When Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Cabinet nomination was still pending on Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he wasn’t sure how to vote on his confirmation. The Louisianan came around, however, after he received some private assurances from the longtime conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist.
In remarks delivered on the Senate floor in early February, Cassidy — a physician prior to his political career — told his colleagues that if Kennedy was confirmed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.”
Take a wild guess what happened to the CDC website nine months later.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage that previously made the case that vaccines don’t cause autism now says they might. … The revised webpage says: ‘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.’
In related news, the claim “the Tooth Fairy does not actually take lost baby teeth from under pillows” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that magical beings are secretly thieving teeth in the dead of night.
All joking aside, a little critical thinking goes along way. There is no evidence connecting vaccines and autism. Kennedy and his allies have invested an enormous amount of time and energy trying to uncover proof to substantiate their meritless claims, and they’ve failed.
The CDC, under the direction of the nation’s unqualified health secretary, has changed the information it shares with the public to promote an idea that flunks Logic 101.
Demetre Daskalakis, who formerly led the agency’s center responsible for respiratory viruses and immunizations, told The Washington Post that the online revisions show that the “CDC cannot currently be trusted as a scientific voice.”
Quite right. The change to the website is important in its own right, but more important still is the systemic damage that Kennedy and his team are doing to federal agencies and public health resources.
In recent months, it’s become common to see reports that quote CDC insiders who refer to the agency in the past tense. The New York Times published a report in late August with a headline and subhead that immediately generated some attention: “Will the C.D.C. Survive? Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assault may have dealt lasting damage to the agency, experts fear, with harsh consequences for public health.”
A day later, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden appeared on MS NOW and told viewers, “I never thought I would see the day when you couldn’t trust what’s on the CDC website, but that day has come.”
That was soon followed by a New York Times op-ed co-authored by Frieden and several others who had held the same office. NBC News reported:








