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Tag: Vaccines

  • Pfizer’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Works Great, but RFK Jr. Might Ruin It for Everyone

    Next-generation vaccines could make the flu season less of a snot-filled nightmare—if they ever reach the public, that is. Trial data out this week shows that Pfizer’s mRNA-based flu vaccine performed markedly better than a traditional shot.

    On Wednesday, researchers published the results of a Phase III trial on the vaccine, funded by Pfizer, in the New England Journal of Medicine. The experimental vaccine was significantly more effective at preventing flu than a standard vaccine, the researchers found. The vaccine appears to cause slightly more side effects than others, but there’s a bigger concern: It’s uncertain whether it will be approved in the U.S., given the government’s current skepticism and fearmongering around mRNA vaccine technology.

    Better but with a catch

    The trial involved more than 18,000 healthy adult volunteers in the U.S., South Africa, and the Philippines. It took place over the course of the 2022 to 2023 flu season. People were randomly assigned to receive a single dose of the experimental vaccine, dubbed modRNA, or Fluzone, a widely used inactivated flu vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur. Both vaccines covered the four most common types of flu predicted to be circulating that season: two influenza A viruses and two influenza B viruses.

    There were noticeably fewer confirmed cases of influenza in the modRNA group compared to the control vaccine group (57 vs 87), the study showed. Overall, the modRNA vaccine was 34.5% more effective at preventing flu-like illness. The experimental vaccine also appeared to generate a higher antibody response to the influenza A strains and a similar response to the influenza B strains (nearly every confirmed flu case in the study was caused by influenza A).

    “This randomized trial showed that the modRNA vaccine provided both similar and improved prevention of a first episode of laboratory-confirmed influenza in adults between the ages of 18 and 64 years,” the study researchers wrote.

    That added protection may come with some tradeoffs, however. People given modRNA reported more local reactions (70.1% vs. 43.1%) after their shot, such as injection site pain. They were also more likely to report systematic adverse events in general, such as fever (5.6% vs 1.7%).

    This finding makes sense, since a vaccine’s adverse events are often linked to the immune response it generates. So a stronger immune response tends to cause more side effects. But while adverse events were more common in those who took modRNA, these events were still usually mild or moderate in severity. In the end, the study researchers concluded that the adverse event profiles of the two vaccines were similar.

    The RFK Jr. wrinkle

    All that said, the most serious hurdle to modRNA’s approval isn’t its potential side effects.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and his allies have systemically undermined vaccines during the second Trump administration. Just this week, for instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its website to boost the debunked myth that they cause autism. But as much as Kennedy and his buddies may mistrust vaccines in general, they have an especially strong hatred for mRNA vaccines, the newest type of vaccine that first saw wide use during the covid-19 pandemic.

    RFK Jr. has (wrongly) stated that the mRNA covid-19 shots developed by Pfizer and Moderna were the “deadliest” vaccines ever created, for instance. Anti-vaccination advocates have also falsely claimed that mRNA vaccines are gene therapies, that they make people magnetic, and that they’re causing an explosion in cases of “turbo cancer.”

    These unsupported fears of mRNA vaccines have had real-world consequences. In May, Moderna delayed the approval application for its combination flu/covid-19 vaccine (which also seemed to show greater protection against flu) after the FDA asked for more data. In August, RFK Jr. also pulled $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine research and development.

    Contrary to claims from the anti-vaccination movement that mRNA vaccines are worse or more dangerous than other vaccines, this technology could actually strengthen our defenses against seasonal flu, and not just in terms of improved effectiveness. Since these vaccines typically take less time to tweak and produce than older types of vaccines, countries could wait longer to select the strains predicted to circulate during the season. That shortened lag could then prevent unexpected strains from causing a mismatch with the vaccine (a disastrous situation that’s now happening this winter).

    Moderna has said that it will seek approval for its stand-alone flu shot next year. And given these latest results, Pfizer will undoubtedly apply for approval of its modRNA vaccine, too. Typically, both vaccines would seem to have an excellent chance of approval. But nothing is typical these days.

    Ed Cara

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  • CDC website changed to include false claims that link autism and vaccines

    (CNN) — Scientific information on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website was replaced Wednesday with anti-vaccine talking points that don’t rule out a link between vaccines and autism, despite an abundance of evidence that there’s no connection.

    Bullet points on the top of the page now state that “vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim” because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.

    The language is a common tactic used to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines, said Alison Singer, president and co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation.

    “You can’t do a scientific study to show that something does not cause something else,” she said Thursday.

    “All we can do in the scientific community is point to the preponderance of the evidence, the number of studies, the fact that the studies are so conclusive,” Singer said. “These studies all agree. They’re very clear, and it’s time to move on.”

    The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that vaccines do not cause autism, Singer said.

    “No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines. This includes vaccine ingredients as well as the body’s response to vaccines,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement Thursday.

    Dr. Paul Offit agrees. In a post on Substack on Thursday, Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said scientific studies can “never prove never.”

    “If RFK Jr. wanted to be honest with the American public, he would make it clear on the CDC’s website that chicken nuggets also might cause autism, which has never been and will never be disproven,” Offit wrote.

    HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said Thursday, “We are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science.”

    However, Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on an episode of his “Chasing Life” podcast that he doesn’t think vaccines cause autism.

    “I think there’s no medicine that’s 1,000% safe,” Makary said. “And I think we have to remember that with everything. I think the absolutism around some of this stuff creates mistrust. And when we say they’re 1,000% safe and it’s impossible for there to be a single complication of a vaccine, that’s the kind of rhetoric, I think, that doesn’t resonate well. So I think we have be humble and take a very honest approach.”

    Studies find no relationship

    Other bullets on the updated CDC page say studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism have been ignored by health authorities. This too is not true: Studies showing a connection between vaccines and autism have proved to be poorly done or were fraudulent. There are, however, many well-done, credible studies that find no such relationship.

    One of the largest studies looking at this question was published in 2019. Researchers in Denmark enrolled more than 650,000 children born between 1999 and 2011 and followed them from the time they were 1 year of age until the end of August 2013. Roughly 6,500 children were diagnosed with autism during the study period.

    When the researchers compared those who received the MMR vaccine with those who did not, they found no significant difference in the risk of developing autism. That held true whether the kids got other vaccines, such as the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine; whether they had siblings with autism; or a host of other factors, such as whether certain kids might be prone to developing a form of regressive autism after getting their shots.

    “This study strongly supports that MMR vaccine does not increase the risk for autism,” the authors wrote in the conclusion.

    This study is not cited on the CDC’s updated “state of the evidence” on MMR vaccines, however. Instead, it mentions older evidence reviews and raises questions about aluminum, an ingredient added to some vaccines to boost their protection.

    The new CDC updates do mention another recent Danish study, published in 2025, which found no link between aluminum in childhood vaccines and any of 50 disorders, including neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. But instead of accepting the overall conclusion of the study, the new CDC page tries to cast doubt on it by homing in on details of data in a supplementary table, saying the findings and other “warrant further investigation” into aluminum exposure and chronic diseases.

    The CDC page also says the US Department of Health and Human Services has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.

    Singer said this is a waste of valuable research money and a distraction from strong science showing that most cases of autism can be traced to genes that affect a baby’s brain development.

    The main heading on the page states that “Vaccines do not cause Autism,” but it has an asterisk that directs readers to a footnote: “The header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed 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 footnote seems to refer to a commitment by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and Republican from Louisiana, during his confirmation process that language on the CDC website “pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism” would not be removed. Cassidy described the promise in a speech in which he explained his support for Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist.

    Cassidy told CNN on Thursday that he had spoken with Kennedy.

    In a statement posted on X on Thursday, Cassidy said, “I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism. Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.”

    ‘Dangerous health disinformation’

    Dr. Peter Hotez, who is director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and wrote a book called “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism” about his daughter’s diagnosis, said the updated information on the CDC’s page follows a well-worn playbook.

    “They’ve decided they want to prove vaccines cause autism. So they keep making a series of assertions,” Hotez said, going back to debunked research that claimed the MMR vaccines caused autism and a retracted 2005 Rolling Stone article by Kennedy that asserted the preservative thimerosal caused autism.

    There have also been claims that aluminum in vaccines was a cause of autism, and those have been disproved, Hotez said.

    Hotez says the updates to the CDC’s page are “pure garbage.”

    “I consider it a piece of dangerous health disinformation, and it needs to be removed right away,” he said.

    Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as director of the CDC’s National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on social media late Wednesday that the changes are “a national embarrassment.”

    “The weaponization of the voice of CDC is getting worse. This is a public health emergency,” he wrote.

    Daskalakis said the agency’s scientists were completely blindsided by the page update.

    “This distortion of science under the CDC moniker is the reason I resigned with my colleagues,” he told CNN.

    Rather than restoring trust in America’s health agencies, moves like this have undermined it, said Dr. Sean O’ Leary, a pediatrician who chairs the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    “I fear that it’s going to lead to fewer children being vaccinated, children suffering from diseases they didn’t need to suffer from,” O’Leary said.

    This is the latest move by the Trump administration to alter longstanding US vaccine policy and practice and cast doubt on vaccinations.

    Kennedy has hired longtime anti-vax allies – including David Geier, a discredited researcher who was once disciplined by the Maryland State Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license, and Lyn Redwood, a nurse who was president of the World Mercury Project, which later became Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group Kennedy ran before campaigning for office – to undertake new evaluations of government data in an effort to prove conspiracy theories that hazards of vaccines have long been hidden from the public.

