‘It feels like deliberate gaslighting’: A Drexel autism expert discusses the CDC’s new website on vaccines and autism
Public health experts say that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine advocate, is risking lives by calling vaccines' safety into question.
On Nov. 19, a webpage at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was updated with a stunning reversal of the agency’s long-held — and scientifically backed — position on vaccines and autism.
Previously, the CDC has noted on its website that decades of research show no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism.
Now, the site reads: “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.”
A header on the webpage still reads “Vaccines do not cause autism.”
But the phrase is followed by an asterisk leading to another statement explaining the header remains “due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”
The chair is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), who made his confirmation vote for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contingent on that agreement.
The move was met with outrage from public health experts who say that Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine advocate, is risking lives by calling vaccines’ safety into question. The New York Times reported two days later that he had personally ordered the website changed.
Diana Robins, the director of the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University, which studies autism from a public health perspective, spoke with The Inquirer about the update and what it means for public health.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Question: Take us through the update on the CDC’s website about vaccines and autism.
Answer: The frightening thing, to me, is if a person who is not really familiar with the science reads this website, there is a lot of convincing-sounding language. It feels like deliberate gaslighting.
It’s using terms they’ve learned from scientists over the last several months — “gold-standard science” and “evidence-based claims” — and using them in directly inaccurate ways.
The very first key point at the top of the page 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.”
Part of what makes that so egregious is that scientists believe in the scientific process. Unfortunately, the federal administration is weaponizing the fact that scientists won’t come out and say it has been proven. A scientist will never say we have 100% ruled out all possibilities. Something we think we know could change tomorrow when we learn something new.
But there are dozens of studies over many, many years that fail to show a link between vaccines and autism. All the studies that are rigorous and methodologically sound fail to show a link between vaccines and autism. That is unequivocal.
Q: What’s the danger in changing the CDC’s language around vaccines?
A: Vaccines save lives. Vaccines are one of the frontline public health strategies to support health in the population. We’re already seeing what happens when vaccine compliance goes down, when there’s an erosion of the public confidence in vaccines.
There have been measles outbreaks in the last year in the United States. Some kids just get sick and they get better, but some kids have serious illnesses and occasionally die. And it’s not just measles. We’re vaccinated against a lot of life-threatening diseases.
The cost is a huge shift in public health, and the protective factor that vaccines give us against life-threatening illness.
If you told me that reading books past 10 p.m. might cause autism, I would say there’s probably not a lot of cost if you stop reading books at 9:59. But not vaccinating children? The costs are huge. Even one death that’s preventable is a tragedy.
And there will be a lot of preventable serious illness and death if parents don’t vaccinate their children.
Q: How does this affect the public’s view of federal health agencies?
A: I think it makes it very difficult for people to know what to trust. And there is already decreased trust in the medical community, scientific community, higher education broadly.
If pages like this are intermingled with legitimate pages, how will people know which ones are the accurate pages and which are the ones with gaslighting and anti-science? I think people will likely lose their faith in the CDC altogether, which is a terrible blow to the public health of the whole country. If we can’t trust our Centers for Disease Control, who can we trust?
Q: How can scientists communicate accurate medical information with the public?
A: One thing I think is slightly heartening in the face of this devastation is that professional societies and organizations that are medical or scientific are all aligned. There have been so many statements that came out within the first day of this, and they are fully aligned in agreement. The only differences are in which words they yell the loudest.
You can usually not get scientists to agree to anything in a day. That means a lot. It’s the responsibility of all the legitimate scientists and public health experts to try to combat that misinformation every which way we can.
[At the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute], we’re trying to do more outreach to the public. We actually developed some vaccine info sheets just a couple months ago that are posted on our website. We have a new website … that brings together all of the information.
Vaccines are one of our biggest public health successes. If we roll those back, we have stepped back decades in the health of our country. It’s that big. It’s that serious.