Over the past year or so, leading Trump administration officials from the Pentagon to the Department of Transportation have sparked controversies by making unfortunate and unnecessary changes to online public resources.
But arguably the most important website change happened last fall when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally intervened and directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change its website, which used to reflect the scientific consensus, alerting the public to the fact that vaccines do not cause autism.
The revised online resource told the public, “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.” This was a ridiculous assertion at odds with basic logic — by this reasoning, the claim “saxophones do not cause autism” is also not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that saxophones cause autism — and it was certainly unbecoming of the CDC, which used to represent the international gold standard in its field.
Roughly nine months later, this issue returned to the fore when Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, endorsed Erica Schwartz’s nomination to lead the CDC after it agreed to change the centers’ website on vaccines and autism.
Cassidy was apparently impressed by what he characterized as a constructive move. “I am confident that [Schwartz] knows what she is doing and will stand against those who don’t,” the senator told The Washington Post. He added that “as a sign of good faith, HHS modified the CDC’s autism and vaccines webpage. There is more to do to repair the damage that has been done to the U.S. public health response, but this is a start.”
Except that Cassidy has little reason to be pleased. The Post’s report added:
The problem: the page still suggests a possible link between vaccines and autism. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally directed the CDC to revise its webpage last year to contradict the long-settled scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism.
The CDC page has a changed footnote beneath the headline “Vaccines do not cause autism,” replacing a reference to Cassidy with language saying scientists have not identified the causes of autism and that the agency will update the page as new evidence emerges. The page’s central claims otherwise remained intact.
What’s more, a NOTUS report emphasized that the CDC’s website also “still references a recently retracted study linking vaccines and autism,” despite no such link between the two.
Cassidy managed to secure a change to a footnote, but effectively nothing else.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Dana Bash asked the Louisiana Republican, who will wrap up his congressional career at the end of the year, whether he’s satisfied. He made clear that he is not.
“It’s been firmly established vaccines do not cause autism. That’s over decades,” Cassidy said. “The fact that [the CDC’s website remains largely intact] is almost an insult to the American people. ‘We don’t care enough about you to tell the truth. We want to continue to promote that which has been proven false, but we don’t want to admit it’ — whoever ‘we’ is.”
Of course, Cassidy could further leverage his power and perhaps even threaten to derail Schwartz’s CDC nomination unless the website is overhauled. At least for now, the senator, who’s long failed to follow through on his ostensible convictions, doesn’t appear ready to do much of anything apart from raise occasional complaints in the media.
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