Don't trust the CDC while RFK Jr. is in charge

The HHS secretary, a notorious anti-vaxxer, is now posting his crank views on CDC's website

I’ve been worried about this for a long time. Back in January 2017, just after Trump was elected for the first time, I wrote a column entitled “Trump and conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. meet for anti-vax lovefest.” At the time, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was hoping to be put in charge of a vaccine commission, and it was crystal clear that RFK Jr.’s goal was to take vaccines away from people. Fortunately, it didn’t happen at that time.

Well, now RFK Jr. is actually in charge, and the inmates are running the asylum.

As a result, we can no longer trust the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) when it gives out advice. This is a tragically sad state of affairs, because the CDC has served for decades as a reliable go-to source for scientific, epidemiological, and medical information about infectious diseases.

Not anymore. When you put an anti-science ideologue in charge of health care, which is what Trump has done, this is what we get.

The latest egregious attack on our health appears on the CDC’s webpage on autism and vaccines, which was updated on November 19, 2025. For many years, this page explained that the evidence from dozens of studies involving millions of children was clear: vaccines do not cause autism.

The page still has the headline “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism*” but with a giant asterisk affixed to the end. At the bottom, the asterisk is explained: the headline remains unchanged because RFK Jr. promised, during his confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, that he wouldn’t remove that statement.

But it seems he had his fingers crossed when he gave that sworn testimony. In the text following the headline, the CDC website makes the opposite case. Not surprisingly, it’s a re-hash of half a dozen tired, illegitimate anti-vax talking points that I’ve been hearing from RFK Jr. and others for the past two decades. All of them have been thoroughly rebutted, time and time again, but RFK Jr. just doesn’t care.

Foremost among these talking points is the claim that “scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism.” This illustrates one of the core strategies of anti-vaxxers (and science denialists more generally): first you claim that science hasn’t proven a negative claim, and then watch the scientists squirm, because they know you’re right.

Hah. Let me illustrate the fallacy here with a few examples:

• Scientific studies haven’t ruled out the possibility that drinking milk causes autism.

• Scientific studies haven’t disproven the theory that riding in a stroller causes autism.

• Scientific studies haven’t disproven the claim that breakfast cereals cause autism.

I could go on. This line of argument suffers from a giant flaw: scientifically speaking, it’s impossible to prove a negative. Let’s consider my first “theory” above, that drinking milk causes autism. I’ve no doubt that a large proportion of children with autism drank milk before their diagnosis–so maybe that’s the cause! Now I can ask, where are the studies that compared milk-drinkers to non-milk-drinkers to “prove” my theory was wrong?

Well, there aren’t any such studies. But you don’t get to claim your theory is correct just because no one has ever DISPROVEN it. In science, the onus is on those who make the claim to first show good, solid evidence that it’s true. If that evidence is compelling, then (and only then) is it worth looking for more evidence to confirm or refute the original claim.

There was never a whit of evidence that vaccines cause autism. The link was originally asserted in a fraudulent 1998 paper in The Lancet, a paper that was later retracted when the fraud was discovered. The lead author of that paper, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license and forged a new career as an anti-vaxxer.

I’ve written many columns about that original fraud, and how Wakefield manipulated the data, lied to his co-authors, and took large payments from a law firm that wanted to file lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. I won’t repeat all of that here, because now we have a bigger problem: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose only claim to fame is his last name, is now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), which puts him in charge of the CDC, the NIH, and the FDA.

In an interview with the New York Times, RFK Jr. admitted that he personally directed the CDC to replace the text on its website with the anti-vaccine misinformation that was posted there as of 19 November 2025.

In case anyone needs reminding, Kennedy has zero medical and scientific training. His only professional training is as a lawyer. But his main claim to fame, prior to becoming HHS Secretary, was that he is one of the world’s most effective spreaders of misinformation about vaccines. Four years ago, I called for de-platforming the “Disinformation Dozen,” a group of 12 people who together have been responsible for a whopping 65% of the anti-vaccine disinformation online. RFK Jr. was number 2 on that list.

After the phenomenal success of the Covid-19 vaccines, and especially the amazing mRNA vaccines, I hoped that the anti-vaccine movement might lose some of its energy. But alas, we weren’t so lucky.

In 2023, RFK Jr. used his notoriety to launch a self-delusional campaign for the US presidency, which never had a chance of success. Once his campaign collapsed, the lifelong Democrat discovered that with sufficient fawning, he might gain Trump’s favor and obtain a powerful position in government.

That’s just what he did. Almost exactly a year ago, when it became apparent that Trump might actually nominate RFK Jr., I wrote that:

Children will die if RFK Jr. is put in charge of HHS.

I was very much hoping to be proved wrong, but I fear this is now happening. Vaccine rates have plummeted in school districts across the country, and three people – all unvaccinated – have died of measles this year. The measles vaccine is highly effective and incredibly safe, and yet people are refusing to give it to their kids. When asked why, they almost always repeat anti-vaccine misinformation.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, on November 23 an anti-vaxxer was appointed second-in-command at the CDC. This is a guy who halted the vaccine program in the state of Louisiana, and later promoted the false claims that both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin can treat Covid-19. I expect the CDC website to get even less reliable in the coming months.

But wait, it gets even worse! On November 28, the FDA’s Vinay Prasad announced that the FDA would be restricting vaccine access because, he falsely implied, vaccines had not been adequately tested for safety. In a memo leaked to the NY Times, Prasad claimed that “Covid-19 vaccines have killed American children.” This alarming anti-vaccine action from the FDA, along with the misleading claims accompanying it, will undoubtedly lead to far fewer people getting vaccines of any type.

So now we cannot trust the FDA either. But this is hardly surprising: with RFK Jr. in charge, anyone who tries to advocate for the use of vaccines as a public health benefit is being silenced or fired, as happened with his first CDC director, Susan Monarez.

I do wonder what could be motivating the scientists and doctors who now run the CDC, FDA, and NIH (and who therefore work for Kennedy). Many of them have impressive credentials, including the FDA’s Vinay Prasad, who was a Professor at UC San Francisco, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who was a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (where I too am a professor), and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, who has both an M.D. and a Ph.D. (in economics).

All of these guys are much too smart to be fooled by anti-vaccine misinformation, aren’t they? Surely they all know that vaccines are the single greatest advance, in terms of the number of lives saved, in the history of medicine. And yet they are enabling the most damaging public health policies in the history of the U.S. Is the lure of political power so strong that they can ignore the obvious damage they are doing? I wish I knew.