Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says he will make an announcement this month highlighting the causes of autism. But based on his past statements, he has already made up his mind. If there were a causal relationship, one would expect that those countries with the highest vaccination rates would have the highest percentage of autism cases. Do they?
Kennedy has spent years challenging accepted medical thinking on vaccines, fluoride and many other topics. In 2023, for example, he went on Fox News and told host Jesse Watters, “I do believe that autism comes from vaccines.” And he told an audience in 2015, “They [children] get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103 [degrees], they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”
Well, no one can accuse Kennedy of understatement. He later apologized for equating childhood vaccinations with the Holocaust.
The vaccines-cause-autism story got its start in 1998 when Dr. Andrew Wakefield of the Royal Free Hospital in London published a paper in the British medical journal The Lancet. Of the 12 children he had studied who received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the parents of eight of them claimed their child had developed autism after vaccination. Even though The Lancet later retracted the article and rejected its conclusion after a significant backlash from the scientific community, others embraced the story. And it has garnered a small but vocal following, including Kennedy.
The secretary is correct when he claims that the number of U.S. autism cases has increased significantly. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2000, one child out of every 150 births was on the autism spectrum. By 2022 it was one in 31 births. But is that a result of widespread vaccinations, or is it a broader definition of and better detection of autism?
World Population Review separately tracks both vaccination and autism rates by country. The large majority of countries have 90 percent or more of their childhood populations vaccinated for diseases such as diphtheria, measles, polio, etc. There are exceptions, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South America and the Middle East.
But although the vaccination rates don’t vary much among most countries, the percentage of the population diagnosed with autism does. For example, China has a 97 percent vaccination rate but only 638 autism cases per 100,000 population. The U.S. has a 94 percent vaccination rate but 1,050 autism cases per 100,000. Brazil’s vaccination rate (90 percent) isn’t much lower than the U.S., but it has only 606 autism cases per 100,000.
Or take neighboring Argentina and Chile. Chile has a vaccination rate of 96 percent versus Argentina’s of only 66 percent. Yet Chile has 1,060 autism cases per 100,000 versus Argentina with 1,030. And most of Europe has vaccination rates similar to the U.S. but autism rates that are 30 percent to 40 percent lower.
Of course, several factors could affect the number of reported autism cases in any given country, including access to health care and just how proactively health care providers look for and recognize autism. Several autism experts argue that the increase in autism prevalence over time is a result of the United States doing a much better job looking for and identifying autism cases. But genetics and other factors may also play a role in the increase.
One of the concerns raised by vaccine critics is that thimerosal, a Mercury-based preservative used in vaccines for decades, was causing autism. Even though scientists studying vaccines could find no link between thimerosal and autism, vaccine makers stopped using it in children’s vaccines in 2001. So that can’t explain the current rise in cases, either.
Another point. If there appeared to be a connection between vaccines and autism, you would expect the autism advocacy organizations to speak out against vaccines. Yet it’s just the opposite. Autism Speaks, one of the leading autism advocacy organizations, writes, “The result of this research is clear: vaccines do not cause autism.” And the National Autism Center at the Mayo Institute announced last January, “Vaccinations are not responsible for autism or the increase in autism prevalence rates.”
Kennedy rebuffs critics who say he opposes vaccines by pointing out that all of his six children were vaccinated. But Kennedy’s involvement in the anti-vaccine movement started in 2005. His youngest son was born in 2001. In other words, most of his children pre-date his vaccine activism.
Kennedy has faced significant pushback from members of Congress and health care professionals since becoming secretary of Health and Human Services. And the public has noticed. His soon-to-be-released autism report may only make his problems worse.
Merrill Matthews is a co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.”
