The Politics of Expertise

 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.

Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.   Even before COVID, they fought vaccine mandates and other public health measures. 

Mike Allen at Axios:

A second Donald Trump presidency would usher in a new type of class warfare — empowering populists to steamroll mainstream experts on issues such as climate change, economics and public health.

Why it matters: This year's devastating hurricane season has exposed the perils of Trump's war on climate experts, who have long warned that human-caused global warming is exacerbating extreme weather.Through warming ocean and air temperatures, climate change makes hurricanes like Helene and Milton more destructive — and more likely to rapidly intensify all the way through landfall. The catastrophic back-to-back storms tore through the Southeast just weeks after climate scientists reported Earth's hottest summer on record.
...

Between the lines: Anti-expert sentiment exploded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis in which many Americans felt betrayed by health authorities they once trusted.

• 29% of U.S. adults in 2021 expressed a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 40% in November 2020, according to Pew Research Center.
• Vaccine skepticism is especially partisan: Just 52% of Republicans believe the COVID vaccine is "very" or "somewhat" safe, compared to 91% of Democrats, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll last year.
• Trump has seized on that phenomenon, forging an unusual alliance with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grounded in their supporters' mutual distrust of public health experts.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

Resistance to public health, relegated to the fringes of the American right and left before Covid vaccine mandates became a cultural flashpoint and a symbol of government overreach, now has a firm foothold in Republican politics — and a chance to wield real power in Washington.

The merger of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald J. Trump presidential campaigns has put the movement’s most prominent leader within reach of a White House job or federal health position. Around the country, nearly 1,000 candidates, nearly all Republican, are seeking office with the backing of Stand for Health Freedom, a Florida nonprofit.

The movement even has a Trump-inspired slogan: Make America Healthy Again.

Now, the remnants of Mr. Kennedy’s campaign apparatus are organizing their efforts around Mr. Trump’s presidential bid. On Monday, former Kennedy campaign officials unveiled a new super PAC, The MAHA Alliance, led by Del Bigtree, Mr. Kennedy’s former communications director, and Brigid Rasmussen, his former chief of staff.

“The medical freedom movement,” Mr. Bigtree said, “now finds itself inches away from being represented inside the White House and inside the regulatory agencies of America.” Mr. Bigtree, who hosts a popular podcast, “The HighWire,” is the founder of Informed Consent Action Network — an advocacy group that has worked to loosen vaccine mandates and is petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of certain vaccines for hepatitis B and polio

...

As the movement grows in influence, the C.D.C. is recording a dip in vaccination rates and a resurgence of measles, the most contagious of the common childhood diseases. There have been 13 measles outbreaks so far in 2024, compared with four in 2023, endangering those with immune disorders and those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

 

Trump Despises People with Disabilities

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in campaign politics.   In the 2016 campaign, a number of posts discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues more generally.   As his words and actions have shown, he despises Americans with disabilities.   He told his nephew Fred that severely disabled people -- such as Fred's son -- should "just die."

Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, and Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

Donald J. Trump took his seat at the dining table in his triplex penthouse apartment atop Trump Tower on the last Sunday in September, alongside some of the most sought-after and wealthiest figures in the Republican Party.

...

He disparaged Vice President Kamala Harris as “retarded.” He complained about the number of Jews still backing Ms. Harris, saying they needed their heads examined for not supporting him despite everything he had done for the state of Israel.

He has also used the r-word before, and Lordy, there are tapes.

In welcoming the US Olympic team to the White House , Trump said:

So today, on behalf of the United States, I want to thank every Olympian and Paralympian. And what as just incredible. And what happened with the Paralympics was so incredible and so inspiring to me. And I watched — it’s a little tough to watch too much, but I watched as much as I could.

Trump thinks it's "tough to watch" disabled people play sports.  This comment is the latest sign of his aversion to people with disabilities.

On November 26, 2015, Jose A. DelReal at The Washington Post:

On stage Tuesday, Trump berated Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski for his recent recollection of an article he had written a few days after the [9/11] attacks. Trump appeared to mock Kovaleski's physical condition; the reporter has arthrogryposis, which visibly limits flexibility in his arms.

“Now, the poor guy — you've got to see this guy, ‘Ah, I don't know what I said! I don't remember!' " Trump said as he jerked his arms in front of his body.

