Vaccines, Autism, and Public Knowledge

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.  Trump has long spread antivaccine misinformation. 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.

 From the Annenberg Public Policy Center:

No evidence vaccines cause autism: About two-thirds of the public (65%) say it is false to claim that vaccines given to children for diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella cause autism, though that represents a significant decrease from prior years (June 2021-July 2024), when 70-74% of the public agreed it was false to link autism with vaccines. In 2004, the National Academy of Medicine (then named the Institute of Medicine) determined that “the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism evidence.” The CDC, on a web page dated Dec. 20, 2024 (accessed Oct. 29), wrote that “studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD” (autism spectrum disorder).

...

No evidence of an autism-thimerosal link: Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in some vaccines since the 1930s, has been the target of unfounded and misleading claims by anti-vaccine advocates, including claims that it is ineffective, a neurotoxin, and may be tied to autism. In its 2004 report, the National Academy of Medicine determined that evidence “favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.” Numerous studies since have also supported thimerosal’s safety, according to FactCheck.org. Thimerosal has not been in childhood vaccines other than flu vaccines since 2001. In July 2025, Kennedy signed off on recommendations by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to remove thimerosal from U.S. flu vaccines.

Asked about any connection between thimerosal and autism, half of those surveyed (51%) are not sure whether thimerosal increases, decreases, or has no effect on the chances that a person getting a vaccine will develop autism. Over a third (37%) correctly say it has no effect on the chances of developing autism, and 10% say it increases the chances.

Trump Posts Antivax Video

 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 number of posts have discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

Megan Messerly at Politico:

President Donald Trump on Monday posted a video to his social media account promoting the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

The decades-old video, in part, features David Geier, who Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tapped this spring to investigate links between vaccines and autism, alongside his father, Dr. Mark Geier, whose medical license was suspended following claims he endangered children with autism. The anti-vaccine activists have published numerous studies on the topic and discuss some of their ideas in the video, which circulated around the internet Monday after Trump shared it.

 

Trump has been pushing the vaccine theory for nearly twenty years.   In 2007, Josh Hafenbrack reported at The South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

At a news conference Thursday in a gold-trimmed Mar-A-Lago ballroom, Trump's wife, Melania, noted her 22-month-old son, Baron, and said: "I cannot imagine what the mothers [with autistic children] and mothers all around the world go through. ... Let's get rid of autism."

In an interview, Donald Trump said he thinks the rising prevalence of autism is related to vaccinations of babies and toddlers.

One in 150 children is now diagnosed with autism, with the prevalence higher among boys.

"When I was growing up, autism wasn't really a factor," he said. "And now all of a sudden, it's an epidemic. Everybody has their theory, and my theory is the shots. They're getting these massive injections at one time. I think it's the vaccinations."

Collateral Damage of the Vaccine-Autism Myth

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's Secretary of HHS. 

Apoorva Mandavilli:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday formally rescinded federal recommendations for all flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism.

The decision cements a move last month by vaccine advisers whom Mr. Kennedy named to the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after abruptly firing all 17 previous members.

After hearing a presentation by the former leader of an anti-vaccine group, the panel had voted to walk back federal recommendations for all flu vaccines containing thimerosal.

...

The thimerosal decision will not affect most Americans seeking flu vaccines: The preservative is added to multidose vials of flu vaccines to prevent bacteria from growing, but it is not an ingredient of the single-dose vials administered to most people.

During the 2024-25 respiratory virus season, only 3 percent of children and 2 percent of older adults received flu vaccines containing thimerosal, according to an analysis of electronic health records by Truveta, a company that analyzes such records.

Still, multidose vials are needed in places where it is difficult to store many vaccines, such as nursing homes or mobile clinics serving remote rural areas.

Mr. Kennedy’s sign-off does not withdraw vaccines containing thimerosal from the market. But his rescinding the federal recommendation means that such shots may not be available to Americans, because insurance companies are no longer required to cover them

ACIP and Thimerosal

 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.