    The rate of routine childhood vaccinations has dropped in the United States, allowing preventable diseases including measles and whooping cough to surge. In a call with state health officials Monday, the CDC disease detectives leading the measles response suggested that the US status as a country that has eliminated continuous measles spread was in jeopardy.

    Brenda Goodman and CNN

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  • US CDC Says Claims That Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism Are Not Evidence-Based

    (Reuters) -The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its website on Wednesday to say that claims about vaccines not causing autism are not “evidence-based.”

    Vaccine skeptic and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well as U.S. President Donald Trump have promoted the theory – contrary to scientific evidence – that childhood vaccines are a cause of autism. But the CDC’s website previously said “studies have shown there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder.”

    As of Wednesday night the agency’s website states: “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.” It added that health authorities have “ignored” studies supporting the link between the two.

    The agency kept the header “Vaccines do not cause autism” on its web page, saying that it has not been removed due to an agreement with Senator Bill Cassidy, chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

    The anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, which was previously led by Kennedy, applauded the changes to the CDC’s website.

    “The CDC is beginning to acknowledge the truth about this condition that affects millions, disavowing the bold, long-running lie that ‘vaccines do not cause autism,’” the group said on X.

    Kennedy has linked vaccines to autism and sought to rewrite the country’s immunization policies.

    Trump has also linked autism to the taking of pain medication Tylenol by pregnant women, a claim that is also not backed by scientific evidence.

    Autism is a neurological and developmental condition marked by disruptions in brain-signaling that cause people to behave, communicate, interact and learn in atypical ways.

    The causes of autism are unclear, but no rigorous studies have found links between autism and vaccines, medications or components like thimerosal or formaldehyde.

    (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in New Jersey; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Reuters

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  • RFK Jr.’s Buddies Are Back to Undermine Vaccines

    The federal government is officially back to work, and unfortunately, so is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s influence over the country’s public health. Early next month, a panel of outside advisors assembled by Kennedy will meet once again and probably take a sledgehammer to more vaccines.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently posted the draft agenda for the next meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, scheduled for December 4 and 5. Among other things, ACIP plans to discuss the childhood vaccination schedule as well as “contaminants” in vaccines. Though it’s not exactly clear what ACIP will vote on during this meeting, some of its members will likely try to remove the decades-old recommendation that children be vaccinated against hepatitis B starting at birth—a decision that even some GOP lawmakers are trying to prevent.

    “I want to make America healthy, and you don’t start by stopping recommendations that have made us substantially healthier,” Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) told CBS News’ Face the Nation in an interview released Sunday.

    The hijacked ACIP

    Earlier this year, Kennedy unilaterally dismissed all 17 members of the ACIP, the panel of outside experts that helps guide the CDC’s vaccine policies. He then quickly added new advisors, many of whom—like Kennedy himself—have a history of spreading misinformation about vaccines.

    In its two meetings to date, the rejiggered ACIP has issued several recommendations welcomed by the anti-vaccination movement. It moved to ban the few remaining vaccines that contained thimerosal, for instance, an ingredient that antivaxxers have long accused of causing autism with dubious evidence. Though thimerosal was removed from most vaccines as a precaution in the early 2000s, studies since have failed to find any link to autism, and autism rates have only continued to rise. The ACIP also called for children under four to no longer receive the combination measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine (MMRV), a decision that the previous CDC had left up to parents.

    These decisions, and the ACIP’s general shift away from science-backed evaluation, have helped fuel the internal collapse of the CDC. In late August, RFK Jr. fired former CDC director Susan Monarez just four weeks into her role, reportedly because she refused to sign off on the ACIP’s recommendations without conducting her own review; soon after, much of the CDC’s senior leadership resigned in protest.

    So far, the ACIP’s worst decisions have been limited in their scope. Few vaccines today include thimerosal, and most families weren’t vaccinating their very young children with the MMRV shot. But the potential removal of universal at-birth hepatitis B vaccination threatens to be its most sweeping and damaging change yet.

    Unscientific fears

    Hepatitis B is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids. In adults, it’s usually transmitted via sex or by sharing contaminated needles. But the virus can also be passed from an infected mother to the child during childbirth.

    Though a hepatitis B infection can be managed with antivirals if it becomes chronic, there is no curative treatment currently. Most children with hepatitis B will have it for the rest of their lives, and about a quarter will experience serious health problems, including cirrhosis and liver cancer.

    Thirty years ago, ACIP and the CDC began to recommend that everyone receive the hepatitis B vaccine when young, eventually moving towards at-birth dosing for the first shot. This strategy was only adopted after previous attempts to just vaccinate the highest-risk groups failed to significantly lower cases. And since its implementation, rates of hepatitis B, especially in children, have steadily fallen in the U.S. The vaccine is also safe, with its most serious side effects, like anaphylaxis, being exceptionally rare and manageable with proper monitoring.

    At the last ACIP meeting in September, CDC staff argued in support of at-birth vaccination and warned that more children would almost certainly develop hepatitis B if the policy was removed. Both sessions of the ACIP ran long, and at the very last minute—amidst lots of confusion about what the members were actually voting on—the ACIP unexpectedly chose to table its planned vote on hepatitis B. Given the inclusion of hepatitis B on Friday’s agenda, however, it appears that reprieve was short-lived.

    The inclusion of the childhood vaccine schedule on Thursday’s agenda is also plenty concerning. Antivaxxers have made no secret about their desire to tear the schedule to shreds if they could. The Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccination group founded by RFK Jr., hosted its “Moment of Truth” conference earlier this month. During the conference, Mark Gorton, president of the MAHA Institute—a group founded to bolster Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy” movement—called for the “childhood vaccination schedule to be eliminated.”

    As before, the reformed ACIP has not revealed the contents of its votes scheduled for this next meeting. So it’s still up in the air just how far its members will go in trying to change the schedule. But there’s certainly no reason to be optimistic about what lies ahead for the country’s public health under the reign of RFK Jr.

    Ed Cara

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  • A Surprise Flu Variant Threw Off the Vaccine. Get Ready for a Brutal Winter

    Scientists are sounding the alarm: this winter’s upcoming flu season in North America could be a real nightmare, thanks to the rapid arrival of a variant that doesn’t match well with the seasonal flu vaccine.

    Health officials in Canada issued the warning in a paper late last month. An unexpected variant of the H3N2 flu, dubbed subclade K, quickly emerged during the tail end of the flu season in the Southern Hemisphere this year, they noted. Subclade K is now poised to become one of the most dominant variants of the flu season in the U.S. and Canada, and it’s likely that our vaccines will be less effective overall this winter against the flu than experts had predicted.

    “While mismatched vaccines can still provide protection against circulating variants, enhanced surveillance is warranted,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published in the Journal of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada.

    A drifting mismatch

    During the peak of a flu season, multiple variants of influenza A and influenza B viruses will spread between people.  Because it takes about nine months to ramp up enough vaccines for everyone in a given hemisphere, scientists and health authorities meet twice a year (once for the northern half, once for the southern) to predict which variants are most likely to circulate in the population, and thus, which variants a seasonal flu vaccine should cover. Part of this educated guesswork comes from tracking the flu strains moving across the globe at that time.

    Usually, the predictions aren’t too far off, and the vaccines will provide at least moderate protection from illness. But flu viruses are always evolving, and variants can gradually develop mutations (a process called drift) that make them significantly different from what scientists had expected them to look like. That seems to be what’s happened here with the latest versions of H3N2, a type of influenza A.

    According to the researchers, an increasing amount of H3N2 variants with concerning mutations emerged during last winter’s flu season in the northern hemisphere. These variants are perhaps one major reason why the U.S. experienced such a hard-hitting flu this past winter.

    More recently, a further drifted and poorly matched lineage of H3N2—subclade K—emerged toward the end of the winter in the Southern Hemisphere. This lineage is now “projected to predominate among A(H3N2) viruses for the NH 2025–2026 season,” the researchers wrote.

    The possibility remains that subclade K will not spread widely in North America, since there will be other circulating variants of flu around at the same time. But the odds of that aren’t looking too good. In the UK, health officials have already announced an early start to its flu season, with a majority of these cases being caused by subclade K. Hospitals in the region are now preparing for a big surge of flu.

    It’s also worth wondering whether the fractured state of public health in the U.S. will further hamper efforts to contain the flu. President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have overseen dramatic funding cuts and layoffs throughout the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies this year, while RFK Jr. has fired or pressured senior health officials to leave the CDC.

    Why vaccines still matter

    Despite the dire outlook, vaccines remain one of the most important tools against the flu this season. There are other strains of flu that the vaccine will cover, and a mismatched vaccine can still provide some protection against the worst outcomes of flu, which can include death. Thankfully, there is good news on that front.

    This week, the UK Health Security Agency reported the latest data from its flu surveillance program. Even with a mismatched variant in the picture, the vaccine is currently estimated to be 70% to 75% effective at preventing flu hospitalizations in children and 30% to 40% effective in adults.

    “These results provide reassuring evidence that this season’s flu vaccines currently offer important protection to children and adults, despite concerns about the new subclade,” said Jamie Lopez Bernal, consultant epidemiologist for Immunization at UKHSA, in a statement from the agency.

    So it’s still worthwhile to get your flu shot as soon as you can. But given the mismatch this winter, it’s all the more important to practice good hygiene, to stay home if you’re sick, and to potentially wear a mask in higher-risk situations for added protection (well-fitting, high-quality masks such as a KN95 or N95 being the most effective).