On August 3, 2015, Celeste Katz wrote at The New York Daily News:

"While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?" Trump wrote in a 1991 letter to John Dearie, then-chairman of the state Assembly's Committee on Cities.

"Do we allow Fifth Ave., one of the world's finest and most luxurious shopping districts, to be turned into an outdoor flea market, clogging and seriously downgrading the area?" Trump demanded.

New York's original peddling exceptions for veterans date back to 1894 — created to give those disabled during the Civil War a chance to support themselves.

In 2004, when the regulations had come up for renewal, Trump piped up again.

John Hendrickson at The Atlantic:

Former president Donald Trump, perhaps threatened by President Joe Biden’s well-received State of the Union address, mocked his opponent’s lifelong stutter at a rally in Georgia yesterday. “Wasn’t it—didn’t it bring us together?” Trump asked sarcastically. He kept the bit going, slipping into a Biden caricature. “‘I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together,’” Trump said, straining and narrowing his mouth for comedic effect.

Trump has made a new habit of this. “‘He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” Trump said in his vaudeville Biden character at a January rally in Iowa. That jibe was also a response to a big Biden speech—one tied to the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. (Guess who the he was in that sentence.)

...

Stuttering is one of many disabilities to have entered Trump’s crosshairs. In 2015, he infamously made fun of a New York Times reporter’s disabled upper-body movements. Three years later, as president, when planning a White House event for military veterans, he asked his staff not to include amputees wounded in combat, saying, “Nobody wants to see that.” Stuttering is a neurological disorder that affects roughly 3 million Americans. Biden has stuttered since childhood. He has worked to manage his disfluent speech for decades, but, contrary to the story he tells about his life, he has never fully “beat” it.

College Search and Autism: Ask the RIght Questions

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the growing number of college students on the spectrum.  

Joanna Nesbit at US News:

“In 2000, there were two specialized autism support programs, and now in 2024, there are close to 100,” says Jane Thierfeld Brown, director of College Autism Spectrum, an independent organization with resources for autistic students, families, schools and professionals. “Colleges are really listening and looking at enhanced services and programs.”
...

Besides services for autism, students should think about what else is important to them. Considerations may include major, school size, distance from home, whether religion is important, ethnic and cultural groups and other factors, experts say.

Even the weather may be a consideration if you don’t like wearing a heavy coat, says Lorre Wolf, founding consultant with College Autism Spectrum and former director of disability and access services at Boston University in Massachusetts.

...
As your family explores campuses, seek answers to the following questions, particularly for schools without autism support programs. Those answers will guide your college search.

• Has the college staff worked with many autistic students, and do they have training in the area?
• What kind of special programming is available, if any?
• How strong is the disability services relationship with other campus offices, including residence life, academic advising, student employment and student mental health? How closely do the offices work together?
• Are single rooms a possibility?
• How many credits are required per term? Can a student attend less than full time and still live in a residence hall?
• What is the availability of mental health therapists or crisis counselors?
• What is the caseload of disability services?
• How often do students usually meet with a disability services professional?

“We encourage families to call and interview the disabilities office,” Wolf says.

 

ASD, IDEA, and Project 2025

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.

About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13.

The Trumpist Project 2025 would gut that law, wiping out protections for all those students.  See here for details:

Buried deep inside Project 2025 is a bombshell that has gotten little attention: a radical proposal that threatens the education and future of millions of students with disabilities.

Right now, a kid with a disability such as autism can get an individualized, school-based set of services, including speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. But under Project 2025 this set of services could go away.

You can find the proposal on page 326 of the Project 2025 transition playbook. It lays out an extreme change to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): “Most IDEA funding should be converted into a no-strings formula block grant targeted at students with disabilities and distributed directly to local education agencies by Health and Human Service’s [sic] Administration for Community Living.”

That one sentence could upend lives and send students with disabilities backward a half-century.

To understand why it is so dangerous, consider the background of IDEA. This law provides federal funding for the education of children with disabilities; states that receive the funds must offer a free, appropriate public education to each eligible child. Before IDEA, public schools excluded about 1.8 million children with disabilities and gave only negligible help to millions more.

