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.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism — a move that underscores his determination to challenge scientific orthodoxy and bend the health department to his will.
In an interview on Thursday explaining why the C.D.C. website now says the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based,” Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had found no link to autism, and that studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal had also shown no link.
But he cited gaps in vaccine safety science. He said he ordered the C.D.C. to change its guidance in part because high-quality large studies had not been conducted to examine a potential link between autism and other shots given in the first year of life. Those include the hepatitis B vaccine and a combination shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough.
In his view, sweeping statements like “vaccines don’t cause autism” are unproven, and have been deployed by public health leaders who want to ease parents’ fears. He said he is not saying vaccines cause autism; he is simply saying there is no proof that they don’t.
Jessica McDonald and Kate Yandell at FactCheck.org:
“This is absolute insanity and a bizarre moving of the goalposts,” David S. Mandell, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health, told us via email. “As any scientist knows, you can’t ‘prove’ the lack of association. You conduct related studies, over and over, until the bulk of evidence finds no association.”
He added: The “CDC page is the equivalent of ‘you haven’t proven that ghosts don’t exist’ or perhaps more to the point, ‘you haven’t proven that driving during pregnancy doesn’t cause autism, so pregnant women should stop driving.’”
As Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pediatrician and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit told us in a phone interview and has explained in a Substack post, scientists can’t ever prove a negative. In this way, he said, the webpage is taking advantage of a technicality of the scientific method, even though overwhelming evidence shows no link between vaccines and autism.
