Why People Believe Debunked Claims about Vaccines and Autism

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walks past President-elect Donald Trump during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena Glendale, Ariz. on Aug. 23. Credit - Tom Brenner—The Washington Post/Getty Images

In a recent interview with NBC, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that his nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will investigate the relationship between early childhood vaccines and autism. Kennedy has a long history of blaming vaccines for autism. Now, he and his lawyer, Aaron Siri, are petitioning for the government to revoke approval for the polio vaccine and pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines.

These unfounded attacks on vaccines pose serious threats to public health, risking the spread of preventable diseases and misinformation. Medical scientists have made it clear: vaccines save lives and do not cause autism. Yet, many Americans share Kennedy’s skepticism and question the importance of early childhood vaccines. For instance, a 2024 survey by Gallup suggests that the share of Americans who consider childhood vaccines to be “extremely important” has declined from 58% in 2019 to just 40%. The same survey found that 13% of Americans believe vaccines can cause autism, up from 6% in 2015, and roughly half of Americans are unsure if vaccines cause autism. Just 36% understand that vaccines do not cause autism.

So why does this myth persist? The reason isn’t because people are uninformed or want children to get sick. It is because for many, the idea of a vaccine-autism link gives them hope.

A cause for autism implies a cure for autism

As a medical sociologist, I spent three years studying parents of autistic children, practitioners, and researchers who are convinced that early childhood vaccines cause autism. Like Kennedy, they believe that children are born non-autistic and then made autistic by vaccines and other environmental triggers.

This belief tragically portrays autistic people as having been born "typical" but then "broken." Although debunked, this causal theory is incredibly appealing to families because it suggests that autism can be reversed with alternative and experimental treatments that address vaccine "injury." Believing in a vaccine-autism link, parents access an ever-expanding market of questionable products that claim to mitigate autistic symptoms—specialized diets, supplements, and riskier treatments, like chelation and parasite therapy. For these consumers, the hope of autism “recovery” depends on vaccines causing autism.

The reality is, autism is not something that can be cured and researchers do not know the precise cause. In this context of multiple unknowns, the increasing prevalence of autism evokes urgency and fear—feelings Trump has historically capitalized on.

In a recent interview with TIME, Trump expressed concerns about a rise in diagnosed cases of autism.  “The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible,” he said. “If you look at things that are happening, there's something causing it.”

And this is not the only time Trump has made such comments. “If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100,” he once told NBC.

Trump’s numbers here are inaccurate. In 2000, autism impacted an estimated 1 in 150 children in the United States; today, it is 1 in 36 children. This steep increase can be largely attributed to the closure of residential institutions which many people with autism were once sent to, greater public awareness about autism, and expansion of the diagnostic criteria. In other words, measuring the true rise of autism is complicated and not based on biology alone. A vaccine-autism link is attractive because it would simplify the challenge at hand.

If vaccines cause autism, then we would have a prevention strategy and new directions for treatment research—but vaccines do not cause autism. Continued research into this imaginary relationship would be wasteful and is not likely to satisfy vaccine skeptics. Moreover, the randomized, double blind control trials that vaccine skeptics have demanded are unethical because they would require child participants to “receive less than the recommended immunization schedule.” This would put them at risk of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases. Humoring conspiracy theorists serves to distract from the fundamental problem: we live in a country that makes being disabled dangerous.

The challenges autistic people face

When talking to parents of autistic kids, mothers often tell me that one of their greatest fears is dying because who will care for their autistic child after they are gone?

Unfortunately, their fears are not unfounded. Earlier this year, 15-year-old autistic teen, Ryan Gainer, was shot by police because he was waving a gardening tool. Tragically, other autistic children, particularly Black autistic boys, have experienced similar fatal encounters. By the age twenty-one, 20% of autistic youths will have had a police encounter. Moreover, autistic people are more likely to experience victimization through bullying, child abuse, sexual assault and rape, and other crimes. Among young autistic adults, only 58% are employed and of that group, most work part time in low-wage jobs. To make matters worse, it is still legal to pay disabled employees less than minimum wage. Scholars have long pointed to the inadequacies of disability services. While allocation for services and supports research has doubled between 2014 and 2020, it still makes up only 8% of autism research spending. The point is: our political priorities are broken, not autistic people. And it is difficult to fix our political priorities.

The vaccine-autism link is more than a myth—it is a wish. For some parents of autistic children, a vaccine-autism relationship is tantalizing because it nurtures the hope of recovering from autism. These parents recognize that the U.S. is not going to make space for disabled people. In their calculation, their chances of reversing vaccine injury with unsupported, experimental treatments are better than convincing policy makers to care for disabled people. We don’t need to squander resources studying a phenomenon that does not exist. If Trump and Kennedy actually cared about autism, then they would be asking how our policies can promote the inclusion and safety of disabled people.

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