RFK Jr’s imaginary world: A case study in anti-science politics - Ivo Vegter

Key topics:

• RFK Jr. added misleading CDC claims on vaccines and autism.

• Right-wing media misreported CDC updates as vaccine-autism link.

• Experts warn policy changes risk vaccine-preventable deaths.

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By Ivo Vegter*

The statement “unicorns do not exist” is not “evidence-based”. Neither is the statement “broccoli does not cause cancer”. Let’s get sciency, RFK-style!

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was grilled by the US Senate before being confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he made several promises.

Among them was a promise to the senior Republican Senator from Louisiana, physician Bill Cassidy, who went on to support Kennedy’s appointment in a floor speech: “If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes. CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.”

RFK Jr. is an experienced tort attorney, however, adept in the weaselly ways of lawyering and finding loopholes. He knows every sleazy trick to get around inconvenient promises.

Instead of removing the statement, he ordered the CDC to add an asterisk, saying that the only reason the statement “Vaccines do not cause autism” has not been removed is because he promised Cassidy not to remove it.

The entire page has been revamped, and the text now begins with this statement: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

It continues with a monumentally misleading claim: “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”

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It also casts aspersions on the CDC’s own motives in having claimed, to date, that vaccines don’t cause autism: “…this webpage has been updated because the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim. Scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism. However, this statement has historically been disseminated by the CDC and other federal health agencies within HHS to prevent vaccine hesitancy.”

Blind-sided

Right-leaning media framed it as an admission that there is a link between autism and vaccines. The Epoch Times, for example, ran with the headline, “CDC Says Vaccines May Cause Autism,” adding, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says that it’s possible vaccines cause autism, in a reversal of its previous stance.”

RFK Jr.’s order to the CDC blind-sided the scientific staff, and was carried out by a senior communications official.

The Washington Post quoted a former CDC leader: “The revisions show that the ‘CDC cannot currently be trusted as a scientific voice,’ said Demetre Daskalakis, who formerly led the agency’s center responsible for respiratory viruses and immunisations. He was one of three senior leaders who resigned in August because of what they said was the politicisation of science at the agency. ‘The weaponisation of the CDC voice by validating false claims on official websites confirms what we have been saying,’ he said.”

On X, Senator Cassidy responded without naming RFK Jr.: “I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism. Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.

“We need to understand the real causes of autism. Studies show there’s a genetic predisposition when a mom who’s pregnant is exposed to environmental toxins which can increase a child’s risk of autism. It’s deeply troubling that, according to HHS officials, they appeared to have canceled hundreds of millions in research on autism genetics. Redirecting attention to factors we definitely know DO NOT cause autism denies families the answers they deserve.

“We had two children die and many more hospitalized nationally from measles this year. Louisiana is experiencing its worst whooping cough outbreak in 35 years. Families are getting sick and people are dying from vaccine-preventable deaths, and that tragedy needs to stop.”

Masterclass

The new CDC page is a masterclass in deceptive rhetoric. It makes it look like the agency was trying to deceive people in the past, makes it look like it unjustifiably ignored relevant scientific evidence, and makes it look like the scientific position is that vaccines may cause autism.

None of that is true.

Let’s analyse the reasoning here. “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

That is true in the same sense that the claim “unicorns do not exist” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that unicorns do exist.

It is true in the same sense that the claim “broccoli does not cause cancer” is not an evidence-based claim because it contains acetaldehyde (as do apples, coffee, grapefruit, grapes, lemons, mushrooms, onions, oranges, peaches, pears, pineapples, raspberries, and strawberries), and acetaldehyde is known to cause cancer.

The claim that would be evidence-based, and is supported by the studies the CDC cites on its revamped page, is “there is insufficient evidence to conclude that vaccines do cause autism”.

The studies that conclude otherwise, which the CDC says have been “ignored by health authorities” (including the CDC itself), were not actually ignored. They were rejected, because they were either methodologically unsound, or tainted by actual corruption and intent to deceive. They were “ignored” only in the sense that they were not taken seriously, because they were not credible.

