Donald Trump has said Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism – despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection.

In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, the US president-elect claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.

“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked him if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated – a position for which Kennedy has argued.

“If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100.”

  • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.social
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    2 days ago

    You don’t “get” autism like it’s a cold, you are autistic and sometimes you get diagnosed, and sometimes you don’t. We as a society have more educated people in places like schools to help identify kids way more than when Trump was having his dad pay for his dumbass to make it through school. It’s just like his COVID solution of, if you don’t test the numbers go down.

    And why does nobody in the media push back on these jackasses to show their work? You make claims about millions of people you better have receipts, but of course these two intellectually-challenged white guys with money just get their every word quoted and published without any push back.