The facts are available, if you look for them
By Matthew Herper, STAT, Image: Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images, February 3, 2025
Vaccines do not cause autism. You’ve almost certainly read that before — probably hundreds of times. But many people do not believe it, perhaps because too often it is repeated without a real explanation of how we know that.
So here is an attempt to offer that explanation.
Of course, the issue is in the news again because Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has spent a career arguing that vaccines do cause autism, as well as other disorders. During Kennedy’s testimony before a Senate committee last week, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who is also a physician, pushed him to “reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification” that vaccines do not cause autism.
“If the data is there, I will absolutely do that,” RFK Jr. said. “Not only will I do that, but I will apologize for any statements that misled people otherwise.”
The data are there — and have been for years. In fact, here they are.
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