‘Something is wrong’: Trump implies that autism and vaccines could be connected despite debunked myths

He’s at it again, folks. Trump, a man with no medical qualifications, is adding his unwanted two cents to the never-ceasing conversation that surrounds vaccination and autism. In a recent interview, Trump implied the connection between the two despite the tired claim having been debunked years ago.

The argument that vaccinations are somehow responsible for autism started more than two decades ago and remains pervasive to date. It was former British doctor Andrew Wakefield who falsely linked the MMR vaccine to autism. In 1998, Wakefield published his “findings” in the well-regarded medical journal The Lancet. Though the article was later retracted, the damage was done. It took decades for immunization rates to rise after the article scared parents away from vaccinating their children. In the meantime, the UK experienced more than 12,000 cases of measles, many of which led to hospitalization and a small number of deaths.

Trump’s pick for US Health Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is another such individual to create fearmongering over vaccines. Though he has stated he isn’t anti-vaccine, he has continued the trend of correlating an increase in vaccinations with an increase in autism. This has been widely debunked by the medical and scientific community at large. Trump now appears to be parroting his pick for Health Secretary, not surprising for a man who has built his platform by pushing conspiracy theories.

The president-in-waiting discussed the topic in his first interview since his election win. In the interview, he said, “When you look at some of the problems – when you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country – somethings wrong.” When interviewer Kristen Welker, pushed on whether Trump was referring to autism, he responded, “If you take a look at autism, if you go back 25 years, autism was almost non-existent. It was one out of 100,000 and now its close to one out of 100. I mean what’s happening?”

Why have autism rates risen?

While it’s true that rates of risen, there is no evidence that vaccines are the cause. In fact, according to Stephen M. Kanne, PhD, a clinical psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian, professor of psychology, and director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at Weill Cornell Medical College, the reason the rates are increasing is due to increased awareness and access to screening. It isn’t so much that more people have autism as it is that we are simply better at diagnosing it today than we were 20 years ago.

While autism isn’t deadly, not vaccinating your children could be. Of course, all vaccinations come with a certain amount of risk. There are instances – extremely rare instances – of allergic responses to certain vaccines, just as there are with other medical interventions such as undergoing surgery. But the risk of not vaccinating your children is much higher. In 2018, 5.3 million children under the age of five globally died from preventable diseases. These deaths occurred in low to middle income countries where access to vaccination is difficult. Vaccinations have proved the most succesful in preventing these deaths.

For Trump and those loyal to him to be creating distrust over vaccinations is extremely irresponsible and downright dangerous.