Why Trump's Meeting With RFK Jr. Has Scientists Worried

Of all Donald Trump’s conspiratorial obsessions, perhaps one of the most dangerous has been his
long promotion of the much-debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.

For years, his distrust of vaccines had been an occasional curiosity of his Twitter feed, nestled between bromides against Rosie O’Donnell and boasts about his ratings on “Celebrity Apprentice.” “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!” he tweeted in March 2014. “I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future,” he wrote months later.

Then, during a Republican primary debate in September 2015—well before anyone really thought he could be America’s next president—Trump brought his vaccine beliefs to the national political stage. “You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump—I mean, it looks like just it’s meant for a horse and not for a child,” he said. “We had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, 2 years old, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick. Now is autistic.”

Each time his beliefs have come up, journalists and the medical and scientific community have dutifully noted that Trump is wrong—the evidence clearly shows no link between vaccines and autism. Now, Trump is going to be the president of the United States, and doctors and scientists are raising the alarm about the potential consequences of having a man in charge of the country’s public health system who dabbles in discredited scientific theories.

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Why Trump's Meeting With RFK Jr. Has Scientists Worried - POLITICO Magazine