Who decided to leave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. home alone at the Health and Human Services Department? Without adults to supervise the Secretary, he’s damaging public trust in immunizations, and now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been conscripted into his anti-vaccine campaign.
On Wednesday the CDC updated a Vaccine Safety page on its website that previously advised: “Vaccines do not cause autism.” Now it explains: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
The studies haven’t been ignored. They’ve been examined and found deeply flawed.
The updated CDC website points to a study by a University of Colorado, Boulder, environmental scientist, who also happens to have written for the newsletter of Children’s Health Defense. That’s the anti-vaccine outfit that Mr. Kennedy previously ran.
The study claimed to find a strong correlation between the use in vaccines of aluminum adjuvants and rising autism in the 1980s and 1990s. These adjuvants are additives that boost the patient’s immune response.
But to repeat basic logic: Correlation does not prove causation. A Danish study of more than 1.2 million children this year found no link between aluminum in vaccines and autism.
Mr. Kennedy has long asserted that the measles vaccine causes autism, but the CDC page doesn’t go that far, perhaps because so many studies have debunked the claim.
The website more vaguely suggests: “There are still no studies that support the claim that any of the 20 doses of the seven infant vaccines recommended for American children before the first year of life do not cause autism.”
Under this logic, the fact that robust studies on childhood vaccines haven’t found an autism link means it can’t be ruled out. But you can’t disprove a negative.
The CDC page now says: “Approximately one in two surveyed parents of autistic children believe vaccines played a role.”
Perhaps because Mr. Kennedy and vaccine opponents have made vaccines an autism scapegoat.
The bottom of the CDC page includes a revealing footnote: “The header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”
To win Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy’s vote for his confirmation, RFK Jr. promised not to remove that statement. Retaining the header is a lawyerly attempt to keep his word while flouting it in spirit.
He is also breaking his pledge to Mr. Cassidy not to push vaccines for children off the market.
Early next month Mr. Kennedy’s handpicked Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will discuss aluminum adjuvants and could require manufacturers to remove them from vaccines. That could force a dozen vaccines out of use.
The aluminum ingredient in vaccines isn’t the same as what’s in kitchen foil. Aluminum is naturally present in plants, soil, water and many foods, including vegetables, tea and chocolate. ]
