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 top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
I have often posted criticism of Kennedy and linked to these posts on social media. Lately, bots have been respondin with praise for his "transparency," even though he lies like the rest of us breathe. John Collier reports at NBC (h/t Brandy Zadrozny):
A previously unreported network of hundreds of accounts on X is using artificial intelligence to automatically reply to conservatives with positive messages about people in the Trump administration, researchers say.
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The network, tracked for NBC News by both the social media analytics company Alethea and researchers at Clemson University, consists of more than 400 identified bot accounts, though the number could be far larger, the researchers say. Its accounts offer consistent praise for key Trump figures, particularly support for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
As often is the case with bot accounts, those viewed by NBC News tended to have only a few dozen followers, and their posts rarely get many views. But a large audience does not appear to be the point. Their effectiveness, if they have any, is in the hope that they contribute to a partisan echo chamber, and that en masse they can “massage perceptions,” said Darren Linvill, the director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which studies online disinformation campaigns.
The members of a federal vaccine advisory committee, who were removed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are suggesting alternatives to vaccine policy in the U.S. because the panel has "lost credibility."
In early June, Kennedy dismissed all 17 sitting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy replaced the group with his own, hand-selected members, many of whom had expressed skeptical views on vaccines.
Since then, the committee has recommended against flu vaccines containing thimerosal -- a preservative that has been falsely linked to autism -- has said the childhood immunization schedule will be studied and has cast doubt on whether newborns need the hepatitis B vaccine.
In a commentary published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former members wrote that the rigorous process for recommending vaccines is "rapidly eroding."
