CDC eyes vaccines, autism study amid measles outbreak, report says. What to know
Decades of scientific evidence haven’t found a link between autism and vaccines, but that doesn’t appear to stop the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from reportedly planning to study the issue.
The CDC plans to study potential connections between autism and vaccines, Reuters reported Friday. While it’s unclear whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who presides over U.S. health agencies including the CDC, is involved in the large study, Kennedy has long promoted anti-vaccine views and debunked conspiracy theories. Paste BN has reached out to the CDC for comment.
The reported plans come during the largest measles outbreak in years, including two deaths among unvaccinated people in New Mexico and Texas. Kennedy has downplayed the outbreak, even miscounting deaths, and has suggested remedies, such as vitamin A, to prevent measles that experts advise against. Instead, officials and experts have stressed the importance of vaccines, which are safe and highly effective, to stop the spread of the highly contagious disease.
The outbreak has spread in under-vaccinated communities where people have falsely been told the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines are dangerous. The MMR vaccine, with two complete doses, provides 97% protection against measles and is even 93% effective with just one dose. Vaccines had been credited with the U.S. eliminating measles in 2000.
Autism diagnoses in the U.S. have increased significantly since 2000, intensifying public concern. Many researchers attribute the rise in diagnoses to more widespread screening and the inclusion of a broader range of behaviors to describe the condition. However, some prominent public figures have blamed vaccines, with little evidence to show.
Kennedy has long sowed doubt over the safety of the measles vaccine, despite efforts during his confirmation hearings to lead the Department of Health and Human Services to say he's not against vaccines.
Public health experts and scientists had long sounded alarms on his nomination. In a letter, 77 Nobel laureates said Kennedy would "put the public’s health in jeopardy.”
"His anti-vaccine stances are "dangerous," Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has looked at conspiracies around vaccines and autism, previously told Paste BN. “What diseases would he like to come back?”
The reported study by the CDC further raises concerns on his tenure.
What have Kennedy, Trump said recently on vaccines, autism?
President Donald Trump, before taking office, told Time magazine that he and Kennedy would have a “big discussion” around vaccines, citing the autism rate.
In a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Trump said Kennedy would look at rising autism rates. The same day, Kennedy appeared on Fox News, saying federal reporting systems for vaccine injuries are insufficient, although adverse reactions are reportable and searchable by the HHS.
“The CDC, in the past, has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines,” Kennedy said. “We are going to do that now.”
What do we know about link between autism and vaccines?
With several vaccines targeting several illnesses, it’s unclear which vaccines Kennedy plans to target. A spokesperson for the CDC didn't immediately respond to Paste BN's request for comment.
The MMR vaccine has been the subject of decades of debunked conspiracy theories about links to autism. These theories trace back to a discredited and retracted 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, a disbarred British physician.
President Donald Trump met with Wakefield before his first election win in 2016, and Wakefield attended one of Trump’s inaugural balls in 2017. Wakefield has also frequently appeared with Kennedy, as well as Trump’s pick to lead the CDC, Dr. David Weldon, a former congressman from Florida.
The Wakefield paper looked at just 12 children in the U.K. with developmental delays. The study said eight children who received the common measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine developed behavioral symptoms consistent with autism within two weeks of vaccination.
The study was deeply flawed, according to scientific research standards. Nearly all of Wakefield's dozen co-authors later removed their names from the paper.
Much larger studies published in 1999, 2002 and 2019, among others ‒ which included hundreds of thousands of children, some of whom received the MMR vaccine and some of whom didn't ‒ found no association between vaccines and developing autism.
How do we ensure vaccine safety?
Although every medical intervention can have negative effects, vaccines undergo extensive safety testing precisely because they are given to healthy people.
“There’s probably no therapeutic medication that undergoes more safety testing than vaccines,” Dr. Matthew Boulton, professor of epidemiology and internal medicine at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, previously told Paste BN.
If a person has a bad reaction to a vaccine, federal officials encourage reporting to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is part of HHS.
What’s behind rising autism rates?
Autism spectrum disorder is defined by neurological and developmental effects for how people communicate, interact with others, learn and behave. Some people may show milder symptoms of autism, while others might not be able to communicate at all. Symptoms generally appear earlier in a child’s life.
Autism rates have increased dramatically in recent decades. About 1 in 36 children born in 2012 is estimated to have an autism spectrum disorder, up from 1 in 150 born in 1992, according to the CDC.
The lack of an explanation for these skyrocketing increases has fed a variety of theories, including a possible link to childhood vaccines, though there has never been definitive research proving such a connection.
One possible cause is increases in greater awareness to identify autism, including in children of color. Around 100 genes have been associated with autism; if an identical twin has autism, the other twin has about an 80% likelihood of also having autism, which more strongly suggests genetic links.
Contributing: Reuters; Clare Mulroy, Leora Arnowitz, Mary Walrath-Holdridge and Karen Weintraub, Paste BN