CDC to Legitimize the Vaccine-Autism Lie

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.  Trump has directed him to investigate autism.

Lena H. Sun and Lauren Weber at WP:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a study into the potential connections between vaccines and autism, according to two people familiar with the plan, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no link between the two.

The request for the study came from Trump administration officials, said the two people familiar with the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy have repeatedly linked vaccines to autism.

Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, has disparaged vaccines for years. A previous Washington Post examination found that since 2020, Kennedy has linked autism to vaccines in at least 36 appearances, despite the evidence to the contrary.

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In a statement, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said: “As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.”

...

“I will watch carefully for any effort to wrongfully sow public fear about vaccines between confusing references of coincidence and anecdote,” [Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana)] said in February.

Cassidy’s office declined to comment Friday.

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The CDC is planning to look at the connection between vaccines and autism using data from its Vaccine Safety Datalink, according to the two people familiar with the initiative, who described it on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it. Established in 1990, the database is a project to monitor the safety of vaccines and study rare and serious adverse events following immunization. The VSD uses electronic health record data from member sites to assess vaccine safety and detect adverse events in near-real time.

Uh oh. From a 2025 Annenberg Public Policy Center study:

 Since the inception of VAERS in 1990 (CDC, n.d., About VAERS), its data have been mistakenly cited to suggest that the recording of an event in VAERS confirms that it was vaccine-caused. Long before COVID-19 was added to our working vocabularies, people falsely alleging that the MMR vaccine causes autism were backing that bogus claim with mischaracterized VAERS event report data.

Such problematic uses persist. So, for example, on June 18, 2021, lawyer, author, and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tweeted, “Latest numbers from CDC VAERS is in… Data for 12- to 17-year-olds include 7 deaths + 271 serious adverse events following COVID vaccine” (Kennedy, 2021). The mental representation invited by that text: COVID-19 vaccination is endangering teens.

Matthew Chapman at Raw Story:

Some medical experts warned Reuters that the CDC's legitimization of the long-discredited theory could increase vaccination fears in the general public and a decline in pediatric vaccination rates.

"It sends the signal that there is something there that is worth investigating, so that means there must be something going on between vaccines and autism," said Dr. Wilbur Chen, who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

 

RFK Touts Quackery as Another Measles Victim Dies

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.  Trump has directed him to investigate autism.

Maria Godoy at NPR:

Two people have now died in the growing measles outbreak in west Texas and New Mexico.

New Mexico Health officials on Thursday confirmed the death of an unvaccinated adult who tested positive for measles. The first death was a school-age child in Gaines County, Texas last week.

News of a second death comes as infectious disease doctors worry that the federal government's messaging about the outbreak is putting more emphasis on treatments like vitamin A than on vaccination, even as misinformation about some of these treatments is spreading online.

Those concerns come in the wake of recent comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy addressed the growing measles outbreak in an editorial for FOX News published on Sunday, also posted on the HHS website.

While mentioning the value of vaccination for community immunity, Kennedy said "the decision to vaccinate is a personal one." He emphasized treatment for measles, saying that vitamin A can "dramatically" reduce deaths from the disease. In an interview with FOX News Tuesday, he said Texas doctors are giving steroids and cod liver oil to their measles patients and "getting very, very, good results."

In his editorial, he said good nutrition is "a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses."

That emphasis on nutrition and vitamin A to treat measles is concerning some infectious disease doctors.

"Mentions of cod liver oil and vitamins [are] just distracting people away from what the single message should be, which is to increase the vaccination rate, " said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Closing the Department of Education

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.

About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13

Matt Barnum, Ken Thomas and Tarini Parti at WSJ:

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as Thursday aimed at abolishing the Education Department, according to people briefed on the matter.

A draft of the order, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

The order has been in the works since Trump’s transition. In early February, the Journal reported that administration officials were considering such a move.

...

The Trump administration has already taken a series of steps to weaken the agency. It laid off probationary employees and offered others buyouts. It paused some of its civil-rights enforcement work and canceled many grants and contracts related to research and teacher quality.

Mastthew Borus at The Conversation:

Students with disabilities, like all students, are legally entitled to a free public education. This right is guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, passed in 1975. IDEA is enforced by the federal Education Department.

