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.
American doctors want their leading lobby to drop its nice guy routine with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
At the American Medical Association’s annual meeting this week, members of the group’s House of Delegates are sending a clear message to their leaders: Call out Kennedy, even if it costs us in the pocketbook.
That message was stated most clearly in the election of Sandra Fryhofer, an internist from Atlanta and uncompromising Kennedy critic, as AMA president-elect. She beat Michael Suk, who as AMA board chair in 2024 and 2025 prioritized doctors’ Medicare fees and promised continued pragmatism in dealing with Kennedy.
Fryhofer, who advised the vaccine committee whose members Kennedy fired last year, suggested that would be an abdication of doctors’ moral duty.
“Measles running rampant, public health destroyed, a trillion dollars ripped from Medicaid, inadequate physician payment, stupid immigration rules,” Fryhofer told AMA members in promising to call out Kennedy and the Trump administration on all of it.
In two dozen interviews this week, AMA doctors described an advocacy organization at its wit’s end with Kennedy. POLITICO granted them anonymity to describe internal dynamics. Long a Republican-leaning constituency, doctors began shifting left during the battles over managed care three decades ago. President Donald Trump’s alliance with Kennedy, a longtime skeptic of vaccine safety and critic of the medical establishment, was the last straw for many.