In the 49 years since the law’s passage, parents have fought for regulations and judicial rulings that shore up IDEA’s protections for their children. For instance, when a school district said that it only had to offer minimal services to an autistic student, his parents fought back. The Supreme Court agreed with them, ruling that IDEA required the district to do better than rock bottom.

Because of such advocacy, some 7.5 million students today receive individualized services. The system is far from perfect, but for many Americans, it has opened the door to fulfilling lives and productive careers. It’s good for students with disabilities, their families, and nearly every community.

Unlike the Americans with Disabilities Act, however, IDEA is not a civil rights law that applies across the board. Its requirements are conditions of federal aid — also known as “strings.”

When you cut the strings, you gut the law.

That is why the Project 2025 proposal is so reckless. This proposal doesn’t just threaten special education; it signals a broader assault on the federal protections that have safeguarded the rights of millions of vulnerable Americans for generations.

Parents have learned the hard way that they can seldom get the services their kids need unless they can cite a legal requirement — and even then, they’ve learned that relentless pressure is necessary to get their kids a fair shake.

Since 1980, the US Department of Education has overseen the implementation of IDEA. Project 2025 would shift that job to another department because it also proposes to eliminate the Department of Education. Let that sink in.

Trumpists insist the former president has nothing to do with this risky scheme. And now that people have started raising alarms about other aspects of Project 2025, he is denying any connection to it — which rings hollow with recent reporting on Trump’s embrace of Project 2025 before it was in the media spotlight.

In his denials, Trump sounds like a guilty defendant on Paternity Court.

No matter what he says about Project 2025 now, his political DNA is all over it: at least 140 people who worked in his administration also took part in drafting the document, and Trump himself was happy to rub elbows with the man behind it on at least one private jet.

Trump has not proposed any other IDEA agenda. His skimpy platform does not even mention the word disability. If Trump wins the 2024 election, Project 2025 will fill in the blanks.

Does Trump care that this proposal would endanger special education? Not likely. Trump has always despised people with disabilities. In talk show interviews, he repeatedly used the r-word — and Lordy, there are tapes. His former chief of staff confirmed last year that he did not want photographs with military amputees, complaining, “It doesn’t look good for me.” His cruel imitation of a disabled reporter became infamous during the 2016 campaign. And according to a recent account by his nephew, he has said that severely disabled people should “just die.”

Trump may dodge, deflect, and deny, but one truth is clear: his agenda lacks any compassion for the millions of students with disabilities for whom IDEA is a key contributor to supporting their education and their future.

Maternal Inflammation During Pregnancy

  In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what causes the condition. 

Samuel Diamond at Cold Spring Harbor:

With the help of partners like the Simons Foundation, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has played a leading role in identifying autism’s genetic roots. Now,  CSHL scientists are helping to explain how inflammation during pregnancy may lead to neurodevelopmental disorders in children.

Irene Sanchez Martin is a postdoc in CSHL Assistant Professor Lucas Cheadle’s lab. She recently presented her research on maternal immune activation at a Society for Neuroscience press conference in Chicago. She points to recent experiments in the Cheadle lab in which a mouse embryo may begin to show early signs of developmental deficits soon after its pregnant mother is exposed to a virus.

“The model we use is very well established for autism spectrum disorder,” Sanchez Martin explains. “The difference in my work is that I check what happened to the fetuses 24 hours after exposure to maternal inflammation, rather than analyzing the behaviors of the offspring as adults.” This is the first time scientists have been able to look at the effects of prenatal inflammation on an embryo in an autism model. Such research may one day enable physicians to identify early warning signs before a child is even born.

Here is a long. growing, and probably incomplete list of other correlates, risk factors, and possible causes that have been the subject of serious studies: 

