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Anti-Vaccine Activist Says Trump Asked Him to Head Commission on Vaccine Safety

After meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told reporters that Trump has asked him to "chair a commission on vaccination safety and scientific integrity" and that he has accepted.

Both Trump and Kennedy have spread fringe theories linking vaccines to autism in children, an idea that medical experts overwhelmingly reject and have warned is endangering public health by discouraging parents from immunizing their kids.

"President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies and he has questions about it," Kennedy told the press. "He says his opinion doesn't matter ... but the science does matter, and we ought to be reading the science and we ought to be debating the science."

A spokesman for Trump, Hope Hicks, told NBC News later that the president-elect was "exploring the possibility of forming a committee on autism" with Kennedy but that "no decisions have been made at this time."

Kennedy drew fire last year for describing a "holocaust" of children allegedly hurt by immunization at a screening of a film on the topic (he later apologized for the term).

Trump tweeted several times in 2014 that the use of multiple vaccinations caused autism, claiming at one point "the doctors lied." Doctors and researchers who specialize in infectious diseases expressed concern after Trump and other candidates promoted the theory in a Republican debate in September 2015.

"Just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic," Trump said at the time.

He offered no details or evidence on the case. The American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement after the debate calling his comments "dangerous to public health."

On Tuesday, the AAP's leaders offered "to share the extensive scientific evidence demonstrating the safety of vaccines" with the new commission.

"Claims that vaccines are linked to autism, or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule, have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature," the group said in a statement. "Delaying vaccines only leaves a child at risk of disease."

Autism Speaks, an organization that advocates for individuals with autism, released a statement to NBC News after Trump's meeting with Kennedy, reiterating its conclusion that vaccines were unrelated to the condition.

"Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism," the statement said. "The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism."

Doctors trace the popular fear to a debunked 1998 study in the British medical journal Lancet that the publication later retracted after discovering its lead author was involved in a lawsuit against drug companies and used flawed methods.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that there is no link between autism and vaccines, citing numerous subsequent studies. An Immunization Safety Commission organized by the Institute of Medicine examined the issue and reached the same conclusion in multiple reports.

But the theory persists, aided in part by celebrity advocates. Experts have warned that this small but vocal group of doubters is helping fuel outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough in communities where parents decline to vaccinate their children.

Health experts who have worked on vaccination policy and science strongly criticized Kennedy's reported new role in interviews.

Marie McCormick, a Harvard professor of maternal and child health who chaired the Immunization Safety Commission, expressed concern that Trump and Kennedy might lend a presidential seal to misinformation.

"If the committee comes out saying there is an [autism] association, there will be people who avoid vaccines," McCormick told NBC News. "There have been actual deaths attributed to lower immunization rates."

Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and father of an adult daughter with autism, said he feared the commission could provide new momentum for vaccine skeptics at home and abroad.

"By appointing [Kennedy], it's going to create a new national 'anti-vaxxer' movement," he said.

Trump has generally been skeptical of scientific expertise, however. He has repeatedly claimed the overwhelming body of research linking climate change to human activities is a hoax.

He is one of several politicians to draw rebukes from medical experts in recent years for entertaining vaccination and autism links. Former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann claimed an HPV vaccine caused a child to become "retarded" after a Republican debate in 2011. More recently, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), an ophthalmologist, and Dr. Ben Carson, a surgeon, also raised concerns that too many vaccines pose a danger.

In 2008, then-candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain indicated to activists concerned about the issue that they supported research into the matter. Obama and Clinton later said that the science was settled and urged families to vaccinate their children.

(The bolded sentences are some of Trump's "proposals" for science)

Nonetheless, the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, has made public remarks that give voters a glimpse into what some of his scientific policies might be. We asked some science and policy experts to discuss Trump’s stances, and what that could mean for Americans in the future.
Go slow on climate action: Trump has tweeted that climate change is a Chinese-driven hoax, though he later called the Tweet a joke. In an interview with Fox and Friends, he called climate change “just a very, very expensive form of tax” and “very hard on business.”

Sizing up the science: “There’s been a misperception that either you get a good economy or you protect the environment,” says Peter LaPuma, an associate professor in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

LaPuma, who worked as a sustainable energy consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton before joining George Washington, says many companies have found that sustainable practices actually boost their bottom lines. For example, IT companies like Apple have begun using renewable energy to power their data centers, a switch that often saves money because the cost of energy sources like solar has dropped so much.

Immediate action to combat climate change has immediate benefits, according to LaPuma. “Climate change is not just polar bears 100 years from now,” he says. Replacing a coal-fired power plant with a solar farm can benefit health immediately, as well as clearing the air for better views of the country’s natural landscape.
Cut the EPA: Trump has said he would cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and return environmental protection responsibilities to the states. He claims the agency hurts business, and in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, called the EPA “the laughingstock of the world.”

Sizing up the science: “There would be serious repercussions” by 2020 if the EPA were severely downsized or abolished, according to Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy professor Neal F. Lane, who directed the National Science Foundation and later the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Clinton.

Lane says the EPA plays a critical role in protecting clean air and drinking water, and that its regulations have helped rehabilitate polluted water bodies like Lake Erie, which was pronounced “dead” in the 1960s. “This is not just a bunch of regulators hugging trees,” he adds. Though states do have a part to play in regulation, the country needs a federal regulating body, according to Lane, because contaminated water and air can cross state borders.

That’s not to say citizens shouldn’t weigh in on the agency’s proposed rules. “There will always be a healthy debate between the private sector and the federal government on these regulations,” says Lane. For this reason, he said, the EPA solicits public comment before making new rules.

If Congress supported Trump in slashing funds for the EPA or changing the law to remove the agency’s power to regulate, Lane predicts there would be an outcry from overwhelmed governors and “reasonable people who care about their families, their children and their life style.”

Alter vaccination schedules to avoid autism: Trump says he favors vaccines, but giving children smaller doses over a longer period of time. He has blamed vaccines for causing autism in children.

Sizing up the science: “I remember wanting to throw something at the TV when I heard it,” Hotez says of Trump’s debate statement linking vaccinations and autism.

Hotez, who develops vaccinations and also has a daughter with autism, says studies have found no link between autism and vaccination. “The anti-vaxxers keep moving the goalposts,” he says. After scientific studies debunked accusations against specific vaccinations, Hotez says those against vaccinations started a different fad: arguing to change the vaccination schedule to protect children.

But infants’ immune systems face up to hundreds of new antigens every day, according to Hotez. Adding a few more in the form of a vaccination does not harm infants. He says changing the FDA’s approved vaccination schedule without clinical testing about immune response could decrease vaccines’ efficacy.

To imagine what a future with fewer or less effective vaccines might look like, Hotez suggests voters think of California’s recent outbreak of measles, a true threat to children’s health. “It’s one of the great killers of children in the world,” he says. “One hundred thousand children die every year of measles.”

Defund Planned Parenthood: Although Trump says Planned Parenthood does a lot of good for women’s health, he says he would defund its clinics because of their abortion services.

Sizing up the science: “The good thing is that he doesn’t think [Planned Parenthood] is evil,” says Amy Tsui, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But, she says, no federal funding has gone to abortion since the Hyde Amendment of 1976 (though Medicaid can fund abortion in the case of rape, incest, or endangerment of the mother’s life).

If Trump defunds all Planned Parenthood clinics, even those that don’t perform abortions, then he’ll be “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” according to Tsui. She says Planned Parenthood’s low-cost care and urban clinic locations, helps low-income women in particular.

In fact, Leighton Ku, Director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, says that decreased access to Planned Parenthood’s contraception services could increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies and possibly cause a spike in abortions.