RFK Jr.’s CDC fills its autism webpage with anti-vaxxer talking points
A newly updated webpage on the CDC's site shocked insiders and outsiders alike.
“The CDC cannot be trusted as a source. It is a weapon.” —former Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis.
Yesterday, the CDC updated its webpage on “Autism and Vaccines.” The update represents an extraordinary moment in the history of our nation’s public health system—a Rubicon moment. The CDC’s page on vaccines and autism is now filled with anti-vaxxer talking points. It’s both expected—we certainly saw this coming, ever since Bill Cassidy’s vote in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services clinched his confirmation bid. But it’s still shocking to see.
That said, the first thing you’d notice if you opened the page might be the innocuous header text that precedes the main body of the page. That reads, “Vaccines do not cause Autism*.”
So far, so good. The problem is the asterisk—and everything else on the page. The asterisk is explained at the bottom of the page. It reads:
*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.
—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 19, 2025.
In other words, Senator HELP Committee chair Bill Cassidy extracted a promise from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his confirmation process that, apparently, included a stipulation regarding the precise language of the header text for this webpage.
So, the CDC under Secretary Kennedy is seemingly abiding by some aspects of Senator Cassidy’s requirement (which was levied in exchange for a vote in favor of Kennedy’s confirmation), but certainly not the spirit of the agreement. (Cassidy mistakenly believed that Kennedy’s empty promises would be sufficient to protect our national vaccine policies from his attacks. How quaint. It turns out to have been one of the great blunders in the history of our nation’s public health.)
Virtually everything else on the page is, indeed, an anti-vaxxer’s dream.
The CDC is now spouting misinformation.
The key points summary that appears at the top of the page is an astonishing departure from the agency’s longstanding evidence-based stances that refuted any connection between vaccines and autism.
Here’s how the top of the CDC’s page on autism and vaccines now reads:
“Key points:
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.
Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.
HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”
—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 19, 2025.
In other words, the CDC has become a PR apparatus for Secretary Kennedy and his anti-vaxxer allies, rather than a reflection of the best available science. Remember, Kennedy admitted that he had hired scientists who would “make the proof” needed to support his kooky views on vaccines. These statements (and the summary of pseudoscience, and in some cases, misunderstood actual science, that follows them) are an overt attempt to sow doubt among parents. This will lead to vaccine hesitancy, and eventually, to the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases that cause suffering and death.
The fallout begins…
Speaking to Inside Medicine, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the former Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, made the definitive statement: “The CDC cannot be trusted as a source. It is a weapon.” (He posted similar sentiments on Twitter/X.) Specifically, Dr. Daskalakis means that the agency is now an extension of Secretary Kennedy’s anti-vaccine movement.
We need to pause and reflect on the gravity of these quotations. Coming from a former top brass leader within the agency, these words carry tremendous weight. Dr. Daskalakis told me via text last night that scientists at the CDC “were completely blindsided by this update.”
But changes like this had long been feared, and it was assumed that a pivot to misinformation regarding a link between vaccines and autism was only a matter of time. “This distortion of science under the CDC moniker is the reason I resigned with my colleagues,” Daskalakis said, referring to the simultaneous resignations of Dr. Debra Houry, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, and himself (commonly known as “The Three D’s”) which occurred in the wake of the firing of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez in late August, after she valiantly refused to reflexively rubberstamp Kennedy’s anti-vaccine directives.
How bad are things at the CDC? Here’s an indication: When I asked an active CDC employee what he thought about the latest bad news, he literally had to ask, “Which thing are you referring to?” When I pointed him to the newly released autism and vaccines page, he expressed surprise and disappointment, describing the newly updated page as “grossly misleading.”
Experts around the world have already begun to take notice. On Threads, Dr. Marc Veldhoen, a prominent immunologist in Portugal, said, “The CDC pages have now been hijacked for state-sponsored disinformation. It is terrible to see this happening. This is ideology, unscientific, over facts, data and the scientific method.”
I have not yet spoken to any active CDC employees within the immunization divisions. But Dr. Daskalakis doesn’t think the agency can survive. On one hand, I wonder how many career scientists at the agency will tolerate being associated with misinformation like this. On the other, public health jobs are increasingly scarce, especially since the CDC cut billions of dollars in funding to state and local departments earlier this year, cuts which have led to layoffs. While many principled CDC scientists might like to resign in protest, some may feel they have no choice but to remain and attempt to hold the line for science from within. And some CDC staffers have been successful in such efforts this year.
So, while the Trump administration’s loud takeover of the CDC is now well underway, many within the agency may respond not by leaving, but either by continuing to resist from within, or, if that fails, simply “quiet quitting.”
Extra: In early October, I wrote an Inside Medicine, entitled “There are now two CDC’s.” I’m reposting it below, because it’s even more relevant now, given the above.
A “Coup de CDC.”
The CDC is now two distinct agencies—a house divided against itself. There are the career officers who continue to carry out the agency’s core mission. That’s the CDC of legends like Dr. William Foege, the former director who played a major role in eradicating smallpox. These dedicated federal employees may be hindered by cuts (and are still roiling from the August attack on their headquarters), but they are doing what they can to keep us safe. Then there’s a small coterie, a top brass gang of RFK Jr. allies, who control major policies, the agency’s public relations, and its social media.
In Senate testimony, former Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry, one of the top CDC officials who resigned last month, described the situation as a “hostile takeover.”