1. Inflammatory bowel disease;
2. Pesticides;
3. Air pollution and proximity to freeways;
4. Maternal thyroid issues;
5. Autoimmune disorders;
6. Induced labor;
7. Preterm birth;
8. Fever;  
9. Birth by cesarean section;
10. Anesthesia during cesarean sections;
11. Maternal and paternal obesity;
12. Maternal diabetes;
13. Maternal and paternal age;
14. Grandparental age;
15. Maternal post-traumatic stress disorder;
16. Maternal anorexia;
17. Smoking during pregnancy;
18. Cannabis use during pregnancy;
19. Antidepressant use during pregnancy;
20. Polycystic ovary syndrome;
21. Infant opioid withdrawal;
22. Zinc deficiency;
23. Sulfate deficiency;
24. Processed foods;
25. Maternal occupational exposure to solvents;
26. Congenital heart disease;
27. Insufficient placental allopregnanolone.
28. Estrogen in the womb;
29. Morning sickness;
30. Paternal family history;
31. Parental preterm birth;
32. Antiseizure meds
33. Location of forebears
34. Lithium
35. Aspartame
36. BPA
37. Brain inflammation
38. Maternal asthma
39. Infertility
40. Ultraprocessed foods
41. Household chemicals
42. Parental psychiatric disorders
43. Fluoride
44. Fatty acids in umbilical cord blood

Disaster Preparedness Resources

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families.  Those challenges get far more intense during disasters and their aftermath.

Florida is suffering the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.  Some resources:

• USA Today Network, "Hurricane Milton: What to do..."
• Blue Sprig, "How Do I Prepare for a Hurricane with a Child with Autism?"
• National Autism, "Hurricane Preparation Tips"
• CDC, "Emergency Preparedness Tips"
• Autism Society of Florida, "Disaster Preparedness" 

WINK-TV:

Texas Justice and an Autistic Child

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between the justice system and autistic people.

Talia Richman at The Dallas Morning News:

The classroom was loud that day, and Hasan doesn’t like loud.

So the 10-year-old boy decided to go on a walk through Frisco’s Bledsoe Elementary. His specialized education plan — required because of his autism — allowed for sensory breaks.

On his way out the door, he said something. His fifth-grade teacher quickly reported what she heard on the morning of March 29, 2022: “Maybe I should bring a gun to school, then maybe they will listen to me.”

These words — which his parents say were grossly misunderstood — would derail Hasan’s childhood and education for the next two years. They would plunge his family into a haze of anxiety, costing tens of thousands of dollars to navigate the juvenile justice system. Ultimately, they would force them to question what it means to raise a child in America.

...

Hasan was arrested and charged with a Class A misdemeanor for the threat of exhibiting a firearm at school. The charge doesn’t require the person to display a gun or to have access to one.

He became one of roughly 1,110 Texas children referred to the justice system for this misdemeanor charge in the last six fiscal years, according to state juvenile justice data. More children were referred for this charge in 2023 — after the Uvalde massacre — than in any other recent year.

About half of the such cases involved kids between 10 and 13 years old.

...'

On that March day, a school resource officer questioned Hasan before Tahmina learned her son was in trouble. When school officials contacted her, she rushed to the campus.

Tahmina watched as Hasan was loaded into a police cruiser in the Bledsoe Elementary parking lot. Handcuffs clanked around his skinny wrists.

Police fingerprinted the boy and took his mugshot. He stood just over 4 feet tall. Hasan wasn’t sure whether he should smile, like he normally would for a picture, or make a mean face. He said he thought mugshots were only for burglars or serial killers.

After two years, prosecutors dropped charges.

Still, the family doesn’t feel whole. Hasan’s confidence is shattered, his parents say. He stopped believing in his Stanford dream. The 10-year-old boy who said he wanted to be the greatest scientist of all time is now a 13-year-old doing science classes from his bedroom.

Tahmina and Mohammed are afraid of sending their son back to school in Frisco — or any in-person school. They’ve considered moving.

They still question, months after the dismissal, why it happened. They think often about the way their country’s love — and fear — of guns shaped their son’s world.

“We call this a first-world country? Where we treat our children like this and criminalize them?” Tahmina asked.

 

Bait and Switch Political Event

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in campaigns.

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) is a leading advocate for people with autism and other disabilities.

His opponent, Dave McCormick, supports Trump, who despises people with disabilities.

Sean Collins Walsh at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick on Friday afternoon made a campaign stop outside Max’s Steaks in North Philadelphia, the latest in a series of GOP events aimed at reaching out to Black voters in Philly this year.

But McCormick’s campaign apparently didn’t do enough outreach to Max’s.