Lia DeGroot at Roll Call:

A key vaccine policy advisory group is recommending that the public not receive vaccines that have thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that’s used to prevent germs, fungus and bacteria from building up in vials.

While thimerosal isn’t common, the debate over its use at the federal public health level is seen as emblematic of the concerns of health experts, who fear that policies under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will chip away at evidence-based science.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, comprised of entirely new members appointed by Kennedy, voted Thursday to make the recommendation. The topic appearing on the meeting agenda at all came as a surprise to many in public health and clinician communities. The CDC itself says it’s been long established that there is no evidence that the amount of thimerosal included in some flu vaccines is harmful.

Thimerosal is used in multidose flu vaccine vials to prevent contamination when the second dose is pulled, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The amount of mercury in vials is about equal to the amount of mercury contained in a three-ounce can of tuna, the FDA says.

Vaccine skeptics have promoted the idea that it’s linked to autism and ADHD. Kennedy was editor of a 2014 book titled “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak,” which called for the removal of the substance from vaccines.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

Critics say that in resurrecting an old controversy, Mr. Kennedy could brew mistrust rather than ease it. Numerous studies, including a 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine and a 2010 review of the medical literature, have rejected a link between the preservative and autism. Dr. Oz, who now runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, noted on his 2014 show that any link had been “ultimately discredited.”

...

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who served on the advisory committee from 1998 to 2003, remembers Ms. Redwood protesting the C.D.C. at that time, when health experts were originally debating thimerosal’s risks. He objected to an advocate making a scientific presentation to the advisory committee.

“It wasn’t clear to me that she was saying autism anymore, like she did 25 years ago,” he said of her presentation Thursday, adding, “It’s like Whac-a-Mole. They just keep moving onto the next thing.”

Ordinarily, such a presentation would be preceded by an analysis from C.D.C. experts. But the panel on Thursday did not hear from the C.D.C. The agency posted a document on the advisory committee’s website on Tuesday that concluded “the evidence does not support an association” between the preservative and autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

But the document was taken down the next day. A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy, Andrew Nixon, said that it had not gone through the proper vetting, but that committee members had been given copies of the document.

 

 

RFK Jr. and Thimerosal

 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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS. 

 Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT:

For decades, anti-vaccine groups have targeted thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that they claim, without credible evidence, is linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

These claims about the mercury-based preservative have long existed at the fringes — until now.

Under the leadership of the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy — who wrote a book supporting “the immediate removal of mercury” from vaccines — these claims are now to be seriously considered by newly appointed members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an influential group that makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Thursday, the panel is expected to discuss and vote on the use of thimerosal in flu vaccines, the only routine shots that still include

... 

the additive. Instead of a C.D.C. scientist presenting on the subject, as is custom, Lyn Redwood, the former leader of a prominent anti-vaccine group, will speak to the committee.

Slides from that presentation, which were posted online ahead of the meeting, argue thimerosal is “neurotoxic” and harmful for pregnant women and children — claims that are contradicted by dozens of rigorous studies and have largely been rejected by vaccine scientists.

AT ABC, Will McDuffie and Dr. Jade Cobern report:

"To the best of my knowledge, the study in rats referred to in the planned CDC presentation by Lyn Redwood listing Berman RF as first author does not exist," Robert F Berman, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of California Davis, said.

"I have not published a paper with that title or with that set of co-authors in the journal Neurotoxicology in 2008. Also, none of my research has made any statements about possible thimerosal effects on microglia in the brain or resulting in neuroimmune effects," Berman said.

That citation has since been removed from the revised presentation online.
...

At least one vaccine expert said she shuddered Wednesday at the idea of Redwood joining HHS.

Fiona Havers, a 13-year CDC veteran who worked on vaccine policy, told ABC News in a statement, “Lyn Redwood is well-known for spreading vaccine misinformation. It is troubling that Redwood may now have an official role within HHS and will potentially be in a position to interfere with official messaging about vaccine safety.”

ABC News has reached out to Redwood for a comment.

