The centers for disease control and prevention are initiating an expanded investigation in the understanding of autism and the possible links between vaccines and autism, said a source familiar with the planning of CDC.
The CDC is one of the agencies that operates under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that President Donald Trump elected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead. The Senate confirmed it to the post in a 52-48 vote last month.
The possibility of a link between vaccines and autism has been repeatedly discredited by hundreds of scientific studies. But Kennedy made a profile for himself as a crusader against the vaccine, criticizing the COVID-19 vaccine and affirm that children’s immunizations are linked to autism. He also founded Children’s Health Defense, an anti -cacuna group.
Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesman, said in a statement that CDCs are “delivering” on the “high quality research and transparency” that Americans expect.
The CDC research plans were first informed by Reuters.
Studies can often have been at least for several years. It is not clear what the methodology for such research would be, how it would be financed or when the results could be published or published.
Approximately $ 419 million are spent in autism investigation in the US.
“As President Trump said in his joint speech to Congress, the Autism rate in American children has shot himself. The CDCs will not leave stone without moving in their mission to discover what is happening exactly, ”said Nixon.
Speaking to Congress on Tuesday, Trump said: “As an example, not long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, 1 in 10,000 children had autism. One in 10,000, and now is 1 in 36. There is something wrong. One in 36, think about that, so we will discover what it is, “and added that there is” no one better “than Kennedy to” discover what is happening. “
The World Health Organization estimates that in the last 50 years, global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives, being the vast majority babies.
The myth that childhood immunizations cause the autism proposed for the first time 27 years ago by a British doctor who was later forbidden to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.
Kennedy’s anti -cacamia statements were part of his independent presidential candidacy in 2024. He finally left the race and backed Trump, who adopted some of Kennedy’s points in a “Make America Healy Again” movement.
The incoming director of the CDC, Dave Weldon and Kennedy, date back at least two decades in their joint vaccine scrutiny as a cause of autism.
In a 2005 wavy piece of stone from the retracting one that falsely links vaccines with neurological disorders, Kennedy quoted Weldon, a then congressman, writing: “CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for truth, Weldon told me, because” an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies did not damage thousands of children. Who would want to get to that conclusion about themselves? “
The news comes during the worst measles outbreak in the United States in the last five years. The outbreak in Texas and New Mexico has exceeded 200 cases, and at least 23 people, most of whom are undesidated children, have been hospitalized. A 6 -year -old boy died in Texas last week, and health officials suspect an additional death related to measles in an adult in New Mexico.
Most cases focus on a Texas County with one of the highest state vaccination exemption rates.
In an opinion article published on Sunday in Fox News, Kennedy called the decision to vaccinate “one personal.” The HHS Secretary did not order the public to obtain the measles-ba-rubella vaccine, but urges parents to consult with their own medical care providers.