    Ed Cara

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  • Here’s Why Fewer People Are Vaccinating Their Pets

    When Sylvalyn Hammond started practicing veterinary medicine in 2018, she rarely encountered pet owners who wanted to skip their dogs’ vaccines. The first time it happened, “I almost thought they were joking,” she recalls. “I was so shocked that I think I might have laughed.”

    Now, just a few years later, Hammond deals with anti-vaccine sentiment at least a few times a week at her office in Charleston, S.C. “We’re seeing vaccine hesitancy in pet parents rising exponentially,” she says. “I’m much more prepared for these conversations now, because I understand that I usually have one chance to win these pet parents back and place credible data and information in front of them.”

    Experts say that growing misinformation and concerns about vaccines for pets—happening in tandem with plummeting childhood vaccination rates and efforts to end vaccine mandates—represent a serious public-health issue that has ramifications for humans as well as their four-legged family members.

    A COVID turning point

    There’s no hard data to quantify exactly how many people are opting out of vaccinating their pets, but researchers have found that vaccine skepticism is indeed prevalent: In one 2023 survey of more than 2,000 pet owners, 52% expressed negative views of canine vaccines. While 37% of them believed vaccines could cause their dogs to develop autism (a fear unsupported by any scientific evidence), 22% questioned the jabs’ efficacy, and 30% were concerned about whether they were truly important.

    Matt Motta, an associate professor of health law, policy, and management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, co-authored that research with a team that included his sister, a veterinarian. His findings suggest that COVID vaccine hesitancy has led to a “spillover effect,” with people who hold negative attitudes about human vaccines being more likely to hold negative views about vaccinating their pets, too. “The way that people feel about one form of vaccination spills over to shape the way they feel about all forms of vaccination,” he says. “Our partisan identities are so central to our understanding of our sense of self, especially now in a hyper-polarized America, that it’s not at all surprising to see that happen.”

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    When Motta did his research, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement didn’t exist. Yet he expects that many who support relaxed vaccine mandates for themselves and their kids feel similarly about their pets. “That is the overlap we demonstrated in our research—we just didn’t call it MAHA at the time,” he says. “There’s this idea that we’re over-medicating, over-vaccinating, and that we can’t trust the scientific community and medical community to have our best interests at heart. People believe that’s true for both humans and, apparently, for our pets as well.”

    That resonates with Simon Haeder, a health services and policy researcher at the Ohio State University who has also studied vaccine hesitancy among pet owners. “It seems to be that the exact same kind of things are happening on the pet side: the concerns about side effects, the concerns about your dog developing some disease, people being worried about too many shots at the same time, people thinking that natural immunity is just better,” he says. “What you see on the human side gets replicated on the pet side, which does make sense in some ways, because for most people, pets are very, very close and human-like.”

    The cost of skipping vaccines

    Some vaccines—like those that protect against rabies—are required by law in most parts of the U.S. Core vaccines, including those against parvovirus and distemper, are recommended but not mandated for all dogs and cats. Exactly which your pet needs will vary based on factors like age, geographic area, and exposure risk from daily activities (like frequent trips to doggy day-care or dog parks). 

    “They’re very tailored,” says Michael Bailey, a veterinarian and president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. Yet every pet—even indoor cats—needs the rabies vaccine to protect themselves, other animals, and all the humans they might come into contact with. “Here’s the good news: We have eliminated canine rabies virus in this country 100%,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we’ve eliminated rabies. There are other kinds of rabies—raccoon rabies and bat rabies—but canine rabies, which is very, very potent, has been eliminated, and we’re trying to keep it that way.”

    Pet owners are often concerned that vaccines are unnecessary, unsafe, or ineffective. Many describe rare side effects they read about online, like anaphylaxis. Yet “the data is very strong that these are safe for animals,” says Mary Combs, a veterinarian at Lovet Pet Health Care in Glendale, Ariz. “Our most common reactions are very mild: some tenderness at the source, a little bit of tiredness, and the dog or cat might be sore.”

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    Hammond’s clients often fall prey to misinformation spread online by pet health influencers. “They’re putting out this content saying there’s a high risk of autoimmune diseases, so the animal’s immune system is going to be compromised for life,” she says. “The pet’s not going to be healthy, they’re going to have a higher risk of allergies and cancer and gastrointestinal disorders, they won’t live as long. There’s zero credible evidence to support these claims, but once that seed is planted, fear spreads faster than facts.”

    The effects of skipping vaccines can be devastating. When Hammond worked at an emergency veterinary care office, she would see unvaccinated puppies with canine parvovirus, which is highly contagious and often fatal. “I have held puppies and they’ve literally died in my arms because none of my medications are treating what they’re fighting,” she says. “I’m the one who has to see it, and then I have to be the one to tell you that your dog died or is going to die from a preventable disease.”

    Combating the rise in vaccine skepticism

    When Hammond talks to clients who aren’t sure if they want to vaccinate their pets, she tells them she can understand why vaccinating their beloved pet seems scary. Then she looks them in the eye and talks them through years of safety data. “I’m usually able to get them to give their pets the vaccines, and then once they do the first round and everything goes fine, and they see that their dog isn’t going to suddenly combust, I can win them over,” she says. “But it does take a very good, collaborative conversation.”

    Combs’ practice has a policy that they won’t treat dogs that aren’t vaccinated for rabies; similar policies exist at some grooming shops and other pet-related businesses. While some of her patients’ owners outright refuse certain vaccines, she’s found that many are open to reconsidering their stance, especially when they learn about the deadly ways vaccine-preventable diseases could affect their pets. “A large part of my job is education,” she says, “and I take that seriously.”

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    As the Trump Administration continues to question the safety and efficacy of established vaccines long proven to be safe, Motta worries that lawmakers will similarly politicize pet vaccines and take action to roll back rabies vaccine requirements or make it easier for pet owners to seek exemptions. (Exactly what qualifies for a medical exemption varies by state, but vets can typically provide a post-exam certificate noting that a vaccine would endanger a pet’s health, usually due to a prior adverse reaction or an immune-mediated illness like inflammatory bowel disease.) The very idea might have sounded “preposterous” a decade ago, he says, but it’s no longer a stretch of the imagination. “If we give dog parents an out to not vaccinate, our work suggests they might take it,” he says.

    That’s why fact-based, pro-vaccine messaging is so important, Motta says. One strategy he believes could make an impact is sharing stories of people who regret not vaccinating their pets. When he did a mock campaign focused on animals who became sick with respiratory disease—and whose owners wished they had chosen to vaccinate—“we found that was a very impactful motivator for people,” he says. “In my view, the absolute best communicators of the science are the science skeptics. They’re the people who say, ‘I used to be like you, but I changed my mind, and here’s why.’”

    Angela Haupt

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  • Canada Will Soon Lose Its Hard-Won Measles-Free Status. America Is Next

    A highly contagious disease once vanquished by vaccination is now on the brink of officially returning to North America. Canada is expected to lose its measles elimination status, and the U.S. might possibly soon follow.

    This week, Canada reported new cases of measles tied to an ongoing outbreak—one that began 12 months ago. The year of continuous transmission means that Canada will almost certainly lose its measles-free designation, experts say. And though the largest outbreaks of measles in the U.S. this year have officially ended, the country could potentially still lose its status in 2026, too.

    “As of today, it seems very, very likely that Canada will lose its measles elimination status, while the United States is also at substantial risk in the next 3 months,” Sten Vermund, chief medical officer at the Global Virus Network, a coalition of medical virologists focused on viral threats, told Gizmodo.

    A resurgent enemy

    Despite a highly effective vaccine for it, measles remains a serious public health threat across much of the globe. In 2023, it’s estimated to have sickened roughly 10 million people and killed over 100,000 worldwide, with most deaths occurring in unvaccinated children under five.

    Some countries, through widespread vaccination programs, have kept measles largely at bay by stopping its local transmission. The U.S. officially eliminated endemic measles in 2000, while the Americas as a whole first achieved elimination in 2016. Canada earned its measles-free status in 1998.

    But so long as measles is endemic somewhere, the disease can hitch a ride on infected travelers and threaten to regain a foothold in locally eliminated countries, especially when vaccination rates start to decline. It’s a threat that’s now hitting close to home in the U.S.

    Canada’s latest outbreak first began in October 2024 in the province of New Brunswick. Since then, the country has reported over 5,000 cases, nearly all of which are linked to the initial New Brunswick cluster. And though the flow of cases has significantly slowed down over time, it hasn’t stopped. On Monday, Canadian health officials reported 19 new cases during the week of October 18 (the most current data) and 136 recent cases across five jurisdictions.

    The World Health Organization regularly evaluates whether countries can be deemed locally free of measles. Travel-related outbreaks can and do still occur in these countries, but it takes more than a year of ongoing transmission for the WHO to even consider revoking a country’s measles-free card. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a subset of the WHO, will meet next month for its annual assessment of the region’s status. And given the current situation, Canada will probably lose its measles-free mantle.

    What about the U.S.?

    The immediate outlook is a bit less grim for the U.S., though still far from great.

    Earlier this January, a large outbreak of measles began in Western Texas. More than 700 cases were ultimately documented before officials formally declared the outbreak over in mid-August. Another large outbreak occurred around the same time nearby in New Mexico, which saw roughly 100 cases before it appeared to die down in late September.