Redwood and Kennedy have long been close. In a conversation between the two of them on Kennedy’s podcast last year, Kennedy credited Redwood with being the figure who “coordinated” the “stalking crusade” by mothers who convinced Kennedy to begin looking into the potential harms of vaccines in the early 2000s.

Again with Thimerosal

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's secretary of HHS. 

In light of the Trump administration's dishonesty and threats to privacy, plans for an autism registry are most disturbing.  Because Trump and RFK Jr. have a long history of lying about autism, we have to assume bad faith.

 A June 18 post at Inside Medicine by Jeremy Faust:

The CDC’s newly installed panel of voting members for its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will vote on “Thimerosal containing influenza vaccine recommendations.” The eight-member panel (hand-picked by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he sacked the seventeen incumbent experts with minimal explanation) includes individuals who have been paid experts in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and spread lies about vaccine safety.

The agenda item was posted on the CDC’s website this morning.

The anti-vaccine movement has long tried to blame autism on vaccines containing thimerosal. The link has been debunked many times.

The vote will follow a presentation on thimerosal in vaccines and proposed recommendations regarding thimerosal-containing influenza. Who will be presenting is “TBD.”

Thimerosal has long been an obsession of the anti-vaccine movement. While the CDC’s website (as of today, at least) says, “a robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines,” most vaccines do not contain them.

...

Former ACIP member Dr. Paul Offit reacted strongly when I informed him of the news, saying: “RFK Jr has now stocked ACIP with like-minded individuals. He’s now created something where we are going to simply have to decide, as a nation, how much pain are we willing to take before someone asks this guy to step down? His goal is simple: Make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. When do we step forward? Who will step forward? I do not believe Senator William Cassidy will do this. It’s going to come down to the public—to parents.”

More on Weldon

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 number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Trump is nominating former Rep. Dave Weldon to head CDC.  David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine:

During his 14 years in Congress, Weldon funneled his belief in an “autism epidemic.” He also apparently believed in the thimerosal-autism link, to the point of promoting highly dubious studies and attacking decent studies examining whether mercury in childhood vaccines had been responsible for such an “epidemic.” Back in the day, he even spoke at antivax “conferences” falsely billed as scientific conferences:

Understanding autism and searching for a cure is a passion that I will continue to carry with me. In 2004, I delivered an address at the Defeat Autism Now Conference and the keynote address to the Autism One Conference in Chicago regarding the autism epidemic affecting one in 163 children. I challenged public health officials to direct the funding to defeat this epidemic. Today, autism affects one in 88 children. America can’t afford further delay in autism research.

Defeat Autism Now! was the umbrella organization for a lot of antivax quacks abusing children with “autism biomed” treatments to “cure” them of the “vaccine injury” blamed by antivaxxers for their autism, while the Autism One conference was the longstanding fake medical conference held in Chicago annually for many years that showcased all forms of antivax and autism quackery. For those of you not familiar with Autism One, It was at the 2013 Autism One conference that RFK Jr. likened vaccines to the Holocaust, at least to my knowledge, and where Kerri Rivera described feeding bleach to children in 2012 to treat their autism.

Back in 2003-2004, Weldon used his position in Congress to write letters to then-CDC Director Julie Gerberding demanding an “investigation” of supposed links between vaccines and autism. Basically, the letters made the same claims that RFK Jr. made in his 2005 conspiracyfest Deadly Immunity. Recall that the central claim in RFK Jr.’s article, co-published by Rolling Stone and Salon.com (to their eternal shame), was that there was evidence that thimerosal in vaccines was associated with a highly elevated risk of autism in children but that the CDC, at a meeting in 2000, “covered it up.” This is a claim that I like to call the Simpsonwood conspiracy theory, after the conference center where the meeting was held, an example of the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement (at least in the US), one I’ve deconstructed in the past. Weldon, even though he’s a physician, fell for the Simpsonwood conference conspiracy theory, promoted a year and a half later by antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., hook, line, and sinker. The first letter regurgitates the “concerns” being promoted by the antivaccine movement at the time. The second letter turned up the heat, trying to persuade Gerberding to postpone an important Institute of Medicine conference until the “concern” about the Verstraeten study had been addressed. As we all know, the IOM conference did go on and the IOM report found (and strongly stated) that there was no evidence to support correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism risk. Once again, antivaxxers were deceptively looking at standard epidemiological and statistical techniques to account for confounders as something nefarious, as they misrepresented how the observed “association” between thimerosal and autism risk declined and disappeared as appropriate confounders were accounted for as the CDC intentionally “covering up” an association, and Weldon was the Congressional spearhead for this conspiracy theory.

