The Claim:
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr. claims that vaccines cause serious long-term illnesses, the safety studies and experts are dishonest, and drug companies and doctors push more shots mainly to make money, not to protect health.
The Facts:
Vaccines are not associated with Autism.
First, RFK Jr. references this abstract by Verstraeten, claiming a 1135% increase in Autism risk. The increase found in the abstract was 760% (risk ratio of 7.6), not 1135%, but more importantly, this increase isn’t found in other research. This is merely an abstract, a first look at numbers that haven’t been fully investigated or peer reviewed.
In this abstract, they don’t talk about the study population or the criteria for which diagnoses were obtained. In order to conclude that there is an association between vaccines and autism, the author published this fully reviewed study here. That study showed no association between thimerosal and autism.
It’s important to note that this abstract was written in 1999. By 2001, thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines. Yet, autism rates continue to rise despite the lack of thimerosal. Importantly, experts attribute this rise to changes in diagnostic criteria.
Disclaimer: Science is always evolving and our understanding of these topics may have evolved too since this was originally posted. Be sure to check out our most recent posts and browse the latest Just the Facts Topics for the latest.
Just the Facts Newsletter:
Correcting this week's disinformation
Sign up to get a weekly look at the latest vaccination facts as we debunk the latest false vaccination claims making the rounds on the internet.