CDC Says ‘No Evidence’ to Support Claim that Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism

After decades of claiming unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday updated its webpage on vaccines and autism to state that there is no evidence supporting the claim that vaccines don’t cause autism.

The webpage previously stated there is no link between vaccines and autism. It now says, “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.”

“Though the cause of autism is likely to be multi-factorial, the scientific foundation to rule out one potential contributor entirely has not been established,” the webpage states, adding that studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism “have been ignored by health authorities.”

In a series of posts on X, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) welcomed the announcement, calling it “the biggest public health reversal of our lifetime” and saying it “confirms what parents have been shouting for decades.”

Andrew Nixon, communications director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told The Defender in a statement that the changes “reflect gold standard, evidence-based science.”

In March, the CDC announced it would investigate potential links between vaccines and autism, promising to “leave no stone unturned.”

CHD CEO Mary Holland today said, “The dam is already breaking.” She added:

“What the new information on the CDC website shows is that there never was science behind the claim that ‘vaccines do not cause autism.’ That was tobacco science, and vaccine science is tobacco science — all marketing, no substance. Now the CDC is starting to be on the side of truth when it comes to vaccines.”

In an interview today on CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD,” Holland said she believes vaccines cause autism and are “the primary cause of the autism epidemic.”

Researchers who have studied the potential link between vaccines and autism also applauded the CDC’s updated messaging.

“Honesty at last,” said Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who published a study in The Lancet in 1998 suggesting a possible link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The paper was retracted in 2010 following intense criticism from the mainstream scientific community.

Wakefield called the CDC’s update “another feather in the cap of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his quest for truth and integrity.”

Phrase ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ remains — with an asterisk

The updated webpage still includes the phrase “Vaccines do not cause autism,” marked with an asterisk, to explain that the CDC left the text in place under an agreement with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) during Kennedy’s confirmation process earlier this year.

Cassidy — a physician and chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee — voted to confirm Kennedy in February, saying he and Kennedy would maintain a “close collaborative relationship.”

Holland said it’s unclear whether the new CDC language will affect Cassidy’s stance toward Kennedy, but she noted that HELP does not have formal oversight authority over the health secretary. Holland said:

“It’s hard to say if this will cause trouble. Cassidy is being primaried in April in Louisiana. There are several other contenders. The Secretary reports to the President alone — the Senate HELP Committee that Cassidy chairs does not have formal authority over the HHS Secretary.”

Holland said the updated statements, including the asterisked disclaimer, could mislead the public.

“The messaging is confusing. The negative — ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ — is no longer defended, but it’s not taken down. And the converse — that ‘vaccines do cause autism’ — has not yet been stated by CDC,” she said.

John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said any confusion reflects “decades of manufacturing of studies that do not prove what they are claimed to prove — and an enormous unmet need for unbiased research.”

He added:

“The lack of evidence to make this claim has been obvious to anyone without bias who wanted to look. Fortunately, we now have leadership in Washington that is willing to put science and the health of American children below the agendas of powerful political forces.”

Cassidy’s office did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.

Spreading misinformation — or correcting it?

Some mainstream media outlets and establishment scientists framed the CDC’s change as a blow to science. The Washington Post reported that “the federal government under Kennedy is legitimizing false claims about vaccines and autism after decades attempting to debunk them.”

Reuters said the CDC adopted “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views,” which it argued run counter to “decades of science.”

Former CDC vaccine chief Dr. Demetre Daskalakis — who resigned in August after publicly opposing Kennedy’s policies — also weighed in, posting on X that the “weaponization of the voice of CDC is getting worse.”

Daskalakis told the Post that the “CDC cannot currently be trusted as a scientific voice” and accused both the agency and Kennedy of “validating false claims.”

In a September Fox News interview, Kennedy said Daskalakis obstructed an investigation into 25 child deaths possibly tied to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Holland said the CDC’s revised language corrects misinformation rather than spreads it. She added:

“Many parents of adults with autism, like many on our staff and me, never believed we would see this moment in our lifetimes. It has been a long, difficult struggle, caring for children and adults with autism, and coping with the social denial, gaslighting, mockery, estrangement and abandonment.”

Other health freedom advocates agreed, arguing that mainstream narratives within media and science reflect deep conflicts of interest with Big Pharma.

