President Donald Trump appeared to support the conspiracy theory that vaccines are linked to autism as he publicly reiterated his support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism.
While Trump did not directly link vaccines to autism, he said that autism rates have increased dramatically in 20 years and that “something’s really wrong.”
In a post on Truth Social, the president said, “20 years ago, Autism in children was 1 in 10,000. NOW IT’S 1 in 34. WOW! Something’s really wrong. We need BOBBY!!!”
It’s unclear which set of statistics Trump is referring to, but he appears to be exaggerating the increase in recent years.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 36 children were identified with autism spectrum disorder in 2020. The figure stood at 1 in 150 in 2000.
Soon after the post, a key Senate committee advanced Kennedy’s nomination, moving him a step closer to confirmation.
For decades, the scientific community has worked to test the claim that vaccines cause autism. Numerous studies have debunked the link, and experts say part of the rise in autism diagnoses can be attributed to improvements in doctors’ abilities to identify the condition.
The consequences of a drop in childhood vaccinations can be deadly.
In 2019, an outbreak of measles devastated Samoa, where vaccination rates were historically low. Some 83 people were killed — mostly children under age 5 — in a population of around 200,000.
Kennedy, who visited the Pacific island nation months before the outbreak with his nonprofit group, told the Senate committee last week: “We don’t know what was killing them.” This claim was described as “a complete lie” by Samoa’s top health official.
During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings last week, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a doctor, said the science shows that measles and other childhood vaccines are safe and not linked to autism — and read aloud the scientific conclusions.
“Will you say unequivocally … and without qualification, that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?” Cassidy asked Kennedy.
Kennedy said he’d support the vaccines if the data showed they were safe. Cassidy responded that there’s no “if.”
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The data, Cassidy said, “have been out there for quite some time and have been peer-reviewed, and it shows that these two vaccines are not associated with autism.”
Despite this back-and-forth, Cassidy voted to advance Kennedy’s nomination on Tuesday.