It was a few weeks ago when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moved forward with plans to examine — or more to the point, re-examine — the nonexistent connection between vaccines and autism. Or put another way, the CDC said it would answer a question that’s already been answered.
Ordinarily, in a responsible administration, there would be no need to waste resources on such an endeavor, but the CDC is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is now led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist and longtime opponent of vaccines.
The development came just a few days after another conspiracy theorist, Donald Trump, delivered a presidential address to a joint session of Congress in which the Republican vowed to scrutinize the causes of autism. “We’re going to find out what it is and there’s nobody better than Bobby and all of the people that are working with you,” the president said. “You have the best to figure out what is going on. OK, Bobby, good luck. It’s a very important job.”
Of course, Kennedy is an attorney by trade, and he won’t oversee the research himself. Who will? The Washington Post reported:
A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two, according to current and former federal health officials. The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
It’s likely that most of the public is unfamiliar with Geier, but according to the Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Geier and his father have published papers “claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked.”
Just as notably, the Post added, Geier has also been disciplined by Maryland regulators “for practicing medicine without a license.”
The Trump administration could’ve chosen anyone to conduct this study. It settled on an unfortunate choice.
Jessica Steier, a public health researcher who leads the nonprofit Science Literacy Lab, told the Post, “This is a worst-case scenario for public health.” The reporting coincides with a new report from The Bulwark’s Jonathan Cohn, who obtained a March 25 memo from the National Institutes of Health that says that the agency will not prioritize research on why people are reluctant to take vaccines. During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings, his reality-based critics warned that developments like these would inevitably happen, given the then-nominee’s unambiguous record of radicalism on matters related to science, public health and medicine. But when push came to shove, 52 Republican senators voted to confirm him anyway. That an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable. The fact remains, however, that GOP senators were given an opportunity to protect Americans from this agenda — and they failed spectacularly.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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