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.
Polls show that many Americans either believe the myth or think it could be true.
Trump has spread this myth and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.
Now his administration is actively defending disinformation. Trump has said that getting "too many shots" causes autism. He's wrong, as Matthew Herper writes at STAT:
Researchers have had two responses to this allegation: First, data don’t indicate that vaccines increase the risk that children will contract other infections. Second, vaccines have become much more targeted over time, often involving fewer antigens to stimulate the immune system than earlier versions. Vaccines for pneumococcus, whooping cough, and other diseases now often contain only sugar molecules or proteins from the coat of a virus in order to produce an immune response. By this measure, children get more shots, but they contain fewer antigens.
Amelia Nierenberg and Maya Tekeli at NYT:
The United States, a nation of 343 million people with a complex and overburdened health care system, is poised to adopt the childhood vaccine recommendations used in Denmark, a country of six million with universal health care. The decision has alarmed public health experts in both countries.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, is expected to announce the move in the new year. It would reduce the number of immunizations required for American children to 10 from 17, radically changing the recommended vaccines without the deliberative process that the United States has relied on for decades.
Instead, Mr. Kennedy is following a presidential directive issued on Dec. 5 by President Trump, which said the United States was an “outlier” in the number of vaccines children receive, pointing to Denmark, Germany and Japan as peer countries that recommend fewer.
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Kristian G. Andersen, a Danish-American professor in the immunology and microbiology department at the Scripps Research Institute in California, said the United States already has one of the best standards for vaccine recommendations.
“Their childhood vaccine program covers almost everything it should,” Dr. Andersen said.
“The Danish program does not,” he added, noting that the Nordic country “has one of the most minimal vaccine programs among wealthy nations.”
“Denmark is the outlier,” Dr. Andersen said. “Not the United States.”
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Denmark has universal health care; that means Danes can get treated more easily for diseases and often seek medical help earlier. Its people do not pay for most doctors’ appointment.
In the United States, about 8 percent of the population is uninsured. Even with health insurance, some American families need to decide whether a child is sick enough to justify the potential cost of a doctor’s visit.
