President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week that he says will address rising autism rates, but advocates and medical experts counter that the move is dangerous and his comments are misleading.
Trump issued an order recommending that children receive vaccines for fewer diseases and that those shots be spaced out among more doctor’s visits. He cited increased autism prevalence as the reason.
“Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today,” Trump said. “And of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So there’s a reason for such epidemic rates of autism. And we’re going to bring it back to much closer to where it was.”
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The Trump order urges states to implement the recommendations in any school vaccine requirements, but it’s unclear whether there is an appetite to adopt the changes.
Spacing out childhood vaccines would require parents to make several additional visits to the pediatrician with their young children, but Trump insisted that the change would be worth it.
“It’s inconvenient,” Trump said. “But, it’s something that I think will have a huge impact on autism.”
The comments drew alarm, however, from experts who noted that Trump cited no new evidence to support any changes to the vaccine schedule.
“Dozens of studies involving millions of people show there is no link between vaccines and autism, and yet federal leaders continue to promote this outdated, disproven idea to scare families,” said Dr. Andrew D. Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Today’s executive order will do nothing to support families of children with autism or advance understanding of the condition. The only purpose of this announcement is to sow confusion so that more people doubt the importance of vaccines.”
At the event with Trump this week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, insisted that autism must be the result of an environmental exposure. Of the 13 research awards handed out through the National Institutes of Health’s Autism Data Science Initiative, five will consider whether vaccines are a factor, he said.
In addition, Kennedy indicated that another “major new initiative focused on foundational causes and biology of autism and on better diagnostics, treatments, technologies and tools for people with autism and their families” is coming next month from the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
“We will examine every biologically plausible hypothesis and leave no legitimate scientific question unexplored,” Kennedy said, noting that the president is “impatient” and pledging to move forward with “urgency.”
The continuing focus on vaccines, however, threatens to divert limited resources from research that could inform the causes of autism or improve life for people with the developmental disability, advocates say.
“While the government spends time trying to prove something that has already been disproven, autistic people are still waiting for the support we actually need,” the Autistic Self Advocacy Network said in a statement. The group said those needs include access to healthcare and home and community-based services as well as accessible housing, education and employment, among others.
The Autism Science Foundation said that dozens of studies looking at vaccines and autism have already ruled out a link. This includes research on both vaccine ingredients and the body’s response to immunizations. In addition, there is no evidence to suggest that spacing out vaccines prevents autism, the group said.
At the same time, hundreds of genes have been associated with autism and about 20% of people on the spectrum have a specific genetic variant that’s identified as a cause of their condition, according to the foundation.
“The issue is not that the science isn’t done. The science is done. The issue is that some people choose not to believe what the studies clearly show because the results don’t conform to their beliefs,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation.