But Trump is reportedly in the process of dismantling the Education Department, with the goal of eventually closing it. It is not clear what this will mean for Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act enforcement, but one possibility is laid out in the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, a policy blueprint with broad support in Trump’s administration.

Project 2025 proposes that Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act funds “should be converted into a no-strings formula block grant.” Block grants are a funding structure by which federal funds are reduced and each state is given a lump sum rather than designating the programs the funds will support. In practice, this can mean that states divert the money to other programs or policy areas, which can create opportunities for funds to be misused.

With block grants, local school districts would be subject to less federal oversight meant to ensure that they provide every student with an adequate education. Families who already must fight to ensure that their children receive the schooling they deserve will be put on weaker footing if the federal government signals that states can redirect the money as they wish.

 

Trump Asks RFK Jr. to Investigate Autism

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.

Trump mentioned autism in his rambling speech to Congress last night.  

 [Not] long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, one in 10,000 children have autism. One in 10,000. And now it’s one in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36. Think of that. So we’re going to find out what it is and there’s nobody better than Bobby and all of the people that are working with you. You have the best to figure out what is going on. OK, Bobby, good luck. It’s a very important job. Thank you. Thank you.

Adam Edelman and Jane C. Timm at NBC:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this ratio is correct. But the statistic is often used to justify opposition to vaccination.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pointed to vaccines to explain the substantial rise in autism diagnoses in recent decades, which have ballooned from an estimated 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36 today.

But the science is clear that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Rather, research suggests that much of the increase is due to increasing awareness and screening for the condition, changing definitions of autism to include milder conditions on the spectrum that weren’t recognized in previous years and advances in diagnostic technology.

Finding the causes of autism is complicated, because it’s not a single disorder, scientists and experts have told NBC News. In addition, those scientists and experts have said they believe that people develop autistic traits because of a combination of genetic vulnerability and environmental exposures.

Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT:

As a measles outbreak expands in West Texas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, on Tuesday cheered several unconventional treatments, including cod liver oil, but again did not urge Americans to get vaccinated.

In a prerecorded interview that aired on Fox News, Mr. Kennedy said that the federal government was shipping doses of vitamin A to Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, and helping to arrange ambulance rides.

H.H.S. officials previously said they were shipping doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to Texas, but Mr. Kennedy did not discuss vaccination.

Texas doctors had seen “very, very good results,” Mr. Kennedy claimed, by treating measles cases with a steroid, budesonide; an antibiotic called clarithromycin; and cod liver oil, which he said had high levels of vitamin A and vitamin D.

While physicians sometimes administer doses of vitamin A to treat children with severe measles cases, cod liver oil is “by no means” an evidence-based treatment, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases.

Dr. O’Leary added that he had never heard of a physician using the supplement against measles.

RFK Spokesman Quits, HHS Winks at Antivaxxers

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.

Adam Cancryn at Politico

The top spokesperson at the Health and Human Services Department has abruptly quit after clashing with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his close aides over their management of the agency amid a growing measles outbreak, two people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

Thomas Corry announced on Monday that he had resigned “effective immediately,” just two weeks after joining the department as its assistant secretary for public affairs.

...

The sudden departure was prompted by growing disagreement with Kennedy and his principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over their management of the health department, said the two people, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Corry had also grown uneasy with Kennedy’s muted response to the intensifying outbreak of measles in Texas, the people said. The outbreak has infected at least 146 people and resulted in the nation’s first death from the disease in a decade.

Helen Branwell at STAT:

The headlines on Robert Kennedy Jr.’s measles commentary published on Sunday excited proponents of vaccines who have worried about the Health and Human Services Secretary’s oft-aired skepticism about the value and safety of vaccines. With a growing outbreak of measles in Texas, they’d been watching HHS and its new leader, waiting for the call to vaccinate children that the headlines implied the article would contain.

But as they read through the commentary looking for a full-throated appeal for parents of unvaccinated children to get their children immunized — the standard public health approach in a measles outbreak — what they saw instead was coded text from a different playbook, one written by opponents of vaccines.

 The stressing of parental choice. A recommendation that parents talk to a health care provider about the possibility of vaccination. An emphatic push for good nutrition and vitamin supplementation, factors that influence measles survival in developing countries if children are malnourished, but are no shield against infection anywhere, and not the threat facing children in Texas, New Mexico, and other states with active outbreaks.

In an outbreak that has already claimed one life, that wasn’t the message that a number of public health officials STAT spoke to Monday were hoping to read.

