Donald Trump has said Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism – despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection.

In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, the US president-elect claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.

“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked him if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated – a position for which Kennedy has argued.

“If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100.”

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    You might think, “What’s the harm? They will waste some money and some time, but they won’t find a link because their premise is flawed. We know there isn’t a link between autism and vaccines, so they’re just going to spin their wheels, right?”

    Ask yourself, do you think Trump and RFK Jr would ever admit they were wrong? That they didn’t find the evidence to support their theories? Trump used a sharpie to change a hurricane map because he mistakenly included the wrong state. They will find a link between vaccines and autism. A link we already know doesn’t exist. A link that one doctor fabricated and then almost immediately was debunked fifty years ago. And these jackasses are going to fabricate some more fake evidence to send the crazies further off the cliff.

      • Bone@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I can’t believe we went through covid to have officials write up bullshit like this. More false agendas.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Yeah it’s pretty easy to do really bad science and get whatever result you want. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      People who got vaccines sometimes got autism. People without vaccines sometimes get autism.

      RFK: We can conclusively say that vaccines cause autism since people who’ve had vaccines have developed autism!

      • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.social
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        2 days ago

        You don’t “get” autism like it’s a cold, you are autistic and sometimes you get diagnosed, and sometimes you don’t. We as a society have more educated people in places like schools to help identify kids way more than when Trump was having his dad pay for his dumbass to make it through school. It’s just like his COVID solution of, if you don’t test the numbers go down.

        And why does nobody in the media push back on these jackasses to show their work? You make claims about millions of people you better have receipts, but of course these two intellectually-challenged white guys with money just get their every word quoted and published without any push back.