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.
Inevitably, though, we were soon back where we’d left off. Kennedy suggested that my story conclude by looking at a statement published on the CDC website—“Vaccines do not cause autism.” During the confirmation process, Bill Cassidy had made him promise not to remove the phrase in exchange for his vote. But Kennedy had a work-around. On November 19, he updated the page and put an asterisk next to the phrase, adding language stating that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism.” Although the MMR vaccine and thimerosal have shown no ties to autism, Kennedy says he has not been able to find any studies of possible autism risk from various other childhood vaccines. This absence of research, he believes, undercuts the validity of the CDC website’s claim....
I had spoken with others about this point. They agreed with Kennedy that not every vaccine had been studied for its effect on autism rates. But they argued that doing so was not urgent, because the existing high-quality evidence around vaccines showed no connection. Joshua Gordon, who as the director of the National Institute of Mental Health helped oversee federal autism research, told me that the recent increase in autism rates could mostly be explained by broadened criteria for diagnosis and by the advancing average age of parents at the time of conception.
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What if you are wrong about vaccines? I asked. Six former surgeons general, most vaccine experts, and almost the entire scientific establishment believes he is. What if, over time, the evidence shows that his actions lowered vaccination rates with no reduction in chronic diseases, but with an increase in suffering and death from viruses and bacteria? How would he respond?
“I mean, we would listen,” Kennedy said. It was the answer I wanted to hear. But then he listed, once again, the reasons he would not be wrong: He spoke about the chronic diseases that appear as potential adverse reactions on the manufacturers’ label for vaccines; the evidence that death rates from the diseases that vaccines inoculate against were already declining before the vaccines materialized; and America’s poor policy decisions and high mortality rates during the COVID years. “You know, we have all kinds of interventions,” he said. “Good health does not just come in a syringe.” The trial lawyer was still laboring to connect the dots that led to his preferred verdict, the orphaned child of American royalty, back from hell, still fighting to fulfill his birthright.
As G.K. Chesterton said of the madman: "He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. "
