Trump reduces childhood vaccinations due to autism: "In the past, there were fewer diagnosed children"
As part of the US administration's move to change childhood vaccination policy, the US President signed a new executive order focusing on 11 key vaccines against diseases and viruses defined as the most serious. On the agenda: Hepatitis B, flu, and COVID-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended in the way they were previously.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed a new executive order on Monday regarding childhood vaccines as part of a move by the US administration intended to change vaccination policy and reduce the number of vaccines recommended across the board for children in their first years of life.
The new recommendations focus on 11 key vaccines against diseases and viruses defined as the most serious, while other vaccines are expected to no longer be recommended across the board for every child. Among other things, Hepatitis B, flu, and COVID-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended for all children in the way they were previously recommended.
As part of the move, the administration seeks to divide the American childhood vaccination schedule into three categories, according to the degree of need and risk. In addition, a recommendation was raised to separate the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate shots, a move that contradicts the accepted medical position and the policy practiced for years in many countries.
The change comes after months in which Donald Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the scope of childhood vaccinations in the United States and raised questions regarding a possible link between them and the sharp rise in the number of children diagnosed on the autism spectrum.
"Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the amount of vaccines required today," said Donald Trump. "In those times, people were much healthier, and of course, the high autism rates we see today did not exist." Donald Trump previously also referred to the dramatic change in the prevalence of diagnosis over the years and claimed: "In the past, the numbers were one in 10,000 children with autism, today we are at one in 30. Something happened along the way."
According to him, "There is a reason for these epidemic autism rates, and we are going to bring it back much closer to what it was once." However, the President himself qualified the remarks and admitted that the cause of autism is unknown: "Although we do not know exactly what the cause of autism is, it is very important for our research efforts that we have the best vaccination recommendations in the world."
Donald Trump's statements are expected to reignite one of the most sensitive debates in the world of medicine and public health. The rise in the rate of those diagnosed with autism in recent decades is a documented phenomenon, but the rise itself does not prove a causal link to vaccines.
A significant part of the change in autism rates over the years is attributed to the expansion of diagnostic definitions, the rise in awareness, the improvement in identifying children on the spectrum, and changes in the way health and education systems identify and document autism. Large-scale studies conducted over the years have not found evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
Therefore, while Donald Trump places the rise in autism diagnoses alongside the rise in the number of vaccines that children receive, there is currently no established scientific basis for the determination that one caused the other. In Israel, the childhood vaccination policy is different from the direction now being presented by the US administration. The Ministry of Health's routine vaccination program begins as early as the day of birth and continues in Tipat Halav clinics and the education system.
Just recently, in July, the Ministry of Health updated the routine vaccination program. The first dose of the MMRV vaccine will continue to be given at age one, but the second dose of the MMRV vaccine, which includes protection against measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox, was moved up from first grade to 18 months of age.
This, according to the ministry, is intended to help provide earlier protection for infants and toddlers and contribute to the protection of the entire population, especially against measles, which has an outbreak in Israel. Thus, while the United States under the Trump administration begins to re-examine some of the basic assumptions of its childhood vaccination policy, in Israel, the broad vaccination schedule remains in place at this stage.
The American debate is now expected to focus not only on the number of shots children receive but also on the much more explosive question that Donald Trump continues to pose: what is behind the sharp rise in the number of children diagnosed with autism, and is there any connection to vaccines.
