RFK Jr. Refuses to Say Vaccines Don't Cause Autism
In his second hearing, RFK Jr. refused to say whether or not vaccines cause autism. It is painfully obvious they don't.
RFK Jr. is at it again. While yesterday’s confirmation hearing was a disgrace, today’s hearing took the cake with an absurd moment with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). During his time to question Kennedy, Senator Sanders asked him point blank if vaccines cause autism. RFK Jr. refused to rule out the possibility despite ample evidence and research showing that vaccines don’t cause autism. Even as other senators pressed RFK Jr. to acknowledge basic reality, RFK Jr. continued to avoid said reality. This failure by Kennedy to speak plainly about his well-established beliefs shows what his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, said about him. He is a predator and dangerous.
Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism. Get Over It
Despite ridiculous claims by anti-vaccine advocates, the idea that vaccines cause autism has long been debunked as hokum. When Andrew Wakefield first brought forward the claim in a 1998 study, it seemingly shook the world of medicine. Wakefield, then a doctor in the United Kingdom, argued that the MMR vaccine increased the risk of developing autism and would later argue that trace amounts of measles were found in the guts of children who received the shot. However, other researchers investigated the claim and found no evidence or link between autism and vaccines. By 2004, ten of Wakefield’s fellow authors retracted their names from the study, and by 2010, Wakefield was exposed for falsifying medical information.
In the simplest of terms, the vaccine-autism scare was based on a deliberate fraud by Wakefield. Despite this, RFK Jr. repeatedly spread the idea that vaccines cause autism, up until the recent day, according to the Washington Post.
An analysis by The Washington Post showed that RFK Jr. also argued for altering the vaccine schedule based on race, asserting that there should be a separate schedule for Black and white people, ignoring that there is no basis for doing so. Even as he continued to avoid responsibility for his past comments on vaccines, the Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that RFK Jr. founded, praised his performance. Presumably, because it helps advance their agenda of spreading medical misinformation.
RFK Jr. is Dangerous
All of this propaganda from the Trump administration and RFK Jr. should not distract the American people from the simple reality that vaccines save lives. They have been instrumental in keeping Americans safe from infectious diseases, and the people who advocate for the removal or restriction of vaccines are dangerous to that progress. If RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine lunacy is permitted in government, and the American people accept it as credible, innocent people can and will die. If there is anything resembling reason left in the Republican Party, then they will reject Kennedy outright, but I sincerely doubt they are decent enough to do their jobs and reject him.