“Take a long look at who pushes back hardest,” said Kim Rossi, managing editor of Age of Autism. “The time has come to acknowledge every factor that leads to an autism diagnosis.”

Gilmore pointed specifically to the role the media plays. “Corporate media will continue to follow the line that their pharmaceutical advertisers pay them to follow, regardless of what the evidence shows,” he said.

Holland said the CDC’s update vindicates people who have long argued that vaccines likely contribute to autism. She said:

“While it is rewarding to see this sea change happen, it is most definitely a bittersweet ‘victory’ to understand that our government, to which we owe allegiance, has been lying to us for decades, and that our children are the innocent victims of the government’s lies.”

RFK Jr.: People claiming no vaccine-autism link ‘have been lying to you’

Before this week’s update, the CDC’s website claimed that a 2012 National Academy of Medicine review and a 2013 CDC study had debunked any claims of a link between vaccination and autism.

Speaking at a Turning Point USA event at George Washington University on Monday, Kennedy said, “The people who told you that have been lying to you.”

In response to a student’s question, Kennedy said the studies relied on a single vaccine and contained major flaws. He added:

“The only studies that were done were MMR studies, and they were all epidemiological studies …

“… None of them did what you would want to do if you actually wanted the answer, which is to compare health outcomes in a vaccinated group against health outcomes in an unvaccinated group.”

In January, a preprint co-authored by Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, found that the CDC’s claim that “vaccines do not cause autism” relies on studies that don’t adequately support that conclusion.

Gilmore said many scientists have been reluctant to investigate a possible link between vaccines and autism because of the professional fallout Wakefield faced.

Gilmore said:

“It is well known that publishing a paper that shows an association between vaccines and autism is career suicide for any scientist foolhardy enough to do so. We now have a new word, ‘Wakefielded,’ to describe the professional lynching that follows from this type of research.”

At a Senate hearing in September, attorney Aaron Siri revealed a long-hidden study of 18,000 children in the Henry Ford Health system’s insurance database that found vaccinated children were more likely to develop chronic disease than unvaccinated children. He said the authors, who strongly support vaccination, withheld the study because they feared for their jobs and reputations.

In a post on X, CHD noted that other scientists who reported evidence of a link between vaccines and autism have been censored, including CDC epidemiologist William Thompson, Ph.D., who in 2013 identified a possible connection between the MMR vaccine and autism and later alleged that the CDC “shredded” the records.

‘Virtually inevitable’ that new studies will show vaccines cause brain injury

At Monday’s Turning Point USA event, Kennedy said HHS is now prioritizing autism research that compares health outcomes between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

“That’s what we need to do, and those are the studies we’re doing now,” Kennedy said.

The updated CDC webpage now states that HHS is conducting a “comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”

During a White House event in September, Kennedy and President Donald Trump said HHS would investigate all possible causes of autism — including vaccines — and announced that Tylenol use during pregnancy may contribute to the condition.

At the same event, Kennedy and Trump announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) officially launched the Autism Data Science Initiative. First announced in April, the initiative funds 13 research teams to study the causes of autism.

Trump cited data showing a rapid rise in autism diagnoses. Earlier this year, the CDC reported that 1 in 31 8-year-old children had an autism diagnosis in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 in 2020 and 1 in 1,000 in the 1990s.

Earlier in September, the White House’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released a strategy report with 128 recommendations for addressing the U.S. chronic disease epidemic, including studying the root causes of autism.

Holland said it’s “virtually inevitable” that these studies “will show definitively that vaccines cause brain injury, the behaviors of which are called ‘autism.’” She added:

“Increasingly, it’s clear that ‘autism’ as a term is vastly too broad and not particularly helpful. We need to start talking about different forms of brain injury at different levels. Enormous efforts in research and remediation are warranted. Millions have been affected by the government’s lies, neglect and cowardice.”

Last month, a comprehensive review of 300 studies on autism’s causes identified vaccination as the leading “modifiable risk factor,” with multiple early-childhood vaccines emerging as the most significant modifiable factor for the onset of autism.

In January, a peer-reviewed study published in Science, Public Health Policy and the Law examined 47,155 9-year-old children in the Florida Medicaid program and found that vaccinated children had a 170% higher likelihood of an autism diagnosis and a 212% higher likelihood of other neurodevelopmental disorders than unvaccinated children.

In April, the NIH announced plans to use public and private health records to further study autism.

Watch CHD’s Mary Holland on CHD.TV: