President Trump Demands the Splitting of the MMR Vaccine
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised parents worried about vaccines that they had a “friend” in the White House. Well, that friend has now spoken, demanding that drug companies break the MMR vaccine into three separate shots. “I think we are going to see a massive reduction in autism,” Trump said, repeating the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
The president then signed an executive order recommending (not demanding?) fewer pediatric vaccines and calling for the combined measles, mumps, and rubella injection to be split into three. “The MMR, we want to have separate visits separate times. The vaccine being broken into three separate single doses and vaccines being administered in separate visits,” Trump said, asserting without evidence that it is safer to receive the immunizations individually.
Pardon me, but I’m confused. The order calls for fewer vaccines, yet splitting the MMR means moreshots. If kids are going to get more shots, how exactly does that produce a massive reduction in autism? If there really were a link, wouldn’t more shots mean more autism, not less?
So now the president is a medical expert just like his health secretary? Where is the evidence that vaccinations cause autism? The medical profession soundly rejects that premise entirely pointing to decades of studies and real-world evidence showing that the MMR vaccine is safe and effective exactly as it is administered now. Splitting it offers no known safety benefit and creates a major logistical burden for families. Today a child gets two MMR shots. Split up, that becomes six. And every extra appointment is one more chance to fall behind or skip a visit altogether — which means fewer children fully vaccinated and more infections. Personally, I rather have the two shots and not the six. Wouldn’t you?
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician himself, and whose primary defeat the president helped engineer is now emboldened to speak out against the president calling the claims about the MMR vaccine “crazy and stupid.” Asked about Trump’s assertion that “nothing bad can happen” from advising parents to get six shots for their children instead of two, Cassidy didn’t mince words: “If it wasn’t so potentially tragic, you would break out laughing at a comment like that. Let’s just take it from the perspective of the parent: now instead of going to the doctor twice to get their child vaccinated, they have to go six times. Instead of the child getting two jabs, they get six jabs. Instead of the insurance company paying for two doctor’s visits, they’re paying for six, which is going to ultimately drive up premiums. So the president is wrong. There’s a lot of bad things that will come out of this.”
Will the president’s orders have any impact on the parents? Why should they believe him? Many will simply ignore him. Others? Will they now simply not have their children vaccinated? What about officials at HHS other than Kennedy himself? Consider Dr. Heidi Overton, the nominee for FDA commissioner, who just testified before a Senate committee. Dr. Overton had stood beside the president and Kennedy when the executive order was signed. Yet at the hearing she testified that according to the FDA all vaccines on the U.S. market are safe and effective and that the evidence supports the combined MMR shot.
Cassidy pressed her to be unequivocal. She called the MMR vaccine “the best tool in the public health response to the measles outbreak.” He then asked what she would do if her boss, Kennedy, claimed that vaccines were unsafe even after FDA approval. Overton replied that she would rely on her scientific and clinical background to communicate “what is currently known,” namely that the vaccines are safe and effective.
Overton is caught between a rock and a hard place. Had she not made the appropriate clucking noises toward Kennedy and the president, she never would have been nominated. She did, after all, stand beside them at the signing. But had she defended the president’s order at the hearing, she would have no hope of Senate confirmation.
Will the president’s order have any effect? Not at present. The pharmaceutical companies don’t make standalone measles, mumps, or rubella vaccines, and none has announced plans to start — which leaves the executive order impotent. So what will Trump do? Will he order the drug companies to manufacture standalone vaccines?
But hey, when has this president ever needed evidence to back up his claims? This is a man who runs on myths, not facts. And in keeping with the president’s feelings, the CDC’s website now hints at a scientific cover-up, stating that “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” Okay, the what are those studies? Show them so we can see their results. Right now I can only find a single study claiming to find a link and is the basis for the claim that vaccines are linked to childhood autism. This is Wakefield et al. “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” published in 1998. However, this study was found to be fraudulent and was retracted. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9500320/
This is too important an issue to be in the hands of a president who knows nothing of medical science and a HHS secretary who is an anti-vac zealot. Let’s see the evidence — and put it to independent, third-party testing. Then let us make the policies and recommendations in the best interest of children and their parents. Without evidence, Trump and Kennedy make witch doctors look credible.
