The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has quietly rewritten its “Autism and Vaccines” page to say that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is “not an evidence-based claim” because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism, and to suggest that health authorities have “ignored” studies supporting a link. The change reverses years of CDC language summarizing research that found no link between vaccines and autism and closely tracks arguments Kennedy has made for decades. Reporting from multiple outlets indicates that key CDC vaccine-safety staff were not consulted, and outside experts describe the new wording as scientifically wrong and politically driven.
CDC estimates that around 90% of this year’s measles cases are in people who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated, and most infections are linked to clustered outbreaks in undervaccinated communities, including a Southwest outbreak that began in West Texas and spread into neighboring states. Federal and independent trackers report roughly 1,750 confirmed measles cases across at least 40 states, with about 12% of patients hospitalized and three deaths so far. Health officials warn that if transmission continues into early 2026, the United States could lose its measles “elimination” status for the first time in a quarter century.
Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, measles was almost a childhood rite of passage in the United States: an estimated 3–4 million infections a year led to roughly 48,000 hospitalizations, about 1,000 cases of brain inflammation and around 400–500 deaths annually, mostly among children. That works out to roughly one to three deaths per 1,000 cases in a typical U.S. setting and higher fatality rates in poorer countries. Today’s outbreaks are smaller only because the virus is trying to burn through a population where most people are still protected by the measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) shot, which is about 97% effective after two doses.
Since the 1970s, childhood vaccination campaigns around the world are estimated to have prevented roughly 154 million deaths, most of them young children. Lined up head-to-toe around the equator, that chain of lives saved would wrap around the planet more than six times. Over roughly the same era in the United States, routine childhood vaccines for children born between 1994 and 2023 alone are projected to prevent about 508 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths, while avoiding roughly $540 billion in direct medical costs and $2.7 trillion in broader societal costs. On a back-of-the-envelope basis, that is on the order of $8,000 in net health-system savings per American alive today — roughly $20,000 per U.S. household — from just the past three decades of childhood immunization.
Against that backdrop, the new CDC wording does not reflect new science. News coverage and expert statements agree that no major peer-reviewed study has emerged to weaken the existing consensus that vaccines do not cause autism. Instead, the update was pushed through over internal objections and outside scientific critique, and it leans on the same small, low-quality, often debunked papers that anti-vaccine activists have been citing for years. At the same time, the administration is funding a new multi-million-dollar autism–vaccine study and exploring whether to classify autism-like symptoms as vaccine injuries — moves critics say risk laundering a long-running conspiracy theory through official channels rather than accurately summarizing the existing evidence.
Why it matters: The Facts, Jack is committed to factual, evidenced-based analysis. A Trump–Kennedy health team is using the government’s most trusted disease agency to cast doubt on vaccines witout citing a new scientific, peer-reviewed study. At the exact moment, a vaccine-preventable disease is resurging. The numbers point in the opposite direction: hundreds of measles hospitalizations in a single year, more than a million American deaths and 150-plus million global deaths prevented by vaccines, and trillions of dollars in averted health-care costs. The core question for coverage is whether outlets frame this as a legitimate “debate” about scientific uncertainty — or as political interference that misrepresents settled evidence and puts real people at risk.
Claim: “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.”
Origin: Updated CDC “Autism and Vaccines” webpage under Trump–RFK Jr. HHS leadership.
Verdict: ❌ False
Rationale: Dozens of large, well-designed studies involving millions of children have tested for links between vaccines (including MMR and thimerosal-containing vaccines) and autism and consistently found no increased risk. Reviews by bodies such as the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, CDC and WHO all conclude that vaccines do not cause autism. Saying the “vaccines do not cause autism” statement lacks an evidence base reverses reality: the evidence overwhelmingly supports that conclusion, while alleged “pro-link” studies are few, methodologically weak or retracted.
Claim: The CDC changed its autism–vaccine language because of new scientific studies suggesting a link.
Origin: Implicit framing from some administration allies and commentators defending the update.
Verdict: ❌ False
Rationale: News reports and expert statements point to political direction, not new data. No major peer-reviewed study has been identified that would justify revising the CDC’s prior conclusion. Coverage indicates that career scientists responsible for vaccine safety were not central to the process and that the page cites no fresh, high-quality evidence. The change follows RFK Jr.’s appointment and pressure from vaccine-skeptical groups, not a scientific breakthrough.
