RFK Jr. directs CDC to change language on website about autism and vaccines

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Public health experts, doctors and scientists have denounced the latest information as the type of misinformation the CDC has been fighting for decades.

Sriparna Roy and Michael Arman
|Reuters

Nov. 21 (Reuters) – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He said he personally instructed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. change a long-held position the vaccine avoid causing autism.

Counter Decades of Science The U.S. Public Health Service website shows the vaccine is safe. changed “The claim that 'vaccines do not cause autism' is not an evidence-based claim because research has not ruled out the possibility that childhood vaccines cause autism.”

In an interview with The New York Times, President Kennedy said that although large epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine have not shown a link to autism, nor have studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, there are gaps in vaccine safety science.

more: RFK Jr. made big promises regarding autism. Click here for the latest information

“Anything that says 'vaccines have been tested and these decisions have been made' is a lie,” President Kennedy said. first interview In major print publications.

Public health experts, doctors and scientists denounced the latest information as the type of misinformation the CDC has been fighting for decades, as it has promoted the use of lifesaving childhood vaccines at home and abroad.

more: How President Trump's 'big debate' on vaccines and autism could negatively impact children's health

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Until Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine advocate, became secretary of Health and Human Services, the CDC was a major opponent of growing global anti-vaccination sentiment. Some of that can be traced back to a now-discredited 1998 study linking measles vaccines to autism. president donald trump He also expressed anti-vaccination sentiment.

The CDC's website previously stated that “studies show no association between vaccination and the development of autism spectrum disorders.”

The World Health Organization and other health organizations around the world have reiterated that evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism, and referred to previous statements in response to questions about changes to the CDC website on Thursday.

CDC remake

“This represents another devastating change in direction by the CDC, which was effectively dismantled by the Secretary of Health,” said Helen Tager-Fulsberg, an autism expert at Boston University.

He pointed to the thousands of CDC scientists who have been fired or resigned this year and have been replaced by leading anti-vaccine advocates such as David Geyer, who Kennedy said was reviewing the data.

The website changes were made without consulting CDC staff who study autism, said a CDC scientist who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

more: Health Secretary RFK Jr. says there's not 'enough' evidence to show Tylenol causes autism

HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon defended the change on Nov. 20, but declined to address questions about who ordered it.

President Kennedy paved the way for the CDC policy change in August. Director Susan Monares fired Regarding vaccine policy. The agency is currently led by Jim O'Neill, the acting director and deputy secretary of health, who is not a scientist.

Kennedy has already All 17 members were fired. He appointed members of a committee that advises the CDC on vaccine policy and replaced them with his own nominees. The committee is scheduled to meet early next month to consider new recommendations for the hepatitis B vaccine.

Fiona Havers, a former CDC official who resigned in June over vaccine policy, said President Kennedy is weaponizing the CDC.

“This is clearly being driven by RFK Jr.'s political appointees, his hand-picked 'special advisers' at the CDC,” Havers said, adding that career scientists at the CDC have been completely sidelined from the process.

Vaccines do not cause autism

Scientists took issue with a statement on the website that said research had not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism, saying it was “exploiting a quirk of logic”.

“You can't prove something will never happen,” Jake Scott, a professor at Stanford School of Medicine, wrote on Substack. “Scientists cannot prove that vaccines do not cause autism because it is logically impossible to prove universal negativity.”

more: The CDC has changed the wording on its website. Public health experts are furious.

The agency left the headline “Vaccines do not cause autism” on its webpage, saying it was not removed due to an agreement with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Kennedy won Cassidy's backing in February by promising not to change language on the CDC's website about vaccines and autism.

Former FDA chief scientist Jesse Goodman said the website ignores multiple large, well-conducted studies that showed no link between vaccines and autism. He said the studies cited in the paper were “seriously flawed and failed to adequately control for other factors potentially associated with an autism diagnosis.”

In particular, he and other researchers cite a large, groundbreaking 2019 study in Denmark.

The CDC website cites a 2012 study by the Institute of Medicine that said all but four studies on the link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism had “significant methodological limitations.”

Nevertheless, the review did not include a conclusion that the evidence supports denying a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Anti-vaccine groups praise change

Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccination group that Kennedy previously led, praised the changes to the CDC's website.

“The CDC is rejecting the long-standing bold lie that 'vaccines do not cause autism' and is beginning to acknowledge the truth about this condition that affects millions of people,” the group said in X.

Kennedy is The relationship between vaccines and autism and sought to rewrite the country's vaccination policy. CDC is Recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination has been withdrawn. Research for pregnant women and children, HHS has cut research funding.

President Trump also links autism to drug use painkiller tylenol This claim, made by a pregnant woman, is also not supported by scientific evidence.

Autism is a neurological and developmental condition characterized by disruptions in brain signaling, which causes people to behave, communicate, interact, and learn in atypical ways. of causes of autism is unknown.

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