We all should be wary of nuts

Speaking to MAHA supporters at the White House on Thursday, Trump praised the report. “There’s something wrong, and we will not stop until we defeat the chronic disease epidemic in America,” he said.

Kennedy refused to provide details about who authored the report.

HHS Report Scrutinizes Vaccines, Without Evidence That It’s Warranted

Increased scrutiny of childhood vaccines — credited with saving millions of people from deadly diseases — figures prominently in the report. It poses questions over the necessity of school mandates that require children to get vaccinated for admittance and suggestions that vaccines should undergo more clinical trials, including with placebos.

Kennedy, a long-time vaccine critic – opens in a new tab or window who previously led a nonprofit that has made false claims about the shots, has continued to raise doubts about the safety of inoculations even as a measles outbreak has sickened more than 1,000 Americans. This week, Kennedy’s health department moved to limit – opens in a new tab or window U.S. access to COVID-19 shots.

The report does not provide any evidence that the childhood vaccine schedule, which includes shots for measles, polio, and the chickenpox, is to blame for rising obesity, diabetes, or autism rates, said Amesh Adalja, MD, an infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s not as if they’re positing any kind of causal link,” Adalja said, adding that Kennedy “is trying to devalue vaccines in the minds of Americans.”

Source: MedpageToday

Although concerns about vaccine safety are understandable, the overwhelming scientific and medical consensus is that childhood immunizations are safe and highly effective at preventing infectious diseases. ^{Major health organizations worldwide, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), affirm this position based on extensive research and surveillance.}

Common concerns, such as vaccines overloading the immune system or containing harmful levels of ingredients like thimerosal (a mercury-containing preservative, largely removed from childhood vaccines in the US), have been thoroughly debunked by scientific evidence. Infants’ immune systems are well-equipped to handle the antigens in vaccines, which are a tiny fraction of what they encounter daily.

The most prominent concern, the alleged link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism, has been extensively researched and definitively disproven by numerous large-scale studies worldwide. ^{The original study that suggested this link was retracted due to fraudulent data and ethical violations.}