For decades, the scientific community has worked to dissipate a completely discredited theory that vaccines cause autism and finally change their approach to find true potential causes.
But now, autism defenders say that if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirms as Secretary of Health and Human Services, could undermine years of progress in autism and non -drinks vaccines, while potentially diverts precious research dollars to a theory already discredited by hundreds of studies worldwide. They warn that he would exert a vast influence on who sits in the committees and directs the policy.
And some condemned Kennedy’s past rhetoric around disability, calling it stigmatizing and insulting.
Alison Singer, founder of the Autism Science Foundation, said he appreciates an exam on possible causes of autism, but focusing on vaccines could be dangerous for children.
“A new parents will be afraid, who can believe that vaccines could harm their children, potentially cause autism, and those parents could retain vaccines to save their children’s lives,” said Singer.
She said that the concern is that “the funds are spent reexamine of autism. “
Kennedy is scheduled to begin his Senate confirmation audiences on Wednesday. It is expected that in front of difficult questions about the erroneous information that has been promoted around public health over the years, including their statements about vaccines.
Kennedy, who founded a non -profit organization anti -vaccin and became one of the most prominent anti -caccinos activists in the world, a crusade of which he and associated groups have won millions of dollars, has prominently advanced a false statement that the Vaccines cause autism.
“I think autism comes from vaccines,” Kennedy told Fox News in 2023.
He continued saying that his position was misunderstood; He just wants to try science behind them. But it is Kennedy who rejects science in front of him, critics say.
“Are [also] Review the question about whether the earth is flat? This is established science, ”said representative Kim Schrier, D-Wash., Who previously worked as a pediatrician. “We already investigate vaccines. They do not cause autism, but let’s see elsewhere. And in other places it could be genetic. It could be the fact that we are now putting many more children under the umbrella of autism that would never have fallen under that umbrella. … It could be many things, but mentioning established science will only undermine vaccines, reduce immunization rates and put the entire population at risk. “
As HHS head, Kennedy would maintain a massive influence on the direction of health policy in the United States. It would be allocated to several agencies, including food and drug administration, centers for disease control and prevention and national health institutes. The election of President Donald Trump for the CDC, former representative David Weldon from Florida, is further promoting fears due to his own statements that doubt vaccine safety.
Collide with history
Kennedy often begins his argument that vaccines cause autism by turning a narrative that he did not know severely autistic children when he grew up, and now he knows nothing at his age. The increase in incidence concludes, it coincides with the prevalence of children’s vaccines.
“I bet you have never met anyone with full -fledged autism of your age,” Kennedy told Podcast Joe Rogan in 2023, throwing himself into a script he often uses in public appearances. “You know, football helmet on, without training, nonverbal. I mean, I have never met anyone like that at my age, but in the age of my children now, one in 34 children has autism. And half of them are full.
However, people with developmental disabilities were institutionalized for decades and, in Nazi Germany, worse, or otherwise, they remained out of the public eye, far from the integrated schools that many public systems try to achieve today.
The practice of institutionalizing children with disabilities was particularly frequent in postwar America and, often, in poor condition facilities.
An example of the gap between the public understanding of children with disabilities occurred in 1965, when Kennedy was about 11 years old. His father, then American senator in New York, denounced the treacherous conditions at the WillowBrook state school. In one of the most shameful exhibits in the history of the United States, it was discovered that disabled children lived in dirt, amid abuse and horrible general conditions, causing indignation throughout the country.
“I think we are all to blame and I think something has been done for a long time,” said Robert F. Kennedy Mr. at the time of WillowBrook.
Zoe Gross, director of Defense of the autistic self-life network, said that the diagnosis of autism was still evolving in the 60s. She supported WillowBrook as an example of how those with development and other types of disabilities were once hidden from society.
“If you watch the video of the conditions in which people were in Willowbrook, you will see the people that RFK Jr. describes as missing in their childhood. And you will see where they went, where they were forced to go, ”said Gross.
Ignoring science
Autism diagnoses have increased from approximately 1 in 150 children in 2000, 1 in 36 today. In that period, the definition of who is autistic expands considerably, capturing a wide period of skills. Now it covers from people who live independent lives to people who are not shocking or face serious medical challenges such as seizures.