    The trouble is, there have been many other measles clusters happening across the U.S. this year, and some are ongoing. All told, there have been roughly 1,650 cases reported—the largest tally seen since 1992—and dozens of outbreaks reported nationwide in 2025. At least three people died of measles in the U.S. this year as well, the first deaths recorded in a decade. There are current outbreaks in South Carolina, Illinois, Minnesota, Arizona, and Utah, with the latter two states sharing a cluster that’s now over 120 cases and counting.

    Though the outbreak in Texas is over, it remains possible that health officials will link some of the current cases to it. This can occur if people in these states are found to be infected with the same or closely related strain of measles that sickened residents in Texas. If so, and if these cases last until January, the PAHO could very well decide to revoke the measles-free status of the U.S. early next year, too.

    But even if this scenario doesn’t happen, experts are still worried about measles becoming endemic in America soon enough, given the sheer amount of transmission we’ve seen this year.

    “I expect the US will lose its measles elimination status next year, as the U.S. in 2025 has already experienced almost 4 cases per 10 million, 87% of cases were related to an outbreak, i.e., not imported, and there have already been 43 outbreaks in less than one year,” Jessica Justman, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told Gizmodo.

    The country’s federal public health system isn’t exactly in steady hands either. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a man with a long history of misleading the public about the safety of vaccines, including the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. And during the height of the Texas outbreak, both he and his allies downplayed its impact and touted unsupported treatments for the viral disease.

    How to stop the return of measles

    Formidable as measles is, we’ve long known how to best curtail its danger: vaccination.

    It might be too late to stop the official return of measles in Canada or even the U.S. But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Notably, Canada wouldn’t even be the first country in the Americas to have lost this status in the last few years, as both Brazil and Venezuela did recently. However, these countries have since regained their designation.

    Though America certainly has a growing anti-vaccination problem, measles vaccination rates in the U.S. and Canada remain generally high (for now). The current outbreaks have occurred in regions where rates are much lower than average, such as Mennonite communities in Canada. In at least some of these communities, officials have said, residents aren’t necessarily opposed to vaccination but simply have less regular contact with doctors. And unlike the U.S., there are no major public health figureheads in Canada with a track record of anti-vaccination sentiment.

    All of which is to say that a dedicated public health response can still convince people to get their measles shots. And Vermund expects that Canadian health officials will lay out a detailed plan to the PAHO to get things back on course.

    According to Vermund, this plan should ideally include, among other things, stronger vaccination campaigns that target under-vaccinated regions like Alberta and Ontario; mobile clinics and school-based immunization drives; community engagement and public education to counter vaccine misinformation; and improved surveillance.

    That same framework should also work to boost flagging vaccination rates in the U.S., too. But under the reign of RFK Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been turned into a shadow of its former self, and the ongoing shutdown of the federal government might further hamper any assistance that the CDC can provide to local and state agencies.

    “A course correction for the U.S. will require an intensive vaccination campaign and funding to support the public health surveillance systems across all 50 states,” Justman said. “Neither of these seems likely in the current context.”

    Though Canada will lose its status first, measles might have an easier time getting reestablished in its downstairs neighbor. If so, plenty more children and their families will suffer as a result.

    Ed Cara

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  • US Supreme Court Won’t Revive Mumps Vaccine Antitrust Case Against Merck

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a bid by a group of physicians and healthcare providers to revive their antitrust lawsuit accusing drugmaker Merck of misleading federal regulators to maintain a decades-long monopoly over the mumps vaccine market.

    The justices turned away an appeal by the plaintiffs of a lower court’s decision to throw out the lawsuit on the basis that the drugmaker was protected under a legal doctrine that immunizes companies from antitrust claims based on actions aimed at swaying government decision-making.

    A collection of family doctors and physicians’ groups from New Jersey and New York filed the lawsuit in 2012 in federal court in Philadelphia, seeking monetary damages.

    The claims remaining in the long-running litigation involve allegations that the plaintiffs were overcharged for New Jersey-based Merck’s mumps vaccines as a result of the company’s monopolization of the mumps vaccine market in violation of federal antitrust law and New Jersey and New York state laws.

    The plaintiffs said that submissions by Merck to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration contained misrepresentations that effectively boxed out competitors such as GlaxoSmithKline and delayed market entry of a rival vaccine for more than a decade.

    Merck made the only mumps vaccine in the United States from 1967 until 2022. It is sold as part of a combined vaccine against mumps, measles and rubella, known as MMR-II.

    The FDA in the 1990s raised concerns that the mumps vaccine lost potency toward the end of its 24-month shelf life, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit accused Merck of misleading the FDA in the 2000s about the potency and efficacy of the mumps vaccine. Merck boosted the vaccine’s initial potency and submitted a supplemental application to the FDA to continue selling it without revising its efficacy claims.

    The so-called Noerr-Pennington doctrine at issue in the case was established under a pair of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s.

    Merck has denied any wrongdoing and has argued that its communications with the FDA were legitimate regulatory submissions protected by Noerr-Pennington immunity.

    The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Noerr-Pennington immunity is broad, though not absolute. Actions intended to influence government decision-making are not immune from liability if they are deemed a “sham,” it said. But it decided that even if Merck’s petitions to the FDA contained falsehoods, they were not “sham” petitions because they succeeded in obtaining the agency’s approval.

    In their request to the Supreme Court to hear their appeal, the plaintiffs urged the justices to resolve what they said was a split among federal appeals courts over whether alleged intentional deception can fall outside Noerr-Pennington’s protections.

    Merck countered that the alleged misrepresentations did not materially affect any statement on the vaccine label. The company also said the FDA had taken no action to revise the label despite being made aware of the allegations years earlier.

    (Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by Will Dunham)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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  • Mesa County’s summer measles outbreak totaled 11 cases, started with out-of-state travel

    Mesa County’s late-summer measles outbreak started with three children who brought the virus back from an out-of-state trip, ultimately passing it on to eight other people.

    The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment previously identified seven people who contracted measles within the county, raising concerns that the virus was spreading under the radar.

    On Wednesday, the agency announced four additional cases from August, including the three who traveled and one person they infected directly. Those four previously unidentified people then spread the virus to the seven known cases.

    All four of the new cases were unvaccinated children between 5 and 17, according to the health department. It didn’t release any other information, such as which state the children traveled to or whether any of them were related.

    The department found their cases after the state they traveled to identified them as contacts of people who had tested positive there, spokeswoman Hope Shuler said.

    Measles is most dangerous for people under 5 or over 20.

    The newly identified people got sick in August, meaning they’re well past the contagious period. Most people who have measles are contagious for about four days before the rash appears and four days after.

    The vaccine schedule calls for kids to receive their first dose at about 1 and their second around 5. Some children with compromised immune systems can’t receive the vaccine and rely on the rest of the community to protect them through herd immunity, where so many people have been vaccinated that the virus can’t easily reach new hosts.

    The known cases included two unvaccinated adults who got sick in mid-August, three people who shared a household with one of them and two strangers who crossed paths with them and later tested positive. None of them needed hospital care.

    Meg Wingerter

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  • Letters: Left-wing billionaires are pushing Proposition 50

    Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.

    Left-wing billionaires
    are funding Prop. 50

    Re: “Hedge fund billionaire Steyer gives $12M to back Proposition 50 redistricting vote” (Page B6, Oct. 12).

    If you are wondering how to vote on Proposition 50 gerrymandering, look no further than who is funding the “yes” campaign. Billionaires Tom Steyer and George Soros are pouring millions of dollars into it. These are far-left-wing elites.

    They are not interested in the people or what is good for the state of California. They are only interested in increasing their stranglehold over voters. They are the power-hungry force behind all the terrible policies that are destroying California.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom conjured up this gerrymandering scheme. He has created this costly special election, hoping that turnout will be low and that people won’t care.

    We do care. We need to say no. Vote no on Proposition 50.

    Jay Todesco
    Concord

    Citizens can flex
    their economic might

    Re: “Tech billionaire Marc Benioff says Trump should deploy National Guard to San Francisco” (Oct. 11).

    My first reaction to this news was, “Who the hell cares what this guy thinks?” Do only billionaires’ voices matter? If Donald Trump rigs future elections, is peaceful protesting the only power we have? Not by a long shot.

    Even as Trump tries to sabotage the power of the vote, we have the power of the purse. It worked on Disney during the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco. It will work on any company that sells to consumers. Www.goodsuniteus.com tracks corporate political donations. When, collectively, people stop shopping and subscribing to the brands that do not share their values, companies notice in a hurry. Trump may not listen to us, but he does listen to his billionaire buddies.

    It may be time to start keeping corporate leaders up at night, watching their market shares tank. It may be time to remind billionaires that the money that drives this country comes from us.

    Janice Bleyaert
    El Sobrante

    Cal must do more
    to support students

    UC Berkeley is regarded as the No. 1 public university. However, the students who make Berkeley great are facing hunger at an unacceptable rate. The 2022 UC Basic Needs Report shows that 47% of UC students have faced food insecurity.

    I’m grateful for the opportunities this university has presented to me. However, a reason I and many other students hesitated in committing to Berkeley is due to the city’s basic cost of living. Attending Berkeley for most will be their greatest investment, so it should be on the university to support students contributing to the legacy of such an institution.

    Currently, students can only visit Berkeley’s Basic Needs Center once a week, which is not enough for the students who rely on this resource the most. Working to expand on this resource could make a significant difference in the lives of thousands of the great minds we have at Berkeley.

