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. This week, he lied about autism research, saying that HHS has not laid off scientists.
At Scientific American, Allison Parshall talks with Helen Tager-Flusberg, an autism researcher and a professor emerita at Boston University.,who organized a coalition of scientists to push back against RFK. The Coalition of Autism Scientists now has 258 members and is still growing.
Kennedy’s approach seems to step right on that fissure in the autism community. Is there a way to prevent this rift from developing further?
I don't think I have the answer to that. It’s a big question in the community because people are looking at the agendas in very different ways. But I will say one thing. I have been really impressed, over the past couple of weeks, since beginning this coalition, with how [autistic] folks who are self-advocates have joined the coalition. I think the one thing that unifies us is a belief in the importance of scientific research. Maybe we define the scope of that science in different ways, but that’s always true. That’s something that we all hold to.
And I think we all, at this moment, believe that the direction that’s been described so far by the administration is not the way we should go. We should not be opening up the question of vaccines again. We should be very cautious about using “registries” and make sure the research that’s done is ethical and maintains the confidentiality of individuals in those databases. We all agree about that.
We also all agree that, so far, we’re not hearing from the administration that they have a very deep understanding of autism. They have failed to engage most of us, whether scientists or advocates or nonprofit organizations. None of us have been involved in these discussions. So I think we actually have a moment in time where there is some agreement, and I think it behooves the administration to think about why that is and whether they need to change their course.
