President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Monday afternoon that would upend the childhood vaccine schedule, a longtime goal of the so-called Make America Healthy Again movement.
The EO recommends reducing the amount of immunizations kids receive to provide protection for 11 diseases, down from the 18 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously recommended, according to a White House fact sheet obtained by MS NOW. The reduced immunizations will remain available “for shared clinical decision-making, ensuring that parents have all options available to them,” according to the fact sheet. Details on which specific immunizations will be removed from the recommended schedule were not immediately available.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the de facto leader of the MAHA movement, has long been a vaccine skeptic and was at the signing.
Health officials first announced in January plans to reduce the recommended amount of vaccines for children and babies. In doing so, they bypassed a CDC committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, designed to make those decisions.
The EO also directs the HHS Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines to present plans to the the president on how “to improve vaccine research and options for American parents, including continuous evaluation of the risk and benefit profiles of all childhood vaccines based on U.S. and international data.”
In the Oval Office Monday, Trump also said the EO directs newly-confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche “to advance legal challenges against states that violate children’s rights to religious or medical vaccination exemptions for the exemptions.”
The fact sheet argues the changes will “maximize parental choices over vaccinations for their children.”
While signing the EO, Trump appeared to suggest a discredited claim, popular among MAHA adherents, that vaccines cause autism, saying that “there’s a reason for such epidemic rates of autism.” He subsequently walked that back, adding, “Well, we do not know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism. It is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world.”
Trump, Kennedy and MAHA supporters have a long history of making baseless claims about the cause of autism. Last year, Trump also cited, to the dismay of scientists and physicians’ groups, that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was to blame for autism.
Brandy Zadrozny contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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