    Kennedy Jones
    Berkeley

    Medical community must
    loudly denounce RFK Jr.

    After eight months of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doing his best to unravel decades of advances in medicine and the development and use of tested and proven vaccines and medications that have saved millions of lives, saved millions of people from years of suffering, and prevented epidemics of many deadly and debilitating diseases — culminating in Donald Trump’s unhinged and unsubstantiated medical advice to America’s pregnant mothers not to take Tylenol because it causes autism in their children — I have one question: Where the hell has the medical community been?

    The medical community in this nation has to stand up loudly to condemn and stop this devastation of what has allowed us all to live longer and healthier lives.

    Michael Thomas
    Richmond

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  • New US COVID Guidelines Add Confusion, Complications for Americans Seeking Shots

    NEW YORK (Reuters) -Americans headed to pharmacies for COVID-19 vaccines are running into roadblocks and confusion due to new U.S. guidance that abandoned broad support for the shots, contributing to the lowest vaccination rates since they were introduced.

    For the four-week period ended October 3, COVID immunizations were down about 25% nationally, according to IQVIA data in analysts’ research notes. 

    Steven Thompson, a 41-year-old financial professional from Salt Lake City, routinely gets the COVID shot through employer-sponsored health insurance. In September, he was told at a Walgreens pharmacy he needed a prescription. Utah, Georgia and Louisiana had been requiring prescriptions while awaiting U.S. CDC guidance on who should get the shot.

    Thompson’s children’s pediatrician just sent prescriptions to Walgreens. His doctor required a visit.

    “I hate going to the doctor or doing any activity where I don’t know how much it’ll cost,” said Thompson, who now doesn’t plan to get a shot unless local infection rates rise.

    Utah authorized pharmacists to provide the shot in late September without prescriptions, while Georgia and Louisiana dropped the requirement early this month. A Walgreens spokesperson said patients no longer need a prescription.

    Since their mid-pandemic introduction, COVID shots have been recommended for anyone in the U.S. who wanted one. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withdrew that broad support, calling for consultation with a healthcare provider first.

    The move came after the FDA approved updated shots only for people aged 65 and over and those at risk of severe disease. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA and CDC, is now led by longtime anti-vaccine campaigner Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    Nadia Hicks, a 31-year-old communications manager from Atlanta, was surprised to learn she needed a prescription to receive the vaccine last month at a Publix pharmacy. Hicks, who has asthma, consulted her doctor for one. 

    “It’s causing a lot of anxiety because I think the less information we have, the harder it is to know… is it necessary to get the vaccine now?” she said, adding she did not receive the usual immunization notice from her healthcare system.

    A Publix spokesperson said its pharmacies can now give COVID shots in Georgia without a prescription. 

    Health insurers rely on CDC guidelines, informed by recommendations from its outside expert advisers, to set their vaccine coverage terms.

    Kennedy gutted that advisory group and replaced it with hand-picked members, many of whom share his controversial vaccine views. As a result, some states said they now questioned the scientific basis for CDC guidance and began setting their own policies. Major insurers have said they will provide coverage for the vaccine through 2026.

    “People hear about the FDA, the CDC, their health department; there’s lots of different discussions about what is actually the recommendation,” said Dr. Aaron Milstone, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore.

    US VACCINATION RATES HIGHER THAN OTHER WEALTHY NATIONS

    In most European countries, Canada and Australia, COVID vaccine guidance was already limited to older adults and those at high risk of severe COVID.

    The midpoint of vaccination rates for adults over 60 in the 21 European Union countries was 8.7% from August 2024 to March 2025, according to the European CDC, well below the 2024 U.S. rate among adults of around 23%, according to CDC data.

    COVID hospitalizations continue to present a burden on health systems, said Jodie Guest, an epidemiology professor at Emory University.

    “The science shows us very clearly how important these vaccines are to keep you individually safe, but also those around you who are in the very high-risk groups,” she said.

    CVS Health Chief Medical Officer Amy Compton-Phillips said in an interview that demand for COVID and flu shots has been lower than last year.

    “It’s a little challenging at the moment, because consumers are looking for organizations they can trust,” she said.

    The company, which operates one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, said it is providing the shots nationwide without a prescription. 

    Pfizer, with German partner BioNTech, and Moderna make COVID shots based on messenger RNA technology, the safety of which Kennedy and allies have questioned, contrary to scientific evidence. Novavax and French partner Sanofi sell a more traditional vaccine.

    The delay in official CDC guidance on updated shots following the FDA’s more limited approval created confusion among consumers and independent pharmacies, which make up about one-third of U.S. pharmacies. 

    Roger Paganelli, a pharmacist at Mt. Carmel Pharmacy in New York City, said many pharmacists are wary of promoting vaccines for patients not approved by the FDA, and that some worry insurers may refuse to cover them.

    Others are concerned they would lose legal protection that shields them from patient lawsuits, said Paganelli, a past president at Pharmacists Society of the State of New York who plans to continue offering the vaccine.

    Three pharmacy experts said CDC guidance to consult with patients acts as a barrier to uptake, especially for low-income populations in underserved areas who rely on walk-in immunizations where counseling is impractical.

    “As far as the mass clinics, pharmacies are only offering the influenza vaccine,” said Dr. Allison Hill, a director at the American Pharmacists Association, “because over the past weeks we’ve gone back and forth with COVID-19 policy.” 

    (Reporting by Amina Niasse in New York; Additional reporting by Jayla Whitfield-Anderson in Atlanta, Michael Erman and Michele Gershberg in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Reuters

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  • People’s Trust in the CDC Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Cratered, Poll Shows

    Americans are losing faith in the country’s health agencies. A new KFF poll shows that people’s trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reached a low not seen since the covid-19 pandemic.

    The poll offers a glimpse into how Americans are feeling about the country’s public health agencies since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, and since his controversial pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., took the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services.

    The poll found that just half of Americans still trust the CDC to provide reliable information about vaccines—far below the level of trust that people have in their own doctors or other health organizations. A majority also said they disapproved of Kennedy’s job performance, and that they disagreed with the Trump administration’s decision to link autism to women taking acetaminophen (Tylenol) during pregnancy despite a lack of evidence.

    Declining trust

    For the poll, KFF surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 1,300 American adults online and by telephone, and it was conducted a day after Trump and Kennedy held a widely criticized press conference last month claiming that Tylenol use during pregnancy causes autism.

    Only 18% of the poll’s respondents expressed a “great deal” of confidence in the CDC’s vaccine information, while a further 32% said they had a “fair amount” of trust. These figures represent a sharp decline in the space of just months: An earlier poll taken in April this year found 59% of people said they trusted the CDC to some extent. Still, faith in the CDC had been waning: In 2023, 63% of people said they trusted the CDC at least somewhat. When considering similar polls evaluating public trust in the CDC as a whole, this is the lowest level of trust in the agency since the start of the covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, according to KFF.

    Conversely, a strong majority of people (83%) still trust their personal doctor to give them reliable vaccine information, while roughly two-thirds of people surveyed also trust the American Medical Association (64%) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (69%) to do the same. About 80% of Americans also agreed that public schools should require some vaccines for students, including 75% of Republicans.

     

    The RFK Jr. effect

    The new poll jibes with other recent surveys that suggest Kennedy is not popular with most Americans.

    About 59% of respondents disapproved of his overall job performance, while 62% disapproved of how he’s handled vaccine policy. Kennedy has a decades-long history of vaccine skepticism, and since his appointment to lead HHS, he has made several moves that have seemed poised to undermine vaccine policy and challenge decades-worth of accepted science—actions that have helped fuel the internal collapse of the CDC.

    Earlier this summer, former CDC director Susan Monarez was fired after she allegedly refused to rubber stamp the recommendations made by a panel composed of Kennedy’s picks to inform the CDC’s vaccine policies, many of whom have their own track record of attacking vaccine safety and voicing skepticism. Following her departure, the current acting CDC chief Jim O’Neill—another Kennedy backer—has since called for the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to be broken up, a longtime goal of the anti-vaccination movement.

     

    The KFF poll also found that most Americans (77%) did hear about Trump’s claim that Tylenol use increases the risk of autism. But only a very few said that this claim was “definitely true” (4%), while 30% said it was “probably true.” About 35% said the claim was “definitely false” and another 30% said it was “probably false.” Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, belief in this claim was highly partisan, the poll found, with Republicans more likely to give some credence to the idea. Scientists have not found any concrete evidence of a link between Tylenol and autism, and critics have said that the president and Kennedy’s claims were based on weak and mixed evidence, at best.

    There are many reasons why Americans’ trust in the CDC and other health agencies has ebbed and flowed over time, but the polling reflects Kennedy’s rapid ascension and his overhaul of the country’s public health agencies’ approach to vaccines and children’s health.

    Ed Cara

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  • CDC Leaves COVID Vaccination Up to Patients

    TUESDAY, Oct. 7, 2025 (HealthDay News) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has dropped its recommendation that all Americans receive routine COVID-19 shots, leaving the decision up to patients and doctors.

    The shift follows new guidance from a panel of vaccine advisers appointed by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who fired the CDC’s longstanding vaccine advisory group earlier this year. 

    Until now, the CDC had recommended annual COVID boosters for everyone 6 months and older.

    But the new panel — created by Kennedy, who has publicly questioned vaccine safety — voted last month to remove that recommendation. The CDC signed off on the change this week.

