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.
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."
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.
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.
