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 PoliticoThe 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.
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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.
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