“You would expect the conversation to be saying: This is why vaccination is absolutely imperative, and [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and HHS wholeheartedly recommend individuals who are not vaccinated receive the vaccine. And we just don’t get that here,” said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health

RFK Vaccine Word Game

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.

Alexandra Banner at CNN:

A measles outbreak in Texas has grown to nearly 150 cases, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Last week, state health officials announced the outbreak's first death — an unvaccinated school-aged child who had been hospitalized in Lubbock. It is the first measles death in the US in a decade. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an opinion piece on Fox News on Sunday that parents should consult with health care providers "to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine" for their children. Kennedy, who has a history of anti-vaccine comments, did not explicitly recommend the vaccine. Rather, he said the outbreak was a "call to action for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health."

From the article:

Parents play a pivotal role in safeguarding their children’s health. All parents should consult with their healthcare providers to  understand their options to get the MMR vaccine. The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons

Notably, he did not retract his long-repeated lie that vaccines cause autism. 

Nathaniel Weixel at The Hill:

Wendy Parmet, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, described Kennedy’s op-ed as “mealy-mouthed advice.”

“It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s not forthright,” Parmet said. “It’s a half-attempted step. It’s certainly more than we’ve heard from him before, and … some of what is in that editorial, I think, is helpful, but it’s certainly not anything close to what we have seen in the past, or could expect to see from a secretary of HHS, given the situation.”

For instance, a nationwide outbreak of measles in 2019 led top Trump administration health officials to warn about the greatest number of cases reported in the country since measles was effectively eliminated in 2000.

RFK at HHS

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.

Brandy Zadrozny at NBC

His first two weeks have been busy. His short tenure has been marked by mass firings of CDC personnel, many tasked with disease detection and outbreak response; the cancellation of a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meeting that would have selected the virus strains for next season’s flu vaccine (he has said he suspects a disorder that strains his vocal cords was caused by the flu vaccine); the indefinite postponement of a CDC advisory committee that votes on recommendations for childhood vaccine schedules; the cancellation of pro-vaccination advertising campaigns, reportedly shifting the focus from the danger of diseases like flu to the potential risks of vaccines; and a proposal that HHS end notice and comment procedures for rules related to “public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts,” a policy that seems to run counter to his promise for “radical transparency” at the agency

Measles: Canary in the Coal Mine

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 helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS.

Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT on the Texas measles outbreak:

Vaccine fears have run deep in these parts for years, and some public health experts worry that the current outbreak is a glimpse at where much of America is headed. Researchers think of measles as the proverbial canary in a coal mine. It is among the most contagious infectious diseases, and often the first sign that other pathogens may be close behind.

“I’m concerned this is a harbinger of something bigger,” said Dr. Tony Moody, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the Duke University School of Medicine. “Is this simply going to be the first of many stories of vaccine-preventable disease making a resurgence in the United States?”

...

Ansley Klassen, 25, lives in Seminole with her husband and four young children, three of whom are fully unvaccinated. She considered bringing her children to a vaccine clinic when measles cases first started popping up.

Mrs. Klassen, who is about five months pregnant, knew she didn’t want to risk getting measles. She had been scrubbing counters with Lysol wipes and keeping her children away from others as much as possible.

But on social media, she had seen a deluge of frightening posts about the side effects of vaccines: stories of children developing autism after a shot or dying from metal toxicity. (Both claims have been debunked by scientists.)

“There are stories that you can read about people multiple hours after they got the vaccine having effects, and that’s scary to me,” she said. “So I’m like, is it worth the risk? And right now I can’t figure that out.”

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Zachary Holbrooks, the local public health official for four Texas counties, including Gaines, said that type of mandate would be deeply unpopular in the state, where individual freedom is a strongly held value.

Texas public schools require children to have received certain vaccines, including the M.M.R. shot. But in this state, as in many others, parents can apply for an exemption for “reasons of conscience,” including religious beliefs.

In January, as the first cases of measles began spreading in Gaines County, state legislators introduced several bills designed to weaken school vaccination requirements.

“I don’t want to see a baby’s lips turn blue because they can’t breathe,” Mr. Holbrooks said. “I don’t want anybody to suffer from long-lasting disability because they got measles.”

“But if you choose to live in Texas,” he added, “you can exercise that option.”