The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is initiating expanded research into understanding autism and potential links between vaccines and autism, a source familiar with the CDC’s planning said.
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 picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead. The Senate confirmed him to the post in a 52-48 vote last month.
The possibility of a link between vaccines and autism has been repeatedly debunked by hundreds of scientific studies. But Kennedy made a profile for himself as an anti-vaccine crusader, criticizing the Covid-19 vaccine and claiming childhood immunizations are linked to autism. He also founded Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for HHS, said in a statement that the CDC is “delivering” on the “high quality research and transparency” Americans expect.
The CDC’s research plans were first reported by Reuters.
Studies can often take several years, at least. It is unclear what the methodology for such research would be, how it would be funded or when results could be released or published.
Roughly $419 million is spent on autism research in the U.S. each year.
“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,” Nixon said.
Speaking to Congress 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 it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36, think of that, so we’re going to find out what it is,” adding that there is “nobody better” than Kennedy to “figure out what’s going on.”
The World Health Organization estimates that over the past 50 years, global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives — the vast majority being infants.
The myth that childhood immunizations cause autism was first proposed 27 years ago by a British doctor who was later banned from practicing medicine in the United Kingdom.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine claims were a part of his independent presidential candidacy in 2024. He eventually dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, who adopted some of Kennedy’s points into a “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Incoming CDC director Dave Weldon and Kennedy go back at least two decades in their joint scrutiny of vaccines as a cause of autism.
In a since-retracted 2005 Rolling Stone piece falsely linking vaccines to neurological disorders, Kennedy cited Weldon, a then-congressman, writing: “CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because ‘an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?’”
The news comes during the worst measles outbreak in the U.S. in the past five years. The outbreak in Texas and New Mexico has surpassed 200 cases, and at least 23 people — most of whom are unvaccinated children — have been hospitalized. One 6-year-old died in Texas last week, and health officials suspect an additional measles-related death in an adult in New Mexico.
The majority of cases center around a county in Texas with one of the highest vaccination exemption rates in the state.
In an opinion piece published Sunday on Fox News, Kennedy called the decision to vaccinate “a personal one.” The HHS secretary did not direct the public to get the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, instead urging parents to consult with their own healthcare providers.
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