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.
- :Career scientists vs. health agency leaders: Two-thirds of Americans (67%) have confidence in career scientists working at U.S. federal health agencies, compared with just 43% confidence in agency leaders overall.
- RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz: About 4 in 10 U.S. adults are confident Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (38%) and Dr. Mehmet Oz (42%), administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, are providing trustworthy information on public health – lower than the confidence people say they had in Dr. Anthony Fauci (54%), former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when he was in office.
- Confidence in experts outside government: People have greater trust in major health and science associations outside government – such as the American Heart Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and National Academy of Sciences – than in U.S. health agencies.
- AAP vs. CDC: On vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, Americans say they are more likely to accept the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics than the CDC by nearly a 4-1 margin.
- Trust in CDC, FDA, NIH sinking: Year over year in February surveys, public trust in the CDC, FDA, and NIH dropped significantly from 2024 (74%-76%), the final year of the Biden administration, to 2025 (67%), the first year of this Trump administration – and fell again, now, in 2026 (60-62%).
