In Mangling CDC Vaccine Pages, RFK Jr. Is Laughing In All of Our Faces
It's a schoolyard friend saying "I promise not to tell anyone your secret" and then shouting it from on top of the jungle gym, claiming he didn't tell "anyone," he told "the sky."
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The worst part of what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., did yesterday is obvious: He had whatever minions are willing to help him take an axe to the very concepts of scientific reality and public health alter a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website titled "Autism and Vaccines" to read, up top, as follows:
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.
Before getting into anything else: this is bullshit. It is an extremely evidence-based claim, backed by dozens of studies spread over decades. Vaccines do not, in fact, cause autism. Studies have also not "ruled out the possibility" that I will one day emerge, Venus-like, from a giant clam shell floating one hundred meters above the Gateway Arch in St. Louis to sing a glorious a capella rendition of "The Boys Are Back in Town." And yet.
But perhaps the most audacious part, the part most tinged with a gleeful sense of impunity developed over a lifetime of absurd failson privilege, comes at the very bottom of the updated page, after further litanies of bullshit piled on top of the base bullshit claim all aimed at undermining public confidence in some of the most revolutionary public health advances in human history. It comes in, essentially, a footnote:
The header "Vaccines do not cause autism" has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.
It's true: up higher on the page, just below the first bit of bullshit but before the rest of the bullshit, a header still does, in fact read: "Vaccines do not cause Autism," just as it did the day before. Only now, there is an asterisk appended to the heading.
The related footnote, referring to a supposed promise made to Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, is the Secretary of Health and Human Services laughing at us. Cassidy, a physician and a theoretical voice of at least health-related reason on his side of the aisle, extracted a series of oaths from the Cronenbergian body horror villain in exchange for his confirmation vote early this year; in claiming to still abide by this particular promise, on a page now rife with misinformation with impossibly grim implications, RFK Jr. is spitting in his face.
It's a schoolyard friend saying "I promise not to tell anyone your secret" and then shouting it from on top of the jungle gym, claiming he didn't tell "anyone," he told "the sky." A genuine absurdity: the promise, according to a Cassidy Senate floor speech back in February was that "CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism." Any sane reading of that would include the stuff outside of just the heading of the page; and putting a literal asterisk on the few words you pinky swore would not be deleted is, perhaps, functionally worse than deleting them.
And of course, RFK already broke a second, much more consequential promise he made to Cassidy. "If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes," Cassidy said before casting the deciding vote. The Secretary didn't wait long to abandon that one, firing the entire ACIP — which sets the approved childhood vaccine schedule and helps determine what is and is not covered by insurance — in June before reconstituting it with a collection of largely like-minded quacks.
I have been waiting for months for the CDC page shoe to drop — it was perhaps the main candidate among my "grotesque children," a collection of government pages that I refresh over and over, waiting for their disappearance or alteration. As I wrote back when the ACIP news hit, the CDC page's language remained intact to that point, but Senator Cassidy "probably shouldn’t hold out hope that he’s getting his wallet back any time soon." And here he is, still waiting for the inspector to return it, doing his best like the rest of us to ignore the rasping, ghoulish laugh ringing in our ears.
