RFK Jr.'s CDC Blasted After Updating Website To Include Debunked Theory About Vaccines

Back in 1998, British medical journal The Lancet published a purported medical study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that claimed to find proof of a link between the MMR vaccine—which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella—and autism.

Parents looking for something to blame other than genetics for their neurotypical child, as well as antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists, rejoiced.

But legitimate science requires peer review of the methodology, data, and results and the ability to replicate those results. Medical researchers found numerous flaws in Wakefield's work and no one was able to replicate his findings.

Study after study before and after Wakefield's paper was published found no connection between vaccines and autism. Twelve years after it was published, The Lancet was forced to retract the paper because of what it was: pseudoscience based on falsified data to fit an antivaxxer narrative.

The 12 children Wakefield studied were carefully selected to meet the criteria of his foregone conclusion, because Wakefield’s research was partially funded by lawyers acting on behalf of parents suing vaccine manufacturers.

Medical professionals applauded the retraction after millions of dollars were wasted trying to prove Wakefield's findings were valid—something no research was ever able to achieve. Wakefield's license to practice medicine was revoked after the British General Medical Council found the children in his study were subjected to unethical, cruel and unnecessary procedures and testing.

Wakefield resigned from the Thoughtful House research center he co-founded in Austin, Texas, as a result of the truth about his research methods being made public. He no longer practices medicine or performs research, and instead makes considerable money as an anti-vaccination activist—much like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once did before his government appointment.

While the scientific and medical community applauded the truth coming out, parents, antivaxxers, and conspiracy theorists—including RFK Jr.—still claimed the repeatedly debunked study was valid.

Now that MAGA Republican President Donald Trump has made RFK Jr. the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the conspiracy theorist and antivaxxer grifter is free to spread the junk science that he used to rake in millions off the scientifically illiterate through his websites, conferences, speaking engagements, and the "alternative medicine" products he sold.

And now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website has been updated, under RFK Jr.'s guidance, to promote this debunked pseudoscience as fact.

@walkerbragman/Bluesky

Drops in childhood vaccinations because of misinformation being spread, often by people making millions off pseudoscience, have created outbreaks of diseases once considered eradicated in the United States.

Measles, a completely avoidable disease, claimed the lives of two unvaccinated school children in Texas in 2025.

@rchusid/Bluesky

@trance/Bluesky

People in the medical community and anyone who cares about public health are appalled that a known, convicted grifter—Trump—gave another grifter—RFK Jr.—this power to deceive the public for his own gratification and profit.

RFK Jr. has pushed and promoted a false narrative of an autism epidemic that doesn't exist.

Mistaking an increase in diagnoses due to expanded criteria, better training, more widely available diagnostic tools, and increased awareness of the disorder is understandable for a layperson, but inexcusable for someone claiming to be a health expert.

RFK Jr. has no education or training in biology, medicine, or any physical sciences.

The man who took his own grandchildren swimming in sewage contaminated water has been heavily criticized by people with autism and their advocates and allies for his misinformation about the disorder.

Basing most of his statements about autism and other health matters on his own personal observations—frequently backing misinformation and false conclusions on the claim "he never saw" something before, the brain damaged former heroin addict has been labeled dangerous by most of his family, including his own siblings and first cousins.