The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its information on the potential link between autism and vaccines, no longer ruling out the possibility of causation.
“We (the Department of Health and Human Services) are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard told The Daily Signal.
On Wednesday, the CDC updated its page titled “Autism and Vaccines.” The website now includes three key points:
- The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
- Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.
- HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.
The Department of Health and Human Services, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., oversees the CDC. Kennedy, who joined President Donald Trump to lead the Make America Healthy Again movement, is widely known for questioning the vaccine schedule.
“News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety,” Kennedy said in January during his opening statement before the Senate Finance Committee.
“Secretary Kennedy has launched a comprehensive review of autism’s causes, including investigations into environmental and biologic factors, with an emphasis on transparency, reproducibility, and gold-standard science,” said Hilliard. “The CDC’s site updates are part of that broader effort to ensure all public-facing information reflects ongoing scientific inquiry.”
Jay Richards, director and senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, explained the change in comments to The Daily Signal.
“For years, the CDC has misrepresented what is known, and not known, about the connection between an ever-expanding childhood vaccine schedule and the massive surge in autism,” Richards told The Daily Signal. “In reality, public health agencies, including the CDC, have generally avoided conducting studies that could definitively answer that question. With these changes, the CDC has finally corrected this error.”
“The CDC should not be in the business of preventing vaccine hesitancy,” he added. “It should be in the business of discovering and reporting the truth, no matter how inconvenient. I’m hopeful that these official language changes at the CDC website will be followed by a serious effort at both the CDC and HHS more broadly to follow the evidence on the autism question wherever it leads.”