Truly, the vaccination program and public health efforts by the CDC are in serious jeopardy, even worse than I had imagined. I suppose I should be happy that Trump didn’t appoint Andrew Wakefield as CDC Director.

Vaccine Hesitancy

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.

Heidi J. Larson, Emmanuela Gakidou, and Christopher J.L. Murray have an article in The New England Journal of Medicine titled "The Vaccine-Hesitant Moment."

Although many observers point to the 1998 Lancet article by Wakefield et al. (retracted in 2010) as the source of parental fears that MMR vaccination might cause autism, the search for what could be causing the seeming increase in autism was already brewing. In the United States, however, anxieties were more focused on thimerosal in vaccines as a possible cause of autism.45 The attention to thimerosal emerged in the context of a larger global movement that highlighted concern about mercury in food and drugs and in the environment. In 1999, as part of a review of mercury-related ingredients in all food and drugs, the Food and Drug Administration called for an assessment of thimerosal in childhood vaccines, although the small amount of thimerosal used in vaccines contains only a minute amount of ethylmercury and does not contain any methylmercury (the more dangerous type of mercury), which was the prime focus of the larger review.46 The U.S. Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics followed with a recommendation to remove thimerosal from childhood vaccines as a precautionary measure.47 Even though the recommendation was precautionary, with no evidence of harm, it reinforced public concern and prompted an initial 38% decrease in the hospitals that offered hepatitis B vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines for infants.48

To address the growing concerns, the Institute of Medicine conducted a major review of studies investigating links between vaccines and autism and concluded that neither MMR vaccines (which do not contain thimerosal) nor thimerosal-containing vaccines could cause autism.49 Meanwhile, some attention was shifted to the possibility that the increased number of vaccines given to children could be a cause of autism, a concern that is also not supported by any evidence. Nonetheless, the parental concerns have persisted. One study showed 70 additional MMR vaccine–related injury claims per month in the United States after publication of the report by Wakefield et al.50 Other research pointed to the effect of concern about a link between the MMR vaccine and autism on vaccine hesitancy in Somali immigrant communities in Norway and the United States.51 In 2012, a court ruling in Italy granted compensation for vaccine-related injury on the basis of the report by Wakefield and colleagues, which further amplified public anxiety. Having lost his credentials as a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, Wakefield became an activist, appealing to concerned parents and reinforcing their vaccine anxieties, alongside environmental lawyer turned vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose previous work on the toxic effects of mercury in the environment provided fertile ground for his campaign against thimerosal and vaccine safety risks more broadly. The launch of Google in 1998, followed by a cascade of new Internet-based and social media technologies, allowed widespread access to information, as well as misinformation, and fueled the viral spread of questioning about vaccines (Figure 1).52

A study in Italy investigated YouTube video content between 2007 and 2017 that focused on the suspected link between the MMR vaccine and autism.53,54 In addition to an escalation in the amount of negative content over the 10-year study period, partly reflecting the growth of YouTube after its 2005 launch, the study showed that negative videos about the MMR vaccine outnumbered positive ones by a factor of 3, with the negative videos more widely viewed. Another Italian study of vaccine-related content on YouTube had similar findings. A number of studies investigating HPV vaccine content on YouTube also showed that negative videos attracted a larger following than positive ones.55-57