    “Informed consent is back,” Interim CDC Director Jim O’Neill said as he approved the move.

    “Past guidance deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination,” he said.

    However, some doctors criticized the statement, noting that informed consent has always been part of the vaccine process.

    “To make a statement that informed consent is back implies that it had gone away. In no way has it gone away,” Dr. Jesse Hackell, a retired New York pediatrician who has coauthored several American Academy of Pediatrics vaccine policies, told The Associated Press.

    Major medical organizations continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women, children and adults at higher risk of serious illness. 

    They argue that the administration’s new stance could mislead the public about vaccine safety, which has been proven in billions of doses given worldwide.

    The CDC also said patients, especially older adults, should consult with their doctors, nurses or pharmacists about whether vaccination is right for them.

    Further, the decision also clears the way for the government’s Vaccines for Children program to continue offering free COVID shots to eligible families.

    In a separate update, the CDC also accepted a panel recommendation that children under age 4 receive their first chickenpox (varicella) shot separately from the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (MMRV) vaccine. 

    Research has shown that the combination shot carries a higher risk of fever and related seizures.

    Since 2009, the CDC has preferred giving these shots separately for first doses, and about 85% of toddlers already receive the varicella vaccine on its own, the agency said.

    SOURCE: The Associated Press, Oct. 6, 2025

    Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

    HealthDay

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  • With CDC signoff, CVS says Covid-19 vaccines will be available nationwide without a prescription

    (CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on a recommendation that patients must consult a health care provider to get a Covid-19 vaccine, although they don’t necessarily need a prescription.

    The updated CDC recommendation — made by a new panel of vaccine advisers chosen by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — shifted away from a broader push in past years for most people to get an updated Covid-19 vaccine. It became final with signoff from Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill.

    The new recommendations mean people ages 6 months and older can get Covid-19 vaccines after consulting with a qualified health care provider, which keeps the shots available but may also create more barriers to access than in past years.

    Before the finalized recommendation this year, access to Covid-19 shots has differed from state to state as pharmacies and providers navigated new federal vaccine policies. CVS, which had previously limited access to Covid-19 shots in some places, said Monday that it was “updating our systems to be able to offer the updated COVID-19 vaccines to patients nationwide” and that “prescriptions from outside prescribers will no longer be required in any states.”

    The signoff is also coming later than usual for the fall respiratory virus season. With the recommendation, the government can finally distribute Covid-19 vaccines through its Vaccines for Children program, which provides free inoculations to about half of US children.

    The CDC’s independent vaccine advisers, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted unanimously last month that people who want a Covid-19 vaccine should consult with a health care provider, a process called shared clinical decision-making. However, they narrowly voted down a recommendation that a prescription should be required to get the shot.

    In August, the US Food and Drug Administration moved to limit approval of Covid-19 vaccines to adults 65 and older as well as younger people who are at higher risk of severe illness because of other health conditions.

    A study published last month in the journal JAMA Network Open found that a universal Covid-19 vaccine recommendation — as had been in place for the US in recent years — could save thousands more lives than limiting the recommendation to high-risk groups.

    Experts said that even requiring shared clinical decision-making could make Covid-19 shots harder to get.

    The recommendation “assumes health care and insurance,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “We do not have universal health care in this country, and we know millions of people are losing insurance.”

    HHS said it was bringing back “informed consent” ahead of vaccination.

    “CDC’s 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination for the individual patient or parent. That changes today,” O’Neill, who is also the deputy secretary of HHS, said in a statement.

    Another new recommendation will mean toddlers get their first vaccines against measles and chickenpox separately, around their first birthdays. In this case, the ACIP guidance formalizes an existing recommendation, which is designed to reduce a very rare, slightly elevated risk of seizures when the two shots are combined into a single injection.

    The CDC advisers said that the single-dose measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine was not recommended before age 4 and that younger kids should get the varicella vaccine, which protects against chickenpox, separately from the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.

    Brenda Goodman, Katherine Dillinger and CNN

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  • CDC recommends patients consult a health care provider for Covid-19 vaccination

    By Brenda Goodman, Katherine Dillinger, CNN

    The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on a recommendation that patients must consult a health care provider to get a Covid-19 vaccine, although they don’t necessarily need a prescription.

    The recommendations shifted away from a broader push most people to get a Covid-19 vaccine and was made by a new panel of vaccine advisers chosen by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CDC’s OK makes the recommendations final and US vaccine schedules will be updated, HHS said on Tuesday.

    CNN.com

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  • Americans Are Already Sick of RFK Jr., Poll Finds

    While U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be trying to “Make America Healthy Again,” it turns out plenty of Americans are already sick of him. A new poll finds that only one-third of people actually approve of how RFK Jr. is handling his job.

    The findings come from the most recent Quinnipiac University poll released this month, which surveyed around 1,200 registered voters across the country. Exactly 33% of respondents said they currently approved of Kennedy’s stint as HHS secretary, while 54% disapproved. The numbers are a noticeable drop from a similar poll conducted earlier this year, prior to the internal collapse of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set off by RFK Jr.’s antivaccine agenda.

    RFK’s waning popularity

    Kennedy has never enjoyed immense popularity among Americans, but it certainly looks like he’s lost more ground as of late.

    In both a March and June poll from Quinnipiac, RFK Jr. had a 38% approval rating, though a slightly higher disapproval rating (53%) in June. Other recent polls have highlighted RFK Jr.’s flagging perception among Americans, too, such as a Washington Post-Ipsos poll this September that documented a 42% approval rating.

    Since taking over HHS, Kennedy has pledged to drive down rates of chronic disease in the U.S., particularly in children. But more often than not, his decisions and policy changes have garnered widespread criticism from public health experts, including within the federal government.

    In late August, former CDC director Susan Monarez was fired for reportedly refusing to rubberstamp the recommendations of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), all of whom had been handpicked by Kennedy after he unilaterally terminated the existing members. Some of these new ACIP members already had a documented history of misrepresenting the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, while others had financially benefited from attacking vaccines. In just two meetings so far, the new ACIP has successfully pushed for the removal of several vaccines from either the market or the childhood vaccine schedule with little scientific backing.

    Kennedy has also promised to tackle the entirely made-up threat of chemtrails, diagnosed everyone’s kids with massive mitochondria problems, and endorsed the widely unsupported idea that acetaminophen use during pregnancy is causing autism.

    Vaccines remain on top, for now

    Though some Americans have started to buy more into the false propaganda of the anti-vaccination movement lately, vaccines overall remain more popular than RFK Jr.

    The latest Quinnipiac poll found that 67% of Americans supported having “vaccine requirements for children attending public schools,” with even a slight majority of Republican-identifying respondents (46%) saying yes.

    “Keep mandatory vaccines in place for public school kids, say a large majority of voters. That sentiment is expressed as voters give a clear thumbs down to the overall recommendations by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” said Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy in a statement.

    Unfortunately, these waning numbers for RFK may not mean all that much. According to the Quinnipiac poll, 71% of Republicans still approve of Kennedy as HHS chief. And while some members of the GOP have become more critical of RFK Jr.’s performance, especially following the CDC defection, many are still roundly in his corner—most notably President Donald Trump himself.

    Last week, RFK Jr. stood shoulder to shoulder with Trump during the latter’s big autism announcement, and both men eagerly took time to go off-script and promote antivaccination talking points, such as the idea that children today are taking too many shots at once.

    Americans might not like Kennedy all that much, but Trump sure seems to still have his back.

    Ed Cara

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  • Small children don’t get ‘80 different vaccines’

    President Donald Trump repeatedly exaggerated the number of vaccines recommended for small children, comparing it with vaccinating a horse. 

    “They give — I mean, for a little baby to be injected with that much fluid?” Trump first said Sept. 21 during an Air Force One press gaggle. “Even beyond the actual ingredients, they have sometimes 80 different vaccines … It’s like you’re shooting up a horse.” 

    He used the number four more times during a Sept. 22 press conference in which he also pushed an unproven link between autism and Tylenol.

    “You have a little child, little fragile child, that you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in,” he said.

    Then again: “It’s like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines and 80. Then you give that to a little kid.”

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    How many vaccines do young children actually receive? It’s not 80, by any measure. 

    The White House didn’t respond to our questions about how Trump arrived at that number. But because Trump’s comments referred to “little” kids and babies, we tallied the overall number of recommended childhood vaccines for children ages 10 and under in four ways: by the number of vaccine formulations a child receives; by the number of diseases the vaccines protect against; by the total number of doses each child receives of all the recommended vaccine formulations; and by the number of physical injections or shots a child would receive if following the recommended vaccination schedule. 

    No matter how we counted, the number of vaccines a young child receives didn’t reach Trump’s claim of 80.

    CDC schedule recommends 11 vaccines for kids 10 and younger

    Over a child’s first year of life, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends seven different vaccine formulations, plus an annual flu vaccine. They are:

    • Hepatitis B

    • RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), if not yet given to the mother in pregnancy

    • DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) 

    • Polio

    • Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type B)

    • PCV (Pneumococcal disease)

    • Rotavirus

    By age 2, children will get their first of two doses of varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A and MMR (measles, mumps, rubella).

    By age 6, children who follow the recommended vaccination schedule and receive all doses of the 10 recommended vaccines will be fully vaccinated against 14 diseases. 

    Starting when a baby is 6 months old, annual flu vaccines are recommended with two doses the first time. That bumps the total to 11 vaccines, and 15 diseases. 

