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.
Liz Essley Whyte and Dominique Mosbergen at WSJ:
An antivaccine activist recently hired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has started hunting for proof that federal officials hid evidence that inoculations cause autism, according to people familiar with the matter.
David Geier, a longtime vaccine opponent hired this spring as a contractor in the health department’s financial office, is seeking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data that antivaccine activists, including Kennedy, have alleged was buried because it showed a link between vaccines and autism, the people said.
...
Geier is seeking access to a database known as the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD, which Kennedy referenced in his 2005 Rolling Stone article. But before joining HHS, Geier was barred at least twice from using the database because officials said he had misused it.
...
The health secretary has said Geier isn’t managing autism research but that he would look into whether data is missing from the database. “There has been a lot of monkey business with the VSD,” Kennedy told lawmakers last month.
Children’s Health Defense, the antivaccine nonprofit Kennedy once led, will host an online event Friday marking the 25th anniversary of what they call the “autism coverup.” Kennedy was slated to speak, according to an earlier version of a schedule posted online. His name was later removed.
...
In 2004, Geier and his father were prohibited from accessing the VSD after CDC officials determined they had misrepresented what they were going to do with the data. The CDC kicked the Geiers out of the VSD again in 2006.
Geier, at a 2015 conference, lamented that his access to the VSD had been suspended. “They think that that is been completely debunked and the science that we’re doing is no good,” he said.
NIH researchers have been asked to help Geier, people familiar with the matter said. NIH employees recently requested that the CDC send over the entirety of the VSD—an ask that set off alarm bells at the CDC and among researchers at the healthcare networks, who worried whether their patients’ private health information
