Surprise: Trump’s Pick for CDC Chief Has Spread the Debunked Claim That Vaccines Can Cause Autism

As you’ve probably heard by now, a lot of people are deeply concerned about Donald Trump’s selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services on account of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views—which include the debunked idea that childhood vaccines can cause autism. They’re worried about the situation not only because Kennedy’s embrace of such a claim clearly shows him rejecting scientific evidence, but also because said vaccines are important in preventing children from contracting preventable diseases. Yet Kennedy is not the only Trump-nominated potential health official who has spent years spreading the idea that some vaccines can cause autism: Dave Weldon, Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has too.

The Washington Post reports that Weldon—a physician and former congressman whom anti-vaccine activists wanted to lead the CDC during Trump’s first term—has a “record of promoting the disproven link between vaccines and autism in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence attesting to the safety and efficacy of vaccines.” That record, the outlet notes, “raises concerns among some public health experts about his ability to run the CDC,” given the fact that, should he be confirmed, “Weldon could undermine confidence in the lifesaving shots at a time when infectious disease threats such as measles and whooping cough are on the rise.”

During a hearing in Congress in 2002, Weldon suggested the CDC was not being transparent about vaccine safety, saying: “Until we get a free and open dialogue within the scientific community, I don’t think, for one, I will ever be satisfied that there isn’t some data suggesting that some children may have serious side effects from some of these vaccines that is really going undetected, unnoticed, and they may actually cause autism.” Several years later, during an event at an autism treatment center, he said that as he began to “look into this subject” of autism, he “subsequently learned that there were many people in the research community saying the incidence was skyrocketing. Certainly my personal observation was that it appeared to be increasing.” (As the Post notes, “researchers attribute the rising prevalence of autism spectrum disorder to environmental and genetic factors as well as increased access to early diagnoses and interventions.”) According to Josh Sharfstein, a former Democratic staff member who worked on the House Government Reform Committee, Weldon was “absolutely and completely dismissive” of data disproving a link between vaccines and autism during his time in Congress. Weldon, Sharfstein told the Post, “appeared to have a closed mind on the issue.”

Not surprisingly, Weldon continued to promote the debunked connection between vaccines and autism after leaving Congress. Per the Post:

In 2013, he accepted an award for his “courage and vision” from AutismOne, an organization that promotes the discredited link between vaccines and autism. During that conference, Kennedy, in a keynote speech, likened vaccinating children to sending them to “Nazi death camps,” according to footage obtained by NBC News. AutismOne’s executive director declined to comment.

In 2016, Weldon repeated his dismissals of the science on vaccine safety in the film Vaxxed, by Andrew Wakefield, who ignited the modern anti-vaccine movement with his 1998 research linking the MMR vaccine to autism. An investigation by Britain’s General Medical Council, which regulates doctors, found Wakefield guilty of professional misconduct in 2010, saying he had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly,” and barred him from practicing medicine. The Lancet retracted his study. During a promotional tour for the movie, Wakefield touted Weldon as an ideal choice to lead the CDC during the first Trump administration, according to social media posts at the time. Wakefield did not respond to requests for comment.

And in 2019, Weldon repeated the false claim that “some children can get an autism spectrum disorder from a vaccine” while appearing on a TV show broadcast by the conservative Sinclair network.

In media interviews and private conversations, Weldon has reportedly expressed support for flu and COVID vaccines, which, given how low the bar is, does amount to something. “I give shots, I believe in vaccination,” he recently told The New York Times. He did not respond to requests for comment from the Post. A spokesperson for the Trump transition did not answer specific questions from the outlet, saying only that Weldon “shares President Trump’s unwavering conviction that the CDC must rise to the challenge of addressing our nation’s chronic health crisis by correcting past mistakes and prioritizing disease prevention…. Dr. Weldon will be an instrumental asset at the CDC to bring in new perspectives and address these concerns and challenges.”

Trump himself appears to have an interest in the false idea that vaccines can cause autism. During a phone call with Kennedy over the summer, in which he and the then third-party candidate discussed vaccine dosages for children, Trump said to him: “And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically; I’ve seen it too many times. And then you hear that it doesn’t have an impact, right? But you and I talked about that a long time ago.” During a press conference on Monday, Trump told reporters: “If you look at autism…30 years ago we had—I’ve heard numbers of, like, 1 in 200,000, 1 in 100,000. And now I’m hearing numbers of 1 in 100. So something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. And we’re gonna find out about it.”

Mary Holland, the CEO of Children’s Health Defense, applauded Weldon’s nomination to run the CDC earlier this month, saying that “while he was in Congress, [he] was the biggest helper at the time to the vaccine choice movement, to the people saying that vaccines are related to autism. He gets this completely.” At present, the CDC’s website states: “Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and [autism spectrum disorder]. To date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.” As director of the organization, Weldon could presumably influence—or decide on his own—whether that statement stays up.