The researchers point out a strong genetic link with complex disorder and have said that much more research is needed to determine what environmental factors, if anyone, play in it. Autism Speaks, one of the largest autism research organizations in the country, is a group that has requested more research on the role that factors such as exposure to chemicals and parents’ age can play.
“We know that autism is highly inheritable, so the most necessary research is on how genes and the environment interact. Genetic variations can lead to changes in underlying biology, which makes those individuals more resistant or susceptible to different exhibitions, ”said Singer, of the Foundation of Autism Sciences. These exhibitions could include toxic, such as insecticides or plasticizers; Pharmacological, such as medications; And possibly sociological, such as low socio -economic status or not receiving adequate medical care, Singer suggested.
“Genetic research is far ahead of environmental research mainly because we have no good ways to measure what we are exposed to the environment,” he added. “That needs to improve. We must also understand how environmental factors affect the structure of DNA and DNA expression. ”
In Kennedy’s conversation with Rogan in 2023, he said that there were others who ignored scientific studies in the field.
“And everyone will say: ‘Oh, there is no study that shows that autism and vaccines are connected.’ That’s just crazy. You know, they are people who are not looking at science,” Kennedy said.
Others say that an approach to vaccines as a cause of autism could divert the funds from the necessary research areas. Due to the last fright scare, some facets of autism research are behind, which include how to help autistic people who have complications to sleep, gastrointestinal problems, bath delays or seizures or if there is a link between the diagnoses of Autism and Parkinson’s development later in life, Gross said.
“Our concern is that it is already so difficult to direct financing to these little studied issues,” he said. “We do not want vaccines to become an absolute domain in financing and drown this very limited financing that these really critical questions are already receiving.”
The parents’ concerns about a draw between vaccines and autism shot after a 1998 study conducted by Andrew Wakefield considering a link between MMR and autism’s shot. It was later discovered that he was fraudulent and retracted years later. Among the problems, Wakefield did not reveal financial conflicts of interest in the study.
In the intermediate years, fears extended throughout the world of intellectual disabilities, not only causing vaccine doubts, but also research dollars towards possible links between vaccines and autism. The defenders say that he put the community in treatments based on research for autism and interventions.
Hundreds of studies in decades and worldwide have found that vaccines are safe.
These studies followed fluctuating theories about what in vaccines can be potentially insecure. The predominant hypothesis changed the blade-bubella (MMR) to the house in the conservative thimeries used in some vaccines to observe the volume of vaccines that children are administered at the same time. Each of the theories was proven and farewell in scientific studies, which included investigations that compared the incidence of autism among children vaccinated with those who had not received certain vaccines.
Despite these findings, Kennedy supports the theory that ingredients in vaccines or the battery of vaccination schedules have caused the increase.
In a Podcast 2023 interview, Kennedy was asked if he thought that any vaccine was effective. His answer: “I think that some of live virus vaccines are probably avoiding more problems than they are causing. Then he added: “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
A Kennedy spokesman did not respond to a request for comments.
Stigmatizing language
Trump himself suggested at the end of last year in “Meet The Press” of NBC News that when choosing Kennedy to take HHS, wanted him to look at the discredited link between vaccines and autism. Trump previously told Fox News, more than once, that he personally knew a family that “had a beautiful son” before receiving a “monstrous take” of vaccines and then “became very, very sick, now he is autistic” .
Among the concerns in the autism community is the type of language that both Trump and Kennedy use to describe the complex neurological condition is derogatory.
“He uses this belief that vaccines make autism propagate a very stigmatizing and negative image of autism, where he says, for example, someone has a vaccine and his ‘brain has left,'” Gross on Kennedy said. “And saying that his brain is gone, it means they are autistic.”
Gross, who is autistic, was referring to a 2015 Kennedy comment in which he compared vaccinating children with the holocaust. He later apologized for his comments.
“They get the shot, that night they have a 103 fever [degrees]They go to sleep, and three months later his brain is gone, ”said Kennedy then. “This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”
Gross called him “Fearmongering”, saying: “The idea behind making this link is that it is better to die of whore as a baby than to live as an autistic person.”
