaming,” “regular education initiative,” “inclusion,” and “full inclusion.” In this case, we draw on (a) Congressional intent as shown in the writings of a co-sponsor of the law, (b) the language of the law and regulations, (c) special education rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and other U.S. Courts of Appeals addressing FAPE and LRE, and (d) policy guidance from the U.S. Department of Education. We argue that there is no basis for believing that FAPE and LRE are in conflict. Rather, the FAPE requirement of the IDEA is the primary obligation of school districts, and it sets the parameters for determining the LRE. To believe otherwise represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. We describe how for students eligible under the category of learning disabilities, this perceived conflict has been especially challenging. Historically, the IDEA has made a distinction between high-incidence disabilities, those that occur more frequently, and low-incidence disabilities, those that occur less frequently. At some point, these distinctions morphed into a belief that high-incidence disabilities required less-intensive interventions and were more suited to regular class placement than those students with low-incidence disabilities. This distinction is incorrect. For each student identified as eligible for special education services, the determination of LRE should be an individualized decision based on student needs and where those needs can be best met. This discussion is a critical one for students with learning disabilities and all students with disabilities who may require intensive individualized supports, regardless of prior conceptions of low- and high-disability categories.