Do not trust CDC on vaccines

After the CDC publicly backed away from the stance that vaccines definitively do not cause autism last week, Boston Public Health Commissioner told residents to not trust the federal government’s preeminent health agency.

“The statements on the CDC’s webpage are now false,” Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu MD, MPH wrote in a statement posted to Facebook and Bluesky. “Under our current federal administration, the CDC is no longer a reliable and trustworthy source of information regarding vaccination.”

The CDC’s website was updated Wednesday to instead say that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is not “evidence-based.” 

“Studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities,” the site now says. “HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”

The change did not go through normal scientific clearance, a resigned CDC leader told STAT News. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who canceled $500 million in vaccine research in August, then personally took credit for the change, telling The New York Times that the phrase “Vaccines do not cause autism” is “not supported by science.” 

However, the secretary acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and separate studies of mercury-based preservative thimerosal had found no link to autism, the Times reported.

“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made,’ is just a lie,” said Kennedy, whose hand-picked advisory committee adopted new restrictions on childhood vaccines in September.

Ojikutu, also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, rebuked Kennedy’s skepticism in her statement. 

“There is no one single cause of autism. Research exploring factors that may be associated with autism is already underway,” Ojikutu wrote. “But we know definitively that vaccines do not cause autism. Numerous studies have demonstrated that vaccines are not associated with an increased risk of autism.” 

Vaccines are credited with saving more than 150 million lives in the last 50 years, Ojikutu said, most of which were infants. 

“We are a trustworthy source of public health information, and we will continue to disseminate accurate information to our local communities because that is what they deserve,” Ojikutu said. “For reliable, trustworthy information on vaccines, do not visit cdc.gov.”

Molly Farrar is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on education, politics, crime, and more.