Mike Sfida, manager at Max’s, said he was told the event was for autism awareness and was surprised to see campaign signs for McCormick and former President Donald Trump being hung up outside the restaurant. Sfida said he welcomed the event because his niece and nephew have autism, “not a political campaign.”

“We didn’t sign up for that at all. Zero,” Sfida said as the McCormick team was wrapping up the event. “I could throw them all out of here, but I’m going to be nice. Do your thing. When you’re done, leave. You’re not welcome back.”

...

The confusion over the purpose of the event stemmed from the fact that it was organized in part by Sheila Armstrong, a Philadelphia activist of various causes who has run for City Council as a Democrat but is now a Republican. Sfida said Armstrong reached out to him to schedule the event on behalf of her nonprofit organization, Cooking4Autism, and not on behalf of McCormick’s campaign.

Armstrong, who has been a member of the controversial conservative group Moms for Liberty, appears to have no official affiliation with McCormick, but said she has offered to be a liaison for the Republican in the city. During Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race, Armstrong was at the center of a minor controversy when it was revealed that the campaign of Republican Mehmet Oz — who defeated McCormick in that year’s GOP primary before losing to U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) — failed to disclose that she was a paid campaign staffer after featuring her as a speaker at a community roundtable in Philadelphia.

She said Friday that the Max’s event was intended to raise awareness about autism and that she also told Max’s that she had “political clients.”

“What I organized this for is because we always hear the politicians saying that they support the Black community, but we never see them. So I always push them and challenge them to come into my Black community,” she said. “Dave McCormick took that challenge.”



Asked if there was an autism awareness aspect of the event, Armstrong said, “Yes, it’s always autism awareness because I’m an education advocate,” adding that she addressed the crowd about autism at one point.

However, there was little visible indication the event had anything to do with autism awareness. While there were Republican campaign signs and McCormick campaign pamphlets on a table, there were no resources about autism.

Trump Stokes Antivax Sentiment

 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.

Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.   Even before COVID, they fought vaccine mandates and other public health measures. 

Darius Tahir at KFF News:

[On] at least 17 occasions this year, Trump has promised to cut funding to schools that mandate vaccines. Campaign spokespeople have previously said that pledge would apply only to schools with covid mandates. But speeches reviewed by KFF Health News included no such distinction — raising the possibility Trump would also target vaccination rules for common, potentially lethal childhood diseases like polio and measles.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

Trump has presided over a landslide shift in his party’s views on vaccines, reflected this campaign season in false claims by Republican candidates during the primaries and puzzling conspiracies from prominent conservative voices. Republicans increasingly express worry about the risks of vaccines. A September 2023 poll from Politico and Morning Consult showed a narrow majority of those voters cared more about the risks than the benefits of getting inoculated

A surge in anti-vaccine policy in statehouses has followed the rhetoric. Boston University political scientist Matt Motta, who tracks public health policy, said preliminary data shows that states enacted at least 42 anti-vaccine bills in 2023 — nearly a ninefold surge since 2019.

In some states, it has the look of a crusade: The 2024 Texas GOP platform, for example, proposes a ban on mRNA technology, the innovation behind some covid-19 vaccines that scientists believe could have significant applications for cancer care.

Deidre McPhillips and Jacqueline Howard at CNN:

A record share of US kindergartners had an exemption for required vaccinations last school year, leaving more than 125,000 new schoolchildren without coverage for at least one state-mandated vaccine, according to new data published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And another dip in measles vaccination rates among kindergartners means coverage has now been well below the federal target for four years in a row.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has set a goal that at least 95% of children in kindergarten will have gotten two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, a threshold necessary to help prevent outbreaks of the highly contagious disease.

After this rate was maintained for a decade, though, coverage dipped during the Covid-19 pandemic and has yet to recover. The measles vaccination rate fell again last year, to 92.7% coverage for kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year, according to the CDC data.

Rates for other state-mandated vaccinations – including diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis, known as DTaP, and polio – also declined.

Another Bogus Autism Treatment

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.

At WIRED, David Gilbert reports on how a Facebook group hawks a bogus - and dangerous - autism treatment.

This group is just the latest example of how the anti-vaxxer community has used platforms like Facebook for more than a decade to prey on vulnerable people by pushing bogus and dangerous pseudoscientific products—especially those targeting children. These same communities have in the past pushed bleach as a cure for autism and during the Covid pandemic promoted ivermectin as a treatment for children. Despite repeated exposés of these groups, they continue to flourish on major social media platforms.