    Trump’s CDC no longer recommends annual COVID-19 vaccination for all children but patients can still receive the vaccine after consulting with a health care provider. The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, approved the vaccine for kids 6 months and older with underlying health conditions. 

    The American Academy of Pediatrics, which publishes its own vaccine schedule, still recommends annual COVID-19 vaccines for all people 6 months and older. If including COVID-19 vaccines, the total vaccines for children comes to 12, with some protection against 16 diseases. 

    The next batch of vaccines starts when children are 11 to 13 years old. Up to four more vaccines are recommended at this age to protect against HPV (human papillomavirus) and meningococcal types A, C, W, and Y. Children in this age group also get a tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis booster called Tdap. If they are at high risk, children this age are also recommended to get the meningococcal B vaccine. 

    When it comes to total doses for children 10 and under, the US vaccine schedule calls for 30 to 52 

    Many childhood vaccines are not given all at once, but spread out over several doses. 

    For example, the CDC recommends three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, one at birth, and one each at 2 and 6 months. Other vaccines are given in up to four to five separate doses. Sometimes the same vaccine can be administered in a two- or three-dose series.

    “For most vaccines, multiple doses are because we’ve shown that fewer doses than whatever is in the schedule is not fully protective,” said Dr. James Campbell, a University of Maryland pediatrician and infectious disease expert. The reasons behind timing and frequency of doses depends on the vaccine. 

    Take DTaP. The first three doses given to infants trains their immune system to recognize and defend against the infection. Those doses do create a protective response, but the more long-lasting protection comes when they get a booster as toddlers. “They make more mature, what we call memory B cells, which means long lasting protection,” said Campbell, “So if a long time after that, they were to be exposed, they would then be able to respond.”

    In the case of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the second recommended dose isn’t meant to boost but rather catch “primary failures,” or the 2% to 7% of people who don’t get an immune response from the first dose. 

    “It’s just a matter of what induces the best immune response,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pediatrician and infectious disease expert.

    We added up all the doses recommended in the childhood vaccine schedule for kids 10 and under. Assuming the most robust dosing series (for example, opting for a four-dose series over a three-dose series), a 10-year-old could receive 30 doses of vaccines. That would be 52 doses if a child receives every single annual flu and COVID-19 vaccine, including two of each their first year. 

    The closest we got to the 80 vaccines that Trump referenced was to count every single dose of every vaccine separately, including each annual flu and COVID-19 shot from birth to age 18. That adds up to 72 doses, half of which are COVID-19 and flu, among all kids, including tweens and teenagers, not only the little kids and babies that Trump talked about. 

    Different vaccine doses are often administered together in one shot

    Fifty-two vaccine doses rarely means 52 shots in a kid’s arm. That’s because many childhood vaccine doses can be delivered in combination vaccines, in which one syringe can contain several vaccines. Other times vaccines can be given orally, like rotavirus, or via nasal spray, like the flu vaccine.  

    Here’s an example: A baby at its two-month appointment is recommended to get doses of six different vaccines. Using a combination vaccine, the child can receive all six vaccinations in the form of two injections and one oral administration by way of drops.

    “We’ve worked for a long time, over decades, to figure out which vaccines can go together in the same needle and syringe and still be safe and still immunogenic and protective, meaning you don’t have any worse protection by putting them together,” Campbell said. 

    Vaccines such as MMR are offered only as a combination in the U.S. 

    “We agree that we want to reduce the number of shots,” said Dr. Flor Muñoz, associate professor of pediatrics, infectious diseases and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine. “We’ve been successful at doing that with combination vaccines to protect against more diseases.”

    Using combination vaccines does not overload children’s bodies with “liquid” as Trump was concerned about though. For infants, the standard is, at most, half a milliliter to a milliliter — or about 1/10 to 1/5 of one teaspoon. “It’s tiny, and babies tolerate it perfectly fine,” Campbell said.

    Our ruling

    On multiple occasions Trump said “little” kids and “little” babies are given “80 different vaccines.”

    According to the current CDC recommended vaccine schedule, a 10-year-old child could receive up to 12 different vaccine formulations, protecting from 16 different diseases. Those vaccines could be administered in up to 52 separate doses, but almost certainly less than 52 injections because many vaccines are delivered in one shot. 

    None of those numbers equals 80 different vaccines. We rate this claim False.

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  • A New Era of Vaccine Federalism

    Soon after, when the legislature formally took up a bill to expand exemptions, three former state health officers released a letter warning that it would “weaken the hard-earned protections keeping our children, families, and communities safe.” Keith Marple, an eighty-one-year-old Republican delegate from Harrison County, urged fellow-lawmakers to vote it down, and spoke of people he’d known with permanent complications of polio. “We’re here today voting not just on one child . . . but on the thousands of children in West Virginia coming into school age,” he declared. “Are we going to protect them? Or are we going to let them take their chances?” This time, the legislation failed.

    West Virginia is a rural state with limited health-care infrastructure; many families don’t have easy access to clinicians, and vaccination requirements create an impetus to engage with the medical system. “There’s a big concern that if we open up exemptions, we’re going to see these diseases roaring back,” Steven Eshenaur, the head of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, told me. The state’s extraordinary success in getting kindergarteners immunized belies a more complicated reality: immunization rates for toddlers, before the mandates apply, are among the lowest in the country. “The writing is on the wall,” Eshenaur said. “If parents don’t have to do it, it’s probably not going to happen.”

    Morrisey hasn’t withdrawn his executive order, which conflicts with the state’s immunization law, and has generated confusion and uncertainty. The state’s health department has granted hundreds of vaccine exemptions, while members of the Board of Education have unanimously decided to effectively ignore those exemptions. (Justice has called Morrisey’s actions “plain out and out nuts.” Morrisey, in turn, derided Justice for holding a “very liberal position.”) In May, some parents filed a lawsuit alleging that the governor’s order placed immunocompromised children at risk; the mother of a ten-year-old boy with a serious genetic disorder said, “Something as simple as a common cold, that is not simple for him.” Then a registered nurse named Miranda Guzman brought a rival lawsuit, after her child’s school refused to honor a religious exemption. Morrisey’s executive order doesn’t require parents to explain their religious objection, and no major religion expressly forbids vaccination. (In the complaint, Guzman says that she believes it’s wrong to needlessly interfere with her child’s “God-given natural immune” system.) “It is precisely religious people who should want to see the citation in scripture—who should want chapter and verse,” Christopher Martin, a public-health professor at West Virginia University, told me. “Your grandparents were Christian, and they got vaccinated, didn’t they?”

    The movement to weaken the state’s decades-old vaccination requirements is enmeshed with Kennedy’s orbit. Aaron Siri, a Kennedy ally, is one of Guzman’s lawyers, and the lawsuit is funded in part by the Informed Consent Action Network, an anti-vaccine organization founded by Kennedy’s former communications director. Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights sent West Virginia an unusual letter, apparently threatening to withhold more than a billion dollars in funding if the state’s health departments fail to grant exemptions outlined in the governor’s executive order. “I stand with @WVGovernor Patrick Morrisey,” Kennedy posted on X.

    West Virginia’s success in keeping children safe from vaccine-preventable illnesses highlights the singular power of immunization. Many of the struggles that children face—obesity, isolation, mental-health challenges—are knotty problems without easy answers. But a single policy can protect them from many infectious threats. With the federal government in retreat, vaccine wars have shifted to the states, and individual leadership can make a pivotal difference. Justice and Morrisey are both Republicans, but one expended political capital to preserve vaccination requirements while the other aims to weaken them. A judge has issued a preliminary injunction, allowing children of the plaintiffs in the Guzman case to attend school this fall, and soon West Virginia’s Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether school officials should follow the state’s legislature or its governor. Its decision will serve as a test of whether an unlikely state can continue to lead the way.

    In the U.S., public-health authority rests largely with the states. Within their borders, states have broad power to issue quarantines, enforce curfews, regulate businesses, require seatbelts, and license medical professionals. For decades, they’ve moved more or less in lockstep on issues of immunization, using the C.D.C.’s recommendations to develop their requirements for entry into schools, day cares, and other communal spaces. Since the nineteen-eighties, every state has required that virtually all school-age children get vaccinated against diseases such as polio, measles, and tetanus. The C.D.C. estimates that routine childhood vaccination in the U.S. has saved more than a million lives, averted hundreds of millions of illnesses, and led to trillions of dollars in societal savings.

    The nation’s vaccination apparatus was already fraying before the rise of MAHA. Since 2019, vaccination rates have fallen in about three-quarters of U.S. counties, according to an NBC News-Stanford analysis, and more than half of them have experienced at least a doubling in the level of vaccine exemptions. Research consistently shows that exemptions result in a higher rate of vaccine-preventable diseases. One study found that kids who received exemptions were twenty-two times more likely to contract measles and nearly six times as likely to get whooping cough.

    Instead of motivating a federal approach to shared problems, America’s increasingly nationalized politics have led to a fracturing of public-health policy. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have all recently issued recommendations that conflict with vaccine guidance from the federal government. This month, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the nation’s largest association of health insurers, announced that through the end of 2026 its member plans would cover all shots recommended by the C.D.C.’s vaccine-advisory panel prior to the recent meeting. Democratic-led states are taking steps to protect access to vaccines. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said that the state would require insurers to cover immunizations recommended by its health department. California, Oregon, and Washington have created an alliance to develop vaccine recommendations, and New Mexico recently authorized pharmacists to deliver COVID-19 shots based on its own guidelines. The state’s health secretary said that it “cannot afford to wait for the federal government to act.”