How is this manifesting? Most glaringly, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which met last month, voting on national policy without actually engaging in a review of the best evidence on the topics. Instead, the information presented was cherry-picked, out of context, and, frankly, amateurish at times.
The CDC also posted a truly bizarre new “priorities” statement, basically a political manifesto that included a typically Trump-world anti-DEI rant, among other random tangents, including one which came out against “harm reduction” for substance use disorders—the evidence-based approach that has saved lives. Meanwhile, the agency’s social media accounts posted anti-vaccine sentiments after its ACIP meeting.
Still, I’m still receiving some “normal” CDC communications in my inbox, including important announcements about drug-resistant bacteria.
So, now when we hear from the CDC, we have to ask “which CDC” is speaking?
Last month, I interviewed Dr. Houry for MedPage Today. It’s out as a three-part series. I encourage you to check it out.
Part 1: ‘Super Tough Decision’: Top CDC Official Reflects on Her Resignation. Former chief medical officer, Debra Houry, discusses leadership, science, and the attack on the CDC.
Part 2: U.S. May Not Be Ready for the Next Outbreak, Ex-CDC Official Says. “We were in a much better place up until about 7 or 8 months ago,” says Debra Houry
Part 3: ‘My Phone Started Blowing Up’: How CDC Leaders Learned of New Limits on COVID Shots. We were “not comfortable” implementing new guidance off a social media video, says Debra Houry.
In the time since, we’ve seen more notable departures, including Dr. Melina Wharton, who spent nearly four decades at the CDC, after training at Harvard (MD) and Johns Hopkins (MPH in Epidemiology). Dr. Wharton served as the agency’s top official for ACIP. From all accounts, nobody understands the vaccine space better. These are the experts we are losing.
That’s why HHS employees have demanded that Secretary Kennedy resign. They are not alone. Dozens of expert medical societies have made similar statements. Until Kennedy is gone, or reined in, the CDC’s foundation is at risk of falling apart. Whether Congress cuts support for the agency by a little or a lot will also profoundly influence our nation’s health. Hopefully, Congress will eventually pass something closer to the Senate’s most recent proposal—which would only cut $100 million in funding to the CDC, bringing funding down from $9.2 billion to $9.1 billion. But if the House gets its way, $1.8 billion would vanish, bringing funding down to $7.4 billion. But even that would be better than President Trump’s proposal, which would cut CDC funding by $5 billion, down to $4.2 billion.
Follow up on RFK’s vaccine panels.
In early September, Inside Medicine was first to report that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to rush seven new members onto ACIP in time for its most recent meeting. By the time the meeting occurred, five of those seven had been officially installed. We don’t know what became of the other two Kennedy hopefuls. They’re either out (for reasons unknown), or will be installed by the next meeting, currently scheduled for later this fall.
Meanwhile, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee has lost Dr. Paul Offit, who was fired last month. That’s ironic, because Secretary Kennedy has railed about what he perceives as too much groupthink in these panels. Dr. Offit was the committee’s most independent voice, including having voted against some of the Covid-19 boosters (on the grounds that they were not sufficiently improved from the earlier versions, a principled, data-driven stance, it turns out.)
One last thing…
Misinformation resources.
As incorrect information increasingly comes from the federal government—lending credence to debunked rumors and pet theories of the anti-vaccine movement—I’ve been getting more requests for resources with high-quality information that can address these claims. While I obviously do some of that type of work here in Inside Medicine, there are experts who focus almost entirely on addressing these issues. Here are some resources you might like to have handy:
Unbiased Science has great information in a database of topics.
Here's a recent post in a blog called Diplomatic Immunity that tears apart some of the logical fallacies and misunderstandings that anti-vaxxers use.
Some of our vaunted institutions have information on frequently asked questions (often spurred by anti-vaxxers). Here are two from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s most respected centers.
Vaccine ingredients in general.
Information about thimerosal.
If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
Most unfortunately, when the head people and the main communications of the CDC spout misinformation and distorted science, no research coming from CDC personnel is likely to avoid the suspicion of being tainted by similar disregard for fact. It can likjely not be saved from those inside, now. The whole agency has been poisoned - deeply shocking.
This is a dangerous moment for public health. What Dr. Faust describes is not a routine disagreement or a policy shift. It is the deliberate insertion of doubt into an area where the evidence has been exceptionally clear for years. The CDC’s autism page was once a straightforward, science-based resource for parents. Now it has been re-engineered to echo talking points that have already caused enormous harm.
The people resigning are not politicians. They are career scientists with decades of service whose professional identities were built around protecting the public. When people like Debra Houry, Daniel Jernigan, Demetre Daskalakis, and Melinda Wharton walk away and warn that the agency has been compromised, that carries real weight. They have nothing to gain by sounding the alarm, and everything in their history suggests they would have stayed if they believed they could do their jobs with integrity.
This will not remain an abstract debate. When you replace evidence with insinuation, the consequences show up in clinics, emergency rooms, and pediatric ICUs. The diseases we spent decades controlling have a way of returning when parents are nudged into doubt. That is why scientific institutions mattered in the first place. They were a buffer between political pressure and the facts.
What is happening now is the dismantling of that buffer. Once scientific rigor is replaced by political loyalty, you do not get it back easily. The damage is not theoretical. It affects real children, real families, and the very idea that public health should be grounded in truth rather than ideology.
That is why this moment matters. And why those who still care about evidence and the welfare of children cannot look away.