Disease Control and Prevention Centers plan to conduct a large -scale study to review whether there is a relationship between vaccines and autism, federal officials said on Friday.
Dozens of scientific studies have failed to find information on a link. However, the CDC now falls under the responsibility of Minister of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long expressed skepticism about vaccine safety and has committed to reviewing the data.
“As President Trump said in his joint address in Congress, the percentage of autism in American children has soared. The CDC will not leave any stone in its mission to understand exactly what is happening,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
Mr Nixon did not offer details of the scope or methods of the project. The news news was mentioned for the first time on Friday morning by Reuters.
In the pursuit of the study, the CDC defies the wishes of the Senate Health Committee Chairman, Senator Bill Cassidy, who said this week that further investigation into any alleged relationship between vaccines and autism would be a waste of money and withdrawing his attention.
“It has been studied exhaustively,” said Mr. Cassidy, a doctor, during a confirmation of confirmation for Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, President Trump’s candidate to lead the National Institutes of Health. “The more we pretend that this is an issue, the more we will have children who die from diseases that can be affected by vaccines.”
While Dr. Bhattacharya said he was “convinced” by existing research that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism, he suggested that more research could mitigate the fears of nerve parents. Mr Kennedy’s supporters and the allies of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement praised the administration’s decision.
“Both Trump and Kennedy maintain their speech,” said Zen Honeycutt, founder of non -profit mothers across America. “We hope that the previous administration had made the health and epidemic of autism as a priority.”
News of the scheduled CDC study comes in the middle of a rapidly spreading measles event in West Texas, driven by low vaccination rates, which has infected about 200 people and killed two. Last year, about 82 % of the kindergarten population in the prefecture that has been most affected had received the measles vaccine, well below the 95 % required to prevent outbreaks. According to Texas health officials, 80 of those infected were unacceptable and in 113 had “an unknown vaccination regime”.
Asked in an interview about CDC’s plans to review whether autism is connected to vaccination, Xavier Becerra, Health Secretary to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said, “All I will say is that the CDC can do a lot of things. They can walk and chew chew
The rate of autism diagnoses in the United States is undoubtedly increasing. About 1 in 36 children have one, according to data that the CDC recently collected from 11 states, compared to 1 in 150 children in 2000. Researchers attribute most of the increased awareness of the disorder and changes in the way it is classified by medical professionals. But scientists say there are other factors, genetic and environmental, who could play a role.
“There are so many promising drivers for the cause or causes of autism,” Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, told an email. “Vaccines are not one of them. Since there are limited resources from CDC, this is a sad day for children with autism.”
Like Mr Kennedy, Mr Trump has long adopted the idea that vaccines are somehow linked to increased autism rates. He first set the idea in 2007 and returned to it as a Presidential Candidate in 2015. He has also said that he will support Mr Kennedy to review the issue, more recently citing the percentage of autism diagnoses during his Congress in Congress on Tuesday.
“We will find out what it is, and there is no one better than Bobby and all the people who work with you,” he said. “Bobby, good luck. It’s a very important job. ”
Mr Kennedy won the confirmation of the Senate as Health Secretary from the narrowest margins. Eventually, he won largely winning Mr Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana, who specialized in liver disease as a doctor and a strong supporter of vaccines. During the second day of confirmation hearing, Senator Cassidy expressed deep concern about Mr Kennedy’s past of vaccine and reported a study of 1.2 million children, found no relationship between vaccines and autism.
Mr Kennedy shot, saying that a new study “showed the opposite”. A review of the New York Times study found that it was funded, compiled and published by a network of skeptic vaccines near Mr Kennedy. When the study was rejected by various medical journals, Andrew Wakefield, the author of a study in 1998 that connects vaccines to autism, helped find a home in a magazine published by various vaccine critics.
Following his confirmation, Mr Kennedy’s first speech in his staff included a promise to study the rise of chronic diseases in the United States, including the review of the vaccine timetable or the suite of young children.
Christina Jewett They contributed reports.
