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.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, on Saturday instructed leaders of the nonprofit he founded to take down a web page that mimicked the design of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s site but laid out a case that vaccines cause autism.The page had been published on a site apparently registered to the nonprofit, the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Kennedy’s action came after The New York Times inquired about the page and after news of it ricocheted across social media.The page was taken offline Saturday evening.
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Publication of the page was first reported on Substack by E. Rosalie Li, founder of the Information Epidemiology Lab. The nonprofit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Kennedy has for years maintained that there is a link between vaccines and autism. He held to that stance during his Senate confirmation hearings, despite extensive research debunking the theory.
More US states are reporting measles cases as the Texas outbreak expands, surpassing last year’s total, amid vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.
The Texas outbreak could take a year to get under control, one health official said – during which time it may spread to more states. Yet the parents of the six-year-old girl who died of measles in Texas have spoken against measles vaccination as misinformation continues to proliferate, including from figures such as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“I never thought in 2025, we would be looking at this resurgence of measles,” said Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health. “And I didn’t know it’d be in my backyard, either.”
On Thursday, several other states reported updates on measles. Ohio reported its first case of 2025 and Maryland announced two new cases. Both states have linked the cases to international travel. Alabama also announced that an unvaccinated child with measles traveled through the state, while Kansas has confirmed eight cases of measles among children this month.
Measles cases have also been confirmed in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
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There were 285 cases of measles reported in the US last year. So far, there have been 378 confirmed cases in the first few months of 2025.
