The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing sharp criticism after the Trump Administration revised language on its website about vaccines and autism, a change many doctors say is confusing and dangerous.
The CDC’s updated page states that vaccines do not cause autism. Just above that section, however, the agency added a note saying the claim “vaccines do not cause Autism” is not an “evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
The CDC has not cited any new research to support the shift.
The revision comes as vaccination rates among Georgia kindergartners continue to fall. In the 2019 to 2020 school year, 93.6 percent of students received the mumps-measles-rubella vaccine. That number fell to 88.4 percent in the 2023 to 2024 school year.
The contradiction has triggered strong backlash from medical experts and from the union representing thousands of CDC employees.
Dr. Robin Dretler, an infectious disease specialist at Emory-Decatur Hospital and a board member of the Infectious Disease Society of America, said he was stunned when he saw the new wording. “Shocked and appalled,” Dretler said. “It’s clearly dangerous.” He called the change irresponsible and said it directly contradicts decades of established research. “The data is very clear, vaccines don’t cause autism and do save lives and prevent ill health.”
Dretler noted that scientists have reached clear conclusions over many years. “Clearly, we have had for 20 years, numerous studies that vaccines do not cause autism,” he said.
Dr. Robert Wiskind, past president of the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the body of evidence is extensive. “Since 1998, there’s been over 40 studies conducted in seven countries around the world with over 5.6-million children involved, looking for an association between vaccines and autism,” Wiskind said. He warned that the agency’s revised wording could deepen vaccine hesitancy. “This latest message from the CDC further erodes confidence in vaccines among parents, among adults, among policymakers,” he said.
Union leaders at the CDC are also raising concerns. Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883, which represents more than 2,000 CDC employees, said the new language makes it harder for the public to understand what is factual. “It’s misleading. It’s confusing to the public,” Jacobs said. “That just is yet another example of how agency leadership is out of touch and estranged from its own scientists.” The union says no CDC researchers who study autism were involved in making the change.
“That’s very disturbing. We will have children unnecessarily getting sick and potentially dying,” Dretler said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said “HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism” and is updating the CDC website to reflect “gold-standard, evidence-based science.”