Claim: Measles is usually mild and safer than the measles vaccine, so concerns about a measles “surge” are overblown.
Origin: Long-running talking point in anti-vaccine circles and social-media commentary around the 2025 outbreaks.
Verdict: ❌ False
Rationale: Before vaccination, the U.S. saw roughly 3–4 million measles infections a year, leading to about 48,000 hospitalizations, around 1,000 cases of encephalitis and roughly 400–500 deaths annually. Globally, measles remains a leading cause of vaccine-preventable child death. Modern outbreaks in undervaccinated U.S. communities have produced high hospitalization rates and renewed deaths, while the MMR vaccine is highly effective and serious adverse events are extremely rare by comparison.
Claim: Most of the recent U.S. measles cases are in vaccinated people, proving vaccines don’t work.
Origin: Misleading social-media posts about 2025 outbreak data.
Verdict: ❌ False
Rationale: CDC data and independent reporting indicate that the vast majority of 2025 U.S. measles cases — on the order of 90% — occur in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, often clustered in communities with low MMR coverage. Outbreaks are occurring where coverage has fallen below the ~95% threshold needed for herd protection, not among fully vaccinated populations.
Claim: Routine childhood vaccination imposes an unsustainable cost burden on families and the health-care system.
Origin: Arguments from some small-government and anti-mandate commentators opposed to federal vaccine programs.
Verdict: ⚠️ Misleading
Rationale: Vaccines do have upfront costs, but CDC economic analyses find that infant and childhood vaccination for U.S. birth cohorts from 1994–2023 prevents hundreds of millions of illnesses and more than a million deaths, while saving an estimated $540 billion in direct medical costs and .7 trillion in broader societal costs. Globally, about 154 million deaths have been averted by vaccines since the mid-1970s. Framing vaccines as a “cost burden” omits the far larger and longer-running costs of treating vaccine-preventable disease.
Rationale: Multiple independent investigations and large datasets — including the Vaccine Safety Datalink and studies in several countries — show no causal link between vaccines and autism. The original fraudulent paper that popularized the claim has been retracted, and alleged “whistleblower” accounts have not been substantiated by independent evidence or replicated analyses. The new page reflects political direction and Kennedy’s long-standing views, not hidden data finally coming to light.
Source: Fringe social-media posts and commentary on conspiracy-oriented sites.
Verdict: ❌ False
Rationale: Measles cases are documented by state health departments, laboratories and CDC surveillance systems, sometimes with genomic sequencing linking clusters across states. Independent outlets have verified hospitalizations and deaths, especially in undervaccinated areas of Texas and other states. There is no credible evidence of fabricated cases; if anything, experts worry that surveillance misses some infections, meaning the true burden is higher, not lower.
Source: Anti-vaccine activists and commentary from groups such as Children’s Health Defense.
Verdict: ❓ Unsupported
Rationale: Major health organizations around the world — including WHO, CDC, independent academic groups and medical societies — have repeatedly reviewed the evidence and reached the same conclusion: vaccines do not cause autism. Claiming a coordinated “cover-up” would require a covert conspiracy spanning thousands of scientists and regulators across dozens of countries over decades, with no credible leaked documentation. The new CDC language runs against that accumulated evidence rather than exposing it.
Baseline (prior statement): For years, CDC vaccine-safety pages told the public that “studies have shown there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder,” reflecting a broad scientific consensus that vaccines do not cause autism. RFK Jr. also told senators he would “follow the science” and respect evidence-based vaccine policy if confirmed as health secretary.
Follow-up (current case): Under Trump and RFK Jr., the CDC revised its site to say “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,” and to assert that health authorities have “ignored” studies supporting a link — and senior scientists say they were sidelined and no new data were cited.
Assessment: Severity 4 — The current messaging directly undercuts the agency’s long-standing evidence summary and RFK Jr.’s pledge to adhere to mainstream science, and it does so on a foundational safety question while measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases are actively resurging.
| Outlet | Bar | Score |
|---|
| Outlet | Spin | Factual integrity | Strategic silence | Media distortion |
|---|
Note: Allegations listed above reflect claims made in official statements, media coverage and advocacy materials and have not been adjudicated in court. Descriptions of scientific findings summarize peer-reviewed research and major health-agency reviews.