Donald Trump last week (December 8) suggested that newly appointed US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr – popularly known as RFK Jr – will be “working with” drug companies to explore the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism.
“When you talk about autism…and you look at the amount we have today versus 20 or 25 years ago, it’s pretty scary,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News.
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“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” he added.
“If you take a look at autism [and] go back 25 years, [it] was almost non-existent, it was almost 1 out of 100,000, and now it’s close to 1 out of 100 – what’s happening?” he asked.
“That’s a pretty bad number,” Trump told the broadcaster, claiming that “something is going on”.
“We have to find out”
Despite being repeatedly told in the interview that studies have shown there is no link between vaccines and autism, Trump stressed that “somebody has to find out”.
The US President-elect acknowledged that he isn’t sure “if it’s vaccines” that are causing a rise in autism cases, noting that “people are looking at a lot of different things”.
“I want them to look at everything,” he added.
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“Going back 25 years, studies show that there is no link between vaccines and autism, yet it sounds like you are open to the possibility of [RFK Jr] looking at getting rid of them?”, NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker asked.
“I’m open to anything, somebody has to find out,” Trump said, adding that “the drug companies are going to be working with RFK Jr”.
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But the President-elect stressed that he’s “not against vaccines”, adding that the polio vaccine was “the greatest thing”.
“I think certain vaccines are incredible, but maybe some aren’t and if they aren’t, we have to find out,” he added.
An “interesting guy”
Trump also told the broadcaster that he had recently spoken with “the top drug companies” and RFK Jr to discuss drug pricing and vaccines, among other things.
“We’re going to reduce [drug] prices because the middleman makes more money than the drug companies”, he said.
“I think a lot of good things are going to come from [RFK Jr]”, Trump added, saying he’s an “interesting guy”.
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“He’s not going to upset the system…he’s not looking to reinvent the wheel totally, but when you look at the numbers, we really don’t have a very healthy country,” he said.
RFK Jr was endorsed by the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) when nominated by Trump as the US health and human services secretary last month.
This is despite him being called a “vaccine sceptic” by the BBC, Channel 4 and the Financial Times.
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In an appearance on Fox News in July last year, RFK Jr said that he believes “that autism does come from vaccines”.
But the NCPA, which represents over 18,900 community pharmacies in the US, welcomed his nomination and said at the time that it is “encouraged by his lifelong willingness to take on the biggest and most powerful corporations on behalf of citizens and small businesses”.
Meanwhile, a new study this month revealed that almost a third of US retail pharmacies closed in the decade between 2010 and 2021.
