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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made an unprecedented change to its website — reversing messaging that debunked any links between vaccines and autism.
The CDC site now says that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” It has also removed scientific reviews of vaccines from its website.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said his sources at the CDC tell him the new directives come from vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Health and Human Services department. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kennedy’s role in the decision.
“What Secretary Kennedy has done is an attempt to basically reduce the use of vaccines, if not eliminate in many cases,” said Osterholm, who also directs the Vaccine Integrity Project. “He does that by creating doubt in the minds of the public.”
Osterholm said there is no link to autism and vaccines and that there have been many well-done studies over the years and in multiple countries that prove this conclusively.
But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told MPR News that there’s still more investigation to be done.
“Studies to date have not definitively ruled out potential associations,” said Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the Health and Human Services department in an email. “Some research suggesting possible biologic mechanisms has been ignored or dismissed by public health agencies, and HHS is committed to finding a definitive answer.”
Osterholm said he disagrees with this argument. He says he’s frustrated with HHS’s logic that they haven’t studied every vaccine. He noted the agency has already studied the only vaccines where there was even a suggestion of a possible autism link — the MMR vaccine to protect against measles, mumps, and rubella, and the Hepatitis B vaccine.
Osterholm said those studies concluded there was no link and does not see it as necessary to study every other vaccine.
“[We] might as well add in milk and chocolate and any number of things, and say we haven't studied those either,” Osterholm said. “And the reason that's important is because there are no other signals. We've seen no evidence of any other activity of any other vaccine suggesting that autism is at increased risk.”
Osterholm compared the logic to linking eating ice cream and swimming in the ocean. Even though both happen more in the summer, it doesn’t mean that eating ice cream causes shark attacks.
Osterholm said he’s worried about the public losing faith in vaccines.
“It will mean kids will not get vaccinated,” Osterholm said. “We'll see increases in these serious, life threatening infectious diseases, and it's all going to come back to the doubt created by a single individual.”
Although the CDC’s updated guidance is a stunning reversal, Osterholm said he wasn’t surprised. He predicted last year that Kennedy would take this approach if elected Secretary.
Under Kennedy’s leadership, Osterholm said he no longer trusts what comes out of the CDC, which has undergone a wave of layoffs and high-profile departures. CIDRAP News, a nonprofit newsroom affiliated with the university’s infectious disease research center, found that many doctors and public health experts share this view.
“And that's unfortunate because there are still people working there who are highly trained, competent professionals, who themselves do not agree with the positions Secretary Kennedy has put forward — those people you can trust,” Osterholm said.
Osterholm said CDC directives do not appear to be coming from people trained in public health but from individuals in the Trump administration.
“Those are the ones that are making these statements,” he said.
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