Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 10 that recommends fewer childhood vaccines. It also called to split the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot into three individual jabs.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) currently recommends 18 childhood vaccines.
Under the order, vaccines for Covid-19, flu, rotavirus, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and bacterial meningitis would no longer be universally recommended.
“Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today,” Trump said.
“In those times, people were much healthier and of course the high rates of autism now observed did not exist.”
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“There are some groups who have virtually no problem with autism”, he continued. “They’re groups that aren’t big into the world of vaccines”.
Trump also suggested that the MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal” if given as one dose and that the vaccination “looks the size of a bottle of soda”. A single dose of MMR is 0.5ml, according to the FDA.
When probed for evidence of the “lethal” claim by a reporter, the president said, “what I’ve heard is that there are some people that say it is that way”.
Confusion and fear
President of the AAP Dr Andrew Racine told NBC that the order is going to cause “confusion and fear”.
Multiple studies have concluded no link between vaccines and autism, including a 2019 study analysing data from over 650,000 Danish children and a study of 2.6 million US children, where researchers found no association between the MMR vaccination before age two and childhood autism.
The order only has the power to serve as guidance, not a legal mandate, as childhood vaccines in the US fall under the remit of state government, rather than being set at a federal level.
This week, Dr Alison Cave, chief safety officer at the MHRA, said “multiple large, well-conducted studies involving millions of children worldwide have consistently demonstrated that there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism in children.”
“All vaccines approved for use in the UK undergo a rigorous assessment of their safety, quality and efficacy and once approved for use, we continuously monitor their safety through robust surveillance systems, real-world data, and international evidence.”
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It comes after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency reaffirmed in January that there is “no link” between paracetamol use during pregnancy and autism in children after Trump’s claims that the two were associated in September.
And it follows Trump’s initial calls for an investigation into the link between vaccines and autism in December 2024.