Concern about one vaccine can also prompt questioning and hesitancy regarding other vaccines, such as the reported risks associated with a dengue vaccine (Dengvaxia) in the Philippines that contributed to a drop in measles vaccination58 and an HPV vaccine scare in Denmark that triggered a decline in MMR vaccine uptake. After HPV vaccine uptake declined (from 95% to just over 30%) after negative media reports, two-dose MMR vaccine coverage also dropped, from 86% to 80% among girls and from 85% to 79% among boys.59

Underimmunization Global Crisis

In The Politics of Autism, I look at the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms have helped spread this dangerous myth.   Measles can kill.

Lawrence O. Gostin and colleagues have an article at The Lancet Infectious Diseases titled "The Public Health Crisis of Underimmunisation: a Global Plan of Action."

The summary:

Vaccination is one of public health's greatest achievements, responsible for saving billions of lives. Yet, 20% of children worldwide are not fully protected, leading to 1·5 million child deaths annually from vaccine-preventable diseases. Millions more people have severe disabling illnesses, cancers, and disabilities stemming from underimmunisation. Reasons for falling vaccination rates globally include low public trust in vaccines, constraints on affordability or access, and insufficient governmental vaccine investments. Consequently, an emerging crisis in vaccine hesitancy ranges from hyperlocal to national and worldwide. Outbreaks often originate in small, insular communities with low immunisation rates. Local outbreaks can spread rapidly, however, transcending borders. Following an assessment of underlying determinants of low vaccination rates, we offer an action based on scientific evidence, ethics, and human rights that spans multiple governments, organisations, disciplines, and sectors.

From the article:

Even a casual search of the internet and social media shows ubiquitous misinformation about vaccines. Robocalls and automated bots amplify false and misleading messages. Anti-vaccine messages often purport to come from reliable scientific sources or genuine anecdotes of children harmed. Internet searches fail to distinguish between authoritative sources and messages intended to mislead. Social media platforms (eg, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) can rapidly spread false or misleading information, ranging from disproven beliefs that vaccines cause autism to unfounded fears about spacing multiple vaccines during infancy. Organised, funded entities and celebrity anti-vaxxers can be especially influential among adolescents and worried parents trying to navigate divergent messaging.16 Although over a dozen high-quality studies17,18 have found no link between measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), thimerosal, and autism, public misperceptions stubbornly persist following the 1998 publication of the discredited Wakefield study.19 Almost any vaccine can be the target of false information campaigns. In 2013, social media messaging featured young Japanese girls reportedly harmed by the human papillomavirus vaccine.20 False messaging dampens public acceptance despite the evidence concluding that universal human papillomavirus vaccination could almost eliminate cervical cancers.

 The government’s highest ethical duty is to safeguard the public’s health through evidence-based policies. Yet, government officials can sometimes discourage or undermine public trust in immunisations. In 2011, the US Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan to obtain DNA from the family of Al-Qaeda fugitive Osama bin Laden, leading to popular conspiracy theories that place vaccine workers at risk. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party voiced concerns regarding vaccine safety. In April 2018, Pakistani politicians tweeted false information to discredit polio vaccines. US President Donald Trump hassent mixed messages regarding vaccine policies. He intimated, in 2016, that childhood vaccines cause autism, but later encouraged Americans to secure measles vaccinations to prevent outbreaks. His administration’s policy to deny influenza vaccines to people unlawfully crossing US borders threatens the health of migrants and US residents alike.22

Openly Embracing the Vaccine-Autism Myth

In The Politics of Autism, I look at the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.

A week ago, a Louisiana state senator linked vaccines to autism on the floor of the chamber. Sam Karlin reports at The Advocate:

State Sen. John Milkovich, a Shreveport Democrat, used a bill that would expand a voluntary statewide immunization database as an opportunity to launch into a diatribe about vaccines, which he suggested are dangerous and cause autism.

Vaccines, which do not cause autism, are “incredibly well studied” because of the “myths” surrounding their links with autism, said Dr. Joe Kanter, assistant state health officer with the Louisiana Department of Health.