The statement that was “historically disseminated by the CDC and other federal health agencies” was intended to “prevent vaccine hesitancy” (because vaccines save lives). That intent does not, however, imply that the statement was false.

It was as true as scientific statements about health and medicines get: numerous studies, involving millions of subjects, did not provide any reason to believe that a causal link exists between childhood vaccines and the development of autism in children.

Non-existence hypothesis

Perhaps it is useful to clear up some misconceptions about science.

It is impossible to prove non-existence. Science is based on empirical evidence. The best science can achieve is to say, “we looked everywhere, and we couldn’t find any”.

If you hypothesise the existence of unicorns, then it remains a valid hypothesis forever, even if unicorns are never found.

It is always possible that we simply haven’t looked hard enough, or that we haven’t looked in the right places. Perhaps they once did exist, but left no trace in the fossil record. Perhaps they exist deep in some jungle, where undiscovered species still lurk. Perhaps they exist on a habitable planet elsewhere in the galaxy.

So if you hypothesise that there is a causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, then it is in principle impossible to “rule out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism”. It remains a valid hypothesis even if no reason is ever discovered for believing it.

The converse, however, does not hold true. If you hypothesise that unicorns do not exist, then your hypothesis can be invalidated by producing a single example of a unicorn.

Proponents of the vaccines-cause-autism theory, therefore, should not have a difficult time proving their claim. And yet they have not succeeded, in almost 20 years since the idea first surfaced (ironically, as part of a civil tort suit against vaccine makers).

Scientific “proof”

More broadly, even the notion of scientific proof is misunderstood. In principle, absolute proof does not exist outside of closed theoretical systems like mathematics or formal logic.

In science, and especially in health-related science, claims are based on the strength and abundance of evidence. No claim is ever proven, in an absolute sense, because in principle any claim can be overturned by contrary evidence.

Claims about the effects and side-effects of medicines are made on the basis of statistics.

Medicines are considered “generally safe” if adverse side-effects are mild, rare or easily treatable. They are considered effective if they result in positive outcomes more often than a prior medication for the same condition, or than a placebo in the absence of such a prior medication.

These are not absolute claims. They are statistical claims. They convey a likelihood.

It is a doctor’s job to weigh the likelihood of positive outcomes of prescribing a particular treatment for a particular condition in a particular person, against the potential negative outcomes of doing so, and against the potential outcomes of not treating the person. There are no absolutes here.

Meaningless

So the statement “‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism” is not just self-evidently true, but it is entirely meaningless.

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Studies have also not ruled out the possibility that paracetamol causes autism, or that too much time on the internet causes autism, or that lead poisoning causes autism, or that the rise of low-fat diets causes autism, or that electronic dance music causes autism, or that air conditioning causes autism.

That doesn’t mean we should make decisions based on the possibility, however remote, that any of those hypotheses are true.

Studies have not ruled out that unicorns exist, or that broccoli causes cancer, either.

Studies have not ruled out the possibility that RFK Jr.’s brain worm caused substantive brain damage that had long-term effects on his judgement and disqualifies him from holding opinions on matters related to public policy. We have only his word for believing otherwise.

Body count

While unqualified cranks like RFK Jr. drive America’s public health agencies off a cliff, turning long-debunked conspiracy theories that cast doubt on the efficacy and safety of vaccines into actual policy, there is a resurgence of serious vaccine-preventable diseases both in the US and around the world.

Making statements that are designed to deceive, and are meant to give credence to people’s doubts and fears about public health measures, cause very real harm. They cause serious illness, permanent disability, and death.

I warned that it would come to this, but was shouted down by the MAGA faithful.

RFK Jr.’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services will have a body count, and that certainly is an evidence-based claim.

*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker who loves debunking myths and misconceptions, and addresses topics from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets.

This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission