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.
He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.
Lena H. Sun and Paige Winfield Cunningham at WP:
The Trump administration is overhauling the list of routine shots recommended for all babies and children in the United States, bypassing the government’s typical process for recommending vaccines and delivering on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-standing goals to upend the nation’s pediatric vaccine schedule.
Effective immediately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend every child be immunized for rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal disease and hepatitis A, according to materials released Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services. Instead, the agency will recommend smaller groups of children and babies should get those vaccines only if they are at high risk or if a doctor recommends it.
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Under Kennedy’s leadership, federal health agencies have upended and scrutinized childhood vaccination policies. They have launched reviews of the cumulative health effects of the immunization schedule. The CDC eliminated a recommendation for all newborns to receive a hepatitis B vaccine shortly after birth, which researchers and health experts credited with a dramatic plunge in infections. Kennedy directed revisions to a CDC webpage that previously debunked a link between vaccines and autism to instead say health authorities have ignored evidence of a link and studies have not ruled out a purported link.
Stephanie Soucheray and Liz Szabo at CIDRAP:
Public health experts immediately decried the change. Experts said there’s no reason to change a system that has prevented 1.1 million deaths over the past 30 years.
“Abandoning the U.S. evidence-based process is a dangerous and potentially deadly decision for Americans,” said Jason M. Goldman, MD, president of the American College of Physicians. “The evidence is clear that vaccines prevent deaths, hospitalizations, and spread of disease.”
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“This is a very dark day for children and for their parents and for our country generally,” said Jesse Goodman, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University, who spoke at a press conference of vaccine experts following the announcement.
Goodman compared the announcement to a “torpedo” blowing up vaccination policy. “There will be more diseases, more infection, more hospitalization,” said Goodman, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief scientist and former director of the agency’s center for biologics evaluation and research.