 “We’re trying really hard to counter that with outreach and education,” Kanter said.
Milkovich claimed “autism did not exist” when he was growing up, and that “tissue from aborted babies is now used in vaccines.” He also suggested aluminum and mercury in vaccines are dangerous.

“Many of you may know some of the leading researchers in America say that autism is a result of vaccination,” Milkovich said. “Did you know tissue from aborted babies is now used in vaccines. Did you know that vaccines use aluminum which is shown to be a neurotoxin? Did you know vaccines in America is preserved often with mercury, which is beyond neurotoxic?”

Jonathon Freeman at myarklamiss.com:

"It is not that vaccines are causing Autism. We just gone from a very small criteria of what is Autism to a larger spectrum," said Lindsey Fortenberry, nurse practitioner Health Care Express.
...
Addressing one of those misconceptions of mercury being in vaccinations, Fortenberry said Milkovich was refering to a perservative ingredient used in making vaccines called Thimerosal that allows for larger quantities to be shipped. However, Thimerosal was removed from all vaccines in 2001. Except for the multi-vial dose of the flu vaccine.

"In the year 2000, one in 150 children were diagnosed with Autism. As of this year, about one and 68 children are diagnosed with Autism. Now if you related that to my comment that Thimerosal was removed from all vaccines in 2001 and we've seen an almost double fold in the amount of cases of Autism. That doesn't really correlate well. I would ask the Senator not only show where that research came from to show that the Thimerosal causing these problems when there's been no Thimerosal in these vaccines since 2001. I think that's the most important thing, if you ever speak out about something just to know what you're talking about and to make sure your source is reliable and be very educated on what you're speaking about before you speak about it," Fortenberry said.
...
According to the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, several vaccines, including the one for chickenpox, are produced by growing the virus inside of human cells. However, those human cells come from two cell lines from that were obtained legally in the 1960s. Since then, the cells grow independently and do not require further cell lines. They were descendent cells, not the cells of aborted fetuses.

Trump, RFK, DeNiro, Autism, and Vaccines

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the discredited idea that vaccines cause autism.  Trump has supported that notion. 

At Buzzfeed, Azeen Ghorayshi reports on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:

On Wednesday, Kennedy said that he’s been contacted by the Trump administration three times since their original meeting in January. “They tell me that they’re still going forward with a commission,” Kennedy said, adding that he “can’t tell” whether it will happen. BuzzFeed News has asked the administration for comment on these claims.

But in a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Wednesday that included the actor Robert De Niro, Kennedy argued that the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, in cahoots with journalists, have been denying the dangers of vaccines, fueled largely by money pumped in by a powerful pharmaceutical industry. He called the public health agency a “cesspool of corruption” and “a vaccine company,” that hid science from the public. To that end, Kennedy announced the “World Mercury Project Challenge,” offering $100,000 to anyone who could find a scientific study that demonstrated the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines in children and pregnant women.

As the article points out, a real expert has a different view:

“I’m a vaccine scientist. I’m also the father of an adult daughter with autism,” Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, told BuzzFeed News.

“Not only is there an abundance of evidence showing that vaccines are safe, there’s not even any plausibility of an association [with autism].”
...
“Press conferences like this become a distraction from the really important and hard work that needs to be done,” Hotez said.

Meredith Wadman reports at Science:

Kennedy was summoned on 10 January to meet with the then–president elect and emerged from Trump Tower in New York City to tell the press that Trump had asked him to head a “vaccine safety and scientific integrity" commission. Within hours a Trump spokesperson qualified Kennedy’s statements, saying the president “is exploring the possibility of forming a commission on Autism … however no decisions have been made.” The spokesperson added that Trump was discussing “all aspects of autism with many groups and individuals.”

Julia Belluz reports at Vox: 

Kennedy has a long history of stoking vaccine doubts, focusing in particular on the claim that the mercury in shots makes kids sick. ...

