American anti-vaccine activists prepare their big assault

US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy has made some disturbing statements regarding the significant increase in autism diagnoses in the country: "It's an epidemic, and epidemics aren't caused by genes. You need an environmental toxin. In September, we'll know what caused the autism epidemic," and we'll be able to. Given the figure's history, which has fueled various unscientific theories for decades, everything points to the fact that the major discovery promised in September will lead to the criminalization of vaccines.

The link between autism and vaccines arose from an article published in 1998 by Andreu Wakefield and twelve of his colleagues in the journalThe LancetAlthough the sample was small, there were no controls, and the conclusions were speculative, it received enough publicity to lower vaccination rates. As soon as it was challenged by other studies, ten of the twelve supplementary authors retracted the originally announced conclusions. And the journal admitted that the article failed to disclose the conflict of interest that plagued it (the author had received money from lawyers who litigated based on this alleged relationship) until it finally renounced it altogether in 2010.British Medical JournalHe published an exhaustive investigation that directly addressed the case of fraud for profit. All the noise linking autism and vaccines emanates from this single article, which has already been thoroughly refuted. However, its lethal echo still resonates. And now RFK may be tempted to re-establish that absurd, unscientific connection. A science that is neither a sect nor an ideology, but merely—but not insignificant—the best method we have for approximating the physical truth of things.