Senate Holds Confirmation Hearings For HHS Secretary Nominee Robert Kennedy
Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Since taking office, the Trump administration has announced major cuts to funding for medical research, throwing studies aimed at finding treatments for cancer, diabetes, and other diseases into limbo. One thing the government apparently still does have funding for? Investigating Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s favorite conspiracy theory. Federal officials said on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to conduct a large-scale study to reexamine the thoroughly debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
Extensive research has found no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism. In fact, just last week, the Republican chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Bill Cassidy, said that the subject has been “exhaustively studied” and that any further research would be both a waste of money and a distraction, according to the New York Times. Of course, this is not enough to satisfy RFK Jr., who has spent his career profiting off vaccine misinformation.
News of the planned CDC study is the latest of many alarming signs that RFK Jr. will use his position as the nation’s top health official to further promote skepticism about vaccines. After he vowed last month to reexamine the childhood vaccination schedule, the FDA abruptly canceled a meeting of experts to discuss flu vaccines without explanation. Meanwhile, as the number of measles cases across the country grows and at least one unvaccinated child has died, Kennedy has been criticized for downplaying the situation and not urging parents to vaccinate their children. In an opinion piece for Fox News Digital, he acknowledged that “vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” but — confusingly — called the decision to vaccinate “a personal choice.”
Discussing the debunked link between vaccines and autism during last week’s confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Cassidy said, “The more we pretend like this is an issue, the more we will have children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.”
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The CDC Will Reexamine Debunked Vaccine Conspiracy Theory