Kennedy’s article at Salon was retracted, after the online magazine had to run a series of corrections that contradicted many of the piece’s claims.

What’s more, thimerosal, an ethyl mercury-containing antimicrobial, has been removed from most vaccines for children since 2001, with the exception of an inactivated flu vaccine. The public health community did this as a precautionary measure — part of a strategy to reduce mercury exposures from any source. And since then, researchers have found that autism rates among children haven’t gone down. So it’s not clear why Kennedy continues on this mercury and vaccines tirade. What’s more, thimerosal was never used in the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine that some vaccine skeptics claim causes autism.

Julia Brucculieri reports at The Huffington Post:

De Niro seemed to be fully on board with his fellow panelist.

“I’m glad I’m here. I thought what Bobby said was great. It was eloquent. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I agree with him 100 percent. Thank you,” he said.

The actor has been sympathetic to the anti-vaccine movement in the past. Last year, he gave the go-ahead to screen the controversial documentary “Vaxxed” at the Tribeca Film Festival (which he co-founded). The film was directed by discredited physician Andrew Wakefield, and was eventually pulled from the festival lineup after immense backlash from the scientific community. Wakefield published his first study linking vaccines to autism in 1998, but was unable to prove his theory. The study was retracted in 2010 and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license in the U.K. later that year.

Further Pushback Against Trump & RFK Jr. on the Autism-Vaccine Myth

Many posts have discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.  (He also has a bad record on disability issues more generally.) The story that Trump might appoint anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head a presidential commission -- whether on vaccines or autism -- has provoked widespread reactions.

At Respectful Insolence, Orac writes:

So basically, antivaccine activists, led by Polly Tommey, who also co-produced VAXXED, are collecting stories of “vaccine injury.” One could say that the movie VAXXED consists, to a large degree, of stories of “vaccine-induced” autism, and the VAXXED team has been busy collecting such stories and posting videos to its website, grouped by state. For instance, here is Michigan, which as of last night included six videos. Not surprisingly, California has many more. So far, the VAXXED team claims it’s received over 650 e-mails from people who have submitted their stories.

This could be a very effective technique with this particular President for the simple reason that he does not understand science, shows little interest in science, and clearly values anecdotes over data. He is very easily influenced by flattery. He has a long and sordid history of antivaccine views. He’s been very consistent in this, dating back to at least 2007. He became antivaccine because of stories told to him by parents just like this, according to RFK Jr.

At STAT, Sheila Kaplan proposes question for HHS nominee Tom Price.

Do you share the president-elect’s concerns about the safety of US vaccines?

Trump has made a number of remarks indicating that he is concerned about vaccine safety, seemingly lending credence to debunked theories suggesting vaccines can cause autism. He also met recently with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken anti-vaccine figure, who later said he had been asked to lead a committee on vaccine safety. (Trump’s transition team did not confirm he had been asked to do so.)

As the head of the nation’s top health agency, Price would be in a position to, at the very least, set the administration’s tone on vaccines.

At The Sacramento Bee, Karin Klein writes that RFK's California campaign against vaccination mandates focused on thimerosal, which has been out of vaccines for more than a decade.

Kennedy says that his mission would be to look at the science, but how could he be trusted to do that when he thinks any science that doesn’t fit with his preconceived notions is a plot? This is how he voiced his fringe vaccine belief: “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

He later apologized for that insulting and wildly inaccurate description of autism, but it proves the point: This man is not a scientist or anything remotely resembling a medical expert. He doesn’t belong anywhere near a scientific inquiry.

Want an example of a holocaust? In 1990, measles killed 872,000 people worldwide. A global vaccination effort reduced that to 158,000 people by the year 2011. A recent study found that the measles vaccination campaign had saved the lives of 20 million children from 2000 to 2015 – and even so, missed measles inoculations mean that 400 children a day continue to die from the disease.

The danger isn’t vaccines. Measles and many other diseases are highly contagious, potentially fatal, but preventable. The danger is from people who throw around scare words, paving the way for its comeback.