The Facebook group was first set up in September 2022 by a woman named Julia Czelazewicz, who is known online as Detox Mama. Czelazewicz pushes group members toward her website, where she sells Pure Body Extra as well as a number of other products.

...

For decades the bogus claim that childhood vaccines were linked to autism was promoted widely within the so-called alternative health community. It was given a major boost in 2005 when Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who will be a member of Donald Trump’s transition team if he is elected next month, published an error-ridden article in two mainstream publications. The claims gained even more traction during the Covid lockdowns when conspiracies around vaccines surged once again.

Czelazewicz told WIRED that she has “never made a claim that this product cures autism” and that she has “no control how others choose to express their experience with PBX.” However, when asked if she would state clearly that Pure Body Extra does not have any impact on the symptoms of autism, Czelazewicz did not respond.

She also failed to respond to questions about the negative side effects being reported in the group by parents of children being treated with Pure Body Extra, and did not provide any evidence when asked if the product was suitable for children.

One of the most troubling aspects of the group is the way it seeks to prey on vulnerable parents of autistic children who appear at a loss as to how to treat their children’s behavioral problems.

Repeating the Myth in Louisiana

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.

Some of the spreaders of misinformation have credentials.

Skafle et al. at Journal of Medical Internet Research

A well-known false claim is that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause autism [9]. The claim has since been empirically refuted many times but is still stated as a major concern for some parents [10]. Motta and Steccula [11] examined American public opinion data on MMR safety collected before and after a retracted 1998 study linking autism to MMR. The researchers detected a statistically significant increase in public concern about MMR safety following the retracted study and the media attention it received. This suggests that misleading vaccine information can impact public confidence in vaccines and cause skepticism about vaccines in general.

Piper Hutchinson at Louisiana Public Radio:

Dozens of anti-vaccine bills have died in the Louisiana Legislature since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultra-conservative lawmakers are gearing up for another fight.

In the process, truth has become a major casualty.

In two days of hearings last week on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security heard hours of testimony from doctors with fringe views on the COVID-19 virus. They included the state’s chief medical doctor, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, who himself amplified misinformation. Abraham is a general practitioner who is also a veterinarian.

“It’s been my observation that nearly every intervention attempted by government has been ineffective, counterproductive and antithetical to the core principles of a free society,” Abraham said last Thursday, citing mask use and vaccines as examples of ineffective measures.

Abraham’s deputy surgeon general, ophthalmologist Dr. Wyche Coleman III, went a step further, touting the debunked theory that childhood vaccinations cause autism.

“You could probably fill Tiger Stadium with moms who have kids that were normal one day, got a vaccine and were then autistic after,” Coleman told lawmakers.

Vance's Dog Whistles

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.

Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.   Even before COVID, they fought vaccine mandates and other public health measures. 

J.D. Vance is one of them, as last night's debate confirmed.

 Ashley Parker and Caroline Kitchener at WP:

Venturing into territory that some Democrats instantly flagged as anti-vaccine, Vance offered a more benign spin to those skeptical of the anti-vaccine movement, referring to his own three children and saying: “Look, so many of the drugs — the pharmaceuticals — that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop, and we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts.”

He also gave a shoutout to the infamous antivaxxer, RFK Jr.

Now I'm really proud, especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue collar Democrats to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the Democratic coalition.

Michael Hiltzik at LAT:

Vance, as has been widely reported, has carried on fatuously for years about how childless people have an insufficiently heartfelt interest in democracy and the republic. He has argued for higher tax rates on the childless, denigrated political and business leaders as “childless cat ladies,” etc., etc.

Yet when Vance was asked about vaccine mandates on Fox News during his Senate campaign in 2021, here’s what he said: “I am sick of these bureaucrats experimenting on my children because that’s what they’re doing.... If you want to experiment on somebody’s kids, Kamala Harris, AOC, and so forth, have your own kids, lay off of mine.”

As part of that same spiel, he put in a pitch for “bodily autonomy,” one of the catchphrases of anti-vaccine fanatics. “This is about doing what you want to do with your own family, with your own rights,” he said.