    Dhruv Khullar

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  • Public Health in America Enters Its Vibes-Based Era

    At last week’s hotly awaited meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes recommendations to HHS on which vaccines America’s children should take and insurance companies should cover, one of its newly appointed members, Dr. Cody Meissner, arguably the most qualified to be there, admitted that he was “still confused.” The committee was weighing whether the MMRV shot that bundles measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccines into one injection should be covered by the government’s Vaccines for Children Program, which provides vaccines at no cost to eligible children. Meissner concluded, “I’m going to abstain because I’m not quite sure what I’m voting for here.”

    Just seven months into Secretary Kennedy’s tenure as the nation’s health secretary, the machinery of our public health infrastructure, with its advisory committees and carefully scrutinized research grants, has become so degraded that it’s becoming challenging for even a well-informed citizen to know what basic healthcare steps to take. When and how should they vaccinate their children? Should they get a COVID-19 booster, and will insurance cover it? Should they “tough it out” if pregnant with a fever and not take Tylenol, as Trump suggested?

    Remarkably, even Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy as health secretary, said at a hearing last Wednesday that the recommendations of the newly constituted ACIP committee, now stacked with vaccine skeptics, could no longer be trusted and lacked legitimacy.

    Secretary Kennedy swept into office with a pledge to use radical transparency and gold-standard science to overhaul America’s broken medical system, throwing aside precedent in favor of unbiased, clear-eyed decisions, free from conflicts of interest.

    But a very different portrait of what drives his decision-making came into view last Wednesday, when Dr. Susan Monarez testified before the Senate Health Committee that she was fired as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 29 days after being confirmed, because she refused to preemptively approve every vaccine recommendation from the ACIP committee, regardless of scientific evidence. (Kennedy refuted the claim, telling the Senate that he fired her because she was “untrustworthy.”)

    Cassidy asked Monarez, “Did [Kennedy] cite any data or science as relates to the potential ACIP recommendations to persuade you to support them?”

    To which Monarez replied, “He responded that there was no science or evidence associated with the childhood vaccine schedule.”

    In this era of vibes-based medicine, government recommendations can be built on the thinnest reeds of evidence and do not need to rest on boring stuff like lengthy research studies and grueling searches for proof. At the autism press conference, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, characterized it as an “aggressive approach…demanded by the president and by the secretary.”

    But as the Coalition of Autism Scientists said in their statement, given that acetaminophen use during pregnancy has not increased over the last two decades alongside rising autism case rates, “It’s clearly not the cause of the increased diagnoses of autism.” It further pointed out, “Fevers during pregnancy are known to increase risk for autism, and that’s why mothers take acetaminophen in the first place.”

    At the press conference, President Trump noticeably struggled to pronounce the word acetaminophen, which led several commentators on X afterward to question whether he should be dispensing medical advice about something he can’t even correctly say.

    Katherine Eban

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  • Trump’s misleading claims about Tylenol and autism

    President Donald Trump warned U.S. women to stop taking Tylenol in pregnancy or risk giving their children autism. The advice came with no clear scientific basis during an hourlong press conference as he stood beside the nation’s top health officials, including the anti-vaccine activist he appointed to lead U.S. health policy.  

    “Taking Tylenol is not good,” Trump said Sept. 22 at the White House with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. beside him.

    Pregnant women have relied on acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol and other medications — for decades to relieve pain and reduce fever. It’s often the only medication OB-GYNs recommend to their patients experiencing high fevers. Untreated fevers can pose health risks for pregnant women and their developing babies. 

    As PolitiFact has reported, research so far does not provide conclusive support for Trump’s warning. Some studies have found an association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism prevalence, while others have found none. None of the research has proven it causes autism in children. Autism was first identified in 1943, more than a decade before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Tylenol for use over-the-counter.

    Trump touted the promise of leucovorin in treating autism. The drug is a form of vitamin B9, also known as folate, traditionally used to combat the toxic effects of certain cancer drugs. He also repeated a number of other wrong or misleading statements about autism and vaccines.

    Trump: “Since 2000, autism rates have surged by much more than 400%.”

    Autism prevalence among children has increased over the years, but Trump’s statement  misses important context about the reasons behind the rise, including the increase in autism screening, diagnosis and awareness.

    In 2000, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated 1-in-150 8-year-olds had autism. In April, the CDC announced that prevalence had risen to 1-in-31. This represents a roughly 383% increase.

    Scientists, including the CDC, have largely attributed the rise to better screening, changes in diagnostic requirements, wider access to services and increased public awareness.

    The CDC based its most recent finding on 2022 surveillance data from 16 sites across 15 states and territories. Autism’s prevalence varied widely by location. The report’s 52 authors attributed those inconsistencies to different ways autism is evaluated and identified, the availability of screenings and financial barriers that can limit families’ access to services.

    In the mid-1990s, researchers began to see autism as a condition that presents in a broad spectrum of symptoms with varying degrees of severity. By 2013, clinicians formally adopted a single autism spectrum disorder diagnosis that includes people with a range of treatment needs.

    Autism advocates have raised awareness of the condition. As more services have become available to autistic children, families increasingly seek out formal testing. A child’s autism spectrum disorder diagnosis makes special education services more accessible and insurance coverage more likely.  

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    Trump: “There are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills that have no autism,” including the Amish and Cubans.

    We rated a similar claim about the Amish Pants on Fire in 2023. Studies have documented cases of autism among Amish children.

    The Amish, a Christian group known for rejecting modern conveniences and technological innovation, tend to have lower-than-average vaccination rates. However, some still vaccinate their children, with rates varying among settlements and different vaccines. 

    University of Maryland genetic epidemiologist Braxton Mitchell, who has studied Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s large Amish communities, previously told PolitiFact that childhood vaccines, which include shots for rotavirus, polio, tetanus and whooping cough, are more accepted among Amish people than other vaccines. 

    Trump also said “there’s a rumor” that Cubans don’t have Tylenol and “have virtually no autism.” 

    Acetaminophen is sold in Cuba under the name “paracetamol,” although shortages of the drug sometimes arise, according to The Latin Times. 

    Cuba also has documented cases of autism. A 2017 report in a peer-reviewed journal focused on Cuban health included a government estimate that 1-in-2,500 Cuban children have autism. That’s likely an undercount because of poor data and surveillance, it said. 

    Trump: “Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born hepatitis B.”

    That’s misleading. 

    Hepatitis B can be transmitted sexually, but it’s not the only way. It can be spread through direct contact with blood or from a mother to child during delivery. More mundane household contact can also result in transmission. Small amounts of dried blood on innocuous household items such as nail clippers, razors or toothbrushes could be enough. 

    Around half of people with hepatitis B are unaware they are infected and contagious. The vaccine dose is given to newborns within 24 hours of delivery because hepatitis B infections are extra dangerous for babies. Infected infants have a 90% chance of developing the disease’s more dangerous chronic form, which can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer. A quarter of those babies will go on to die prematurely from the disease when they become adults. 

    Trump: “Don’t take Tylenol. There’s no downside…don’t take it if you’re pregnant.”

    This is wrong. Acetaminophen reduces fever, and fever during pregnancy has been linked to birth defects and other health problems.

    Untreated fever and pain during pregnancy has significant maternal and infant health risks, including miscarriage and preterm birth, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

    Doctors have also said that abstaining from needed medication could leave pregnant women in a negative emotional and mental state with worsening underlying conditions.

    Trump: “Now, you know what mercury is, you know what aluminum is. Who the hell wants that pumped into a body?”

    Vaccine critics often cite aluminum and mercury as problematic vaccine ingredients. But these blanket statements leave out important details about the chemistry and the quantity used. Health officials warn pregnant and breastfeeding women against consuming too much mercury, which can be found in seafood in safe and hazardous levels. But those warnings are about methylmercury, which is different from the kind of mercury used in vaccines. 

    Thimerosal, a preservative that prevents bacteria and fungal growth in multi-dose influenza vaccine vials, contains ethylmercury. Unlike methylmercury, which can accumulate and cause harm, ethylmercury is broken down by the body and excreted quickly making it less likely to cause harm.

    Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines, including all childhood vaccines, as of 2001, according to the CDC. Numerous scientific studies have found no link between thimerosal and autism.

    Some vaccines contain a small amount of aluminium to enhance the body’s immune response. Although large amounts of aluminum can be harmful, vaccines contain less aluminum than infants get from their natural surroundings. 

    According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, babies get about 4.4 mg of aluminum from vaccines in their first six months; they get around 7 mg from breastmilk and around 38 mg from formula in the same time. 

    Trump: Questioning how vaccines are administered to children, “Maybe it’s the doctors they get, maybe more money.”

    Trump advocated for childhood vaccines to be split up into multiple doses — a practice that exists for most childhood vaccines. As he spoke, he questioned if doctors have a financial incentive when it comes to administering vaccines. 

    A close look at the process by which vaccines are administered shows pediatric practices make little profit — and sometimes lose money — on vaccines.

    Pediatric practices might make money providing vaccines to privately-insured children, but many also participate in a program that vaccinates children for free. Overall, most practices likely break even or lose money.

    Doctors told us that evidence-based science and medicine and a desire to keep kids healthy drives doctors’ childhood vaccination recommendations.

    Staff Writer Madison Czopek contributed to this report.

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