President-elect Donald Trump announced a bombshell on Sunday involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump said his nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary will investigate, once and for all, the possible links between vaccines and autism, reviving a longtime scientific controversy.
Trump said they will look for the definitive answer in his new administration.
“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.” “If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism. Now you have it.”
Trump cited rising autism rates, though his figures weren’t exact. CDC data shows diagnoses increased from 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36 in 2020, not the “1 in 100,000” he initially claimed.
Kennedy, known for skepticism over certain vaccines, has previously said it is possible vaccines can cause autism.
“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he told Fox News in 2023, calling for more rigorous vaccine testing. “Vaccines are exempt from pre-licensing control trials, so there’s no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products.”
Experts have long strongly disputed these claims, while critics have called for a through investigation of the claims.
The World Health Organization has definitively ruled out any connection between autism and certain childhood vaccines, including the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. Many scientists attribute rising diagnoses to improved screening methods and cite multiple factors including genetics, environment, and pregnancy conditions.
Trump moderated his position through the interview, expressing support for certain vaccines while questioning the longterm safety of others.
“I’m not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing,” he said. “If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me.”
The president-elect suggested Kennedy’s investigation will consider other factors, and that he wants definitive answers.
“I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things,” the president-elect said.
Trump assured that Kennedy would not “reinvent the wheel totally” at HHS, despite giving him latitude to “go wild” on health issues.
“He’s not going to upset any system,” Trump said.