Washington D.C. – In a shocking, rare acknowledgment of peer-reviewed science from the Trump administration, during a Senate HELP Committee hearing today, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Director of National Institutes of Health, testified: “I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism.”
Bhattacharya’s testimony echoes the findings of a major analysis released in December from the WHO global expert committee on vaccine safety finding no causal link exists between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), “with evidence based on 31 primary research studies, published between January 2010 and August 2025, including data from multiple countries”.
The NIH director’s statement also puts him squarely at odds with long-time vaccine misinformer Trump HHS Secretary Kennedy who declared on national television in 2023 “I do believe that autism comes from vaccines”, and who is now leading a multi-pronged effort to make vaccine innovation non-viable for manufactures based on that widely debunked autism-vaccine conspiracy theory, likely in order to enrich his allies with legal fees from frivolous lawsuits.
“RFK Jr. is using every tool at his disposal to try to obstruct children’s access to lifesaving vaccines based on completely discredited claims of autism risks. Kennedy should listen to his own NIH Director who agrees with the mountain of peer-reviewed data showing that no such risks exist and never have,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care. “Unfortunately, Trump’s health secretary seems content to keep marching to the beat of his own anti-science drum and spread misinformation that leads to lower vaccination rates and higher infections of otherwise preventable disease, like the measles outbreak currently running wild in South Carolina.”
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