On Nov. 19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—a name that feels increasingly misleading, given Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s track record of sowing outbreaks of infectious diseases—quietly updated a webpage in order to suggest a link between vaccines and autism. To say it up top, this is patently false. Scientists have known for a long time that vaccines do not cause autism, there is no evidence to suggest that they do, and just in case you were wondering, there is also no new evidence to suggest that they do. If you would like to read more about this true fact, I recommend STAT News's explainer, "Here is how we know that vaccines do not cause autism."
Now that we are in agreement, let's move on. The CDC page, titled "Autism and Vaccines," now lists the following "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.
None of this is true. The first statement is a lie. The second statement is a lie by omission, in that there are no credible studies that support a link between vaccines and autism, in which case it is good that health authorities have debunked and dismissed the famous (since-retracted) study that did. And one can only imagine that whatever "comprehensive assessment" HHS undertakes on the topic will be equally shoddy science: experiments designed to prove a claim, not test one. The one report HHS has released on the subject claimed that Tylenol caused autism, a report so bombastic that even RFK Jr. had to walk it back.
Later down on the CDC webpage, the header "Vaccines do not cause autism" still stands. But it is tagged with an asterisk that explains the header was not taken down "due to an agreement with Bill Cassidy, the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website."
In February, it seemed unclear whether Republican Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy would support RFK Jr.'s nomination as health secretary, given that Cassidy is a doctor of medicine, and RFK Jr. is a denier of medicine. Cassidy, a gastroenterologist who supports vaccines, grilled RFK Jr. about the latter's vaccine denialism. But Cassidy ultimately voted to confirm, offering as explanation that RFK Jr. had essentially promised to maintain the nation's status quo on vaccines. The update to the CDC page would appear to violate Bobby's promise to Bill.
But Cassidy forgot one crucial thing: Lying is OK now. As long as you find yourself in a position of power, you can do it anytime you want. RFK Jr. first reneged on his promise to Cassidy when he fired the entire the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and replaced them with hand-picked replacements that included vaccine deniers and conspiracy theorists. In a hearing in September about his tenure as health secretary, RFK Jr. regurgitated a chumbucket of falsehoods, including that we don't know how many lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines, that antidepressants might play a role in school shootings, and that children have to get "between 69 and 92 vaccines" before turning 18 (it's closer to 30). Frankly there is not enough time in the world to debunk all the things that RFK Jr. has said; his ignorance and malice are among the world's few truly renewable resources.
Multiple outlets reached out to Cassidy for his comment on the change to the CDC website. Instead, the doctor decided to vaguepost on main, tweeting a cowardly few paragraphs in support of vaccines without naming RFK Jr. or mentioning the CDC. It feels like only courtesy that Cassidy is still referred to as a doctor, because he has abnegated his oath to "do no harm." Like with many other of RFK's actions, the claim that vaccines cause autism will lead, immediately, to deaths.
This time, the victims will be babies. Children who do not get vaccinated are more likely to die from preventable diseases. In the U.S. this year, two unvaccinated children have already died from the measles. The 2025 outbreak has seen the most cases since measles was eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, with 1,753 people infected this year according to the CDC, a website that I frankly am no longer sure I can trust as a reader, let alone cite as a source. Many career scientists remain at the CDC attempting to do good work amid the carnage—several anonymously told the Washington Post they had no knowledge of the changes to the webpage, and group chats are allegedly freaking out—but it is clear the agency's principles have begun to rot from the top down. As Demetre C. Daskalakis, the CDC's former vaccine chef who resigned in August, tweeted this week: "This is a public health emergency."
What is perhaps lost in all this miasma of deception around vaccines and autism is that autism is not a disease, and its appearance in the population is not an epidemic. RFK Jr.'s fixation on autism reeks of eugenics. He dehumanizes autistic people, dismisses their lives as not worth living, and desires to eliminate them from society. Kennedy has spewed such rank and hateful beliefs as "autism destroys families" and claimed that autistic people "never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted." We will all eventually become disabled, likely unable to use a toilet unassisted. I would hope that whenever that time comes, we will not be scorned for our condition.
If RFK Jr. were actually interested in "improving" society, he would remove himself as the health secretary, walk into the forest, and never emerge. Obviously he is not. He is interested in sexting, in eulogizing dead Kennedys on Twitter, in subjecting innocent lizards to one of the worst blunt rotations of all time. He is interested in continuing to take a wrecking ball to the pillars of this nation's public health, and leaving behind destruction that will not be easily fixed even with a new administration. The CDC website can be changed back, but the children RFK is killing aren't coming back to life.
