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The Trump administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plan to conduct a study on links between vaccines and autism, both Reuters and the Washington Post reported Friday.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says that, in keeping with President Donald Trump’s concerns that “the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed,” the CDC “will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening.”
“The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering,” the HHS spokesperson said in a statement to CatholicVote.
In his address to the joint session of Congress on March 4, Trump said “Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong.”
“As an example, not long ago — you can’t even believe these numbers — one in 10,000 children had autism,” he continued. “One in 10,000. And now it’s one in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36. Think of that. So, we’re going to find out what it is, and there’s nobody better than Bobby and all of the people that are working with you — you have the best — to figure out what is going on.”
Trump referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom the president nominated to lead HHS. The CDC is an agency of HHS.
The Friday reports from Reuters and the Washington Post both cited two unnamed sources familiar with the planned CDC study on vaccines and autism.
Reuters asserted the study was to be launched “despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links.”
The Post announced the controversial issue was to be studied “despite overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no link between the two.”
CatholicVote reached out to HHS’ Office of Public Affairs for confirmation of the report and received the following response:
On background: The following statement can be attributed to an HHS spokesperson.
“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.”
“The request for the study came from Trump administration officials, said the two people familiar with the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation,” the Post reported, referring to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as “an anti-vaccine activist.”
“President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy have repeatedly linked vaccines to autism,” the Post added, continuing that the reported new CDC study will utilize data from the agency’s Vaccine Safety Datalink.
Reuters said the reported CDC move to study vaccine links to autism “comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks the U.S. has seen in the past decade, with more than 200 cases and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico.”
“The outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the United States where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good,” Reuters added.
In an op-ed at Fox News in early March, Kennedy wrote of the measles outbreak in Texas that he wants to ensure his department provides both “accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy” and easy access to vaccines “for all those who want them.”
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense (CHD), celebrated “the CDC’s newfound curiosity in vaccines and autism.”
CHD was founded by HHS Secretary Kennedy, who also formerly served as its chairman and chief litigation counsel.
Jablonowski told CHD’s The Defender that, during the 1990s, the U.S. “passed an inflection point” at which cases of autism became more common. Since then, cases have been “increasing exponentially,” he said.
“When is an appropriate time to conduct a large study on vaccines and autism?” he asked. “Apparently, two generations later.”
Biologist Christina Parks, Ph.D., told The Defender the CDC should examine its childhood vaccination schedule.
“The cumulative effect of giving multiple vaccines at once as well as over a short period of months has not been studied as a potential contributing factor to autism,” Parks said. “Vaccines have the potential to alter a child’s immune system in ways that are unexpected.”
She observed that studies conducted in 1970 and 1987 found autism rates of 0.7 and 3.3 children per 10,000, respectively.
“If autism were as prevalent then as it is now, we should have a large number of older autistic adults, which we do not,” Parks noted.
Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, which funds autism research, called the reported CDC study “just a waste of money at a time when critically needed autism research is being cut all across HHS.”
“Vaccines do not cause autism,” Singer told the Post. “Dozens and dozens of studies have been conducted looking at vaccines and autism and they all show the same result: no relationship.”
Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, also criticized the study.
“Devoting more research dollars to answer a question that is already known does not add to our knowledge about the safety of vaccines,” Kressly told the Post. “It does a disservice to individuals with autism and their families by diverting funding that is needed to learn more about autism and how we can strengthen supportive communities.”