The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study on the long-discredited connection between autism and vaccines, a move that advocates say will squander precious government resources.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed late last week that a study is in the works less than a month after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over the agency. He has spent years promoting a link between autism and vaccines and refused to disavow such views during his confirmation hearings.
“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,” said Andrew G. Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. “The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.”
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President Donald Trump has repeatedly taken issue with the rise in autism prevalence, saying that he’s “open to anything” and signaling that Kennedy would have wide latitude to investigate the causes of the developmental disorder.
“Not long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, 1 in 10,000 children have autism. One in 10,000. And now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong,” Trump told a joint session of Congress last week. “So we’re going to find out what it is.”
Autism prevalence has increased from 1 in 150 U.S. kids in 2000 to 1 in 36 currently, according to the CDC. Experts attribute the rise to improved awareness and identification.
Nixon, the HHS spokesman, did not respond to questions about how the study, which was first reported by Reuters, will be conducted, when it will launch or if it was requested by Kennedy. However, The Washington Post reported that the CDC plans to use data from its Vaccine Safety Datalink, a database that uses electronic health records to monitor vaccine safety.
National autism advocacy groups including Autism Speaks, the Autism Society of America, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Autism Science Foundation have all asserted that vaccines do not cause autism.
Revisiting this issue will divert resources that could be used to discover new things about autism and improve the lives of those with the developmental disability, advocates say.
“This is a waste of valuable resources at a time when critically-needed autism research is being cut all across Health and Human Services,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation. “Dozens and dozens of scientific studies show that vaccines do not cause autism. This question has been asked and answered; we must ask new questions to find the actual causes of autism. You can’t just discard the existing data because you disagree with it. That’s not science.”
In addition to concerns about funding, advocates are also worried that the CDC’s involvement in a study reexamining vaccines and autism will sow further doubt about vaccines.
“The worst part is that by funding this study, the CDC sends the message that the government believes vaccines might cause autism,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “This will undoubtedly contribute to vaccine hesitancy, which is already dangerously high, and speed the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, which are already circulating in the United States.”
