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.
Lena H. Sun, David Ovalle and Paige Winfield Cunningham at WP:For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has fought attempts by the anti-vaccine movement to sow doubts in the safety and efficacy of the shots that marked a triumph of public health. This week, the agency instead provided a powerful platform for the cause.
Common anti-vaccine talking points were on display in presentations and discussions during a two-day meeting of federal immunization advisers at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. It culminated Friday with the end of a long-standing recommendation for every newborn to receive a hepatitis B vaccine and President Donald Trump directing a broader probe into whether American children receive too many shots.
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The committee’s vote Friday to adopt a more restrictive approach to vaccinating children for hepatitis B marked the most significant change to the schedule under Kennedy. The vote followed presentations critical of vaccinating newborns for the virus that were delivered by people who were affiliated with anti-vaccine groups and now work with the CDC.
Neither of them have backgrounds in vaccine science or infectious diseases, as senior CDC career scientists who typically deliver such presentations do. Mark Blaxill is a former businessman with an MBA who has a long history promoting a debunked link between vaccines and autism. Cynthia Nevison, an autism and climate researcher, cited a study to imply that those who receive the birth dose of hepatitis B had lower levels of protection than those who receive their first dose later. The findings were “misinterpreted,” the study’s author Amy Middleman told The Washington Post.
Nevison and Blaxill are two of the three authors of a retracted paper about autism. The third author spoke during a public comment period at the meeting without mentioning his affiliation with Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded.
