President-elect Donald Trump has said his nominee for health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism, despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection. In an interview with NBC, Trump claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.
“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after being asked if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated. “If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in 36 children in the US were diagnosed with autism in 2020, compared with one in 150 in 2000.
Kennedy, a noted vaccine sceptic, has repeatedly peddled discredited theories that autism is caused by childhood vaccinations. In a 2023 Fox News interview, he called for more vaccine testing, saying: “We should have the same kind of testing or control trials that we have for every other medication. Vaccines are exempt from pre-licensing control trials, so there’s no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products.”
Scientists attribute the rise in autism diagnoses to improved screening methods and say it is caused by a complex mix of factors, including genetics, environment and conditions during pregnancy and birth. The World Health Organization has definitively ruled out a connection between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine or other childhood inoculations.
Research led by British doctor Andrew Wakefield asserting a link between autism and the MMR jab was later discredited, with the Lancet issuing a full retraction. Wakefield was banned from practicing in Britain after being found to have acted “dishonestly” and with a “callous disregard” for children’s health.
