Many studies have shown vaccines don’t cause autism, study after study. But HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who used to be a left-wing Democrat, has appointed a discredited charlatan who has no medical degree to study whether vaccines cause autism. As a news story explains:
A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two. The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis…Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked. David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license….
Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences. They fear it will undermine the importance of the lifesaving inoculations..The government’s premier public health agency has stressed vaccination as the safest and most effective measure to control the spread of some contagious diseases, including the growing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.
“It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism, even though they don’t,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation….Jessica Steier, a public health researcher who leads the nonprofit Science Literacy Lab that scrutinizes research on high-profile health topics, said that the Geiers’ research is riddled with basic flaws and that the pair have “demonstrated patterns of an anti-vaccine agenda.” “This is a worst-case scenario for public health,” Steier said. “It’s a slap in the face to the decades of actual credible research we have.”…
Geier was identified [internally] as the person who “would be the one analyzing the data”….Information that the CDC has turned over to NIH [for Geier’s review] includes the underlying data from four studies on vaccines and autism published in the 2000s…None of the papers found any link.
Nor have more than two dozen other studies, including a decade-long study of a half-million children in Denmark published in 2019. It showed the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine does not increase the risk of autism, lending strong statistical evidence to what was already medical consensus.
It’s not clear how or why Geier, who is not a physician…was chosen.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed HHS Secretary in exchange for endorsing Trump in the 2024 election, even though Kennedy previously had a record of left-wing positions like supporting reparations.
As Center Square reports, Kennedy, a “lifelong Democrat, became an Independent during his presidential campaign and then endorsed Trump, helping propel Trump to victory.” After Kennedy endorsed Trump, Kennedy removed his name from the ballot in various states, and his supporters then voted mostly for Trump.
Back in 2019, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helped fuel a “deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa” and “claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children.” He did that by spreading “misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption.”
“Measles vaccination has saved 94 million lives globally since 1974. Of those, 92 million were children,” reports Our World in Data. Of the lives saved by vaccination, around 60% are saved by the measles vaccine. Globally, vaccination against measles has risen from under 20% in 2000 to more than 70% today.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long record of taking left-wing stances. Kennedy called for jailing “climate deniers” such as the Koch brothers, notes Reason Magazine. (The industrialist Charles Koch admitted that carbon dioxide was warming the Earth, but said it was “not certain” that “humans are the cause.” Progressives deemed this “climate denial,” and claimed that companies such as Koch Industries and Exxon had lied about the extent of climate change. But courts largely rejected these claims, such as when a New York Judge rejected securities fraud claims brought against Exxon by the New York Attorney General. “ExxonMobil’s public disclosures were not misleading,” the judge concluded).
Ironically, RFK, Jr. himself caused more air pollution, by getting New York to shut down a nuclear power plant, which resulted in higher electric bills, and more use of fossil fuels. A recent study found that nuclear power is better for the environment, because it produces less pollution and fewer “deaths per megawatt of energy produced” than alternative sources of energy.
Earlier, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for “issuing reparations to the black community, making him the most prominent 2024 candidate to favor the controversial policy,” reported the New York Post:
Kennedy — who ditched his Democratic primary challenge to Biden [in October 2023] — has spoken out in favor of issuing federal dollars to “rebuild black infrastructure” like banks and businesses, and as well as “direct redress payments or tax credits”….“These programs complement direct redress payments or tax credits to the descendants of the victims of Jim Crow,” the pledge continues. “RFK Jr. will find ways to offer this redress.”
No country has successfully pursued a policy of race-based reparations, which would cost trillions of dollars. The African nation of Zimbabwe pursued a policy of reparations. It wrecked its economy by doing so, resulting in hyperinflation and leaving even its black population worse off.
