869 - The Evidence on Vaccines and Autism

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Novelcoronavirus, Health, Publichealth, Covid, Globalhealth, Coronavirus, News, Health & Fitness, Education, Medicine, Covid19, Science

4.8 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

About this episode:

Questions about vaccines and autism have been around for a while despite multiple scientific studies that do not show a connection. In this episode: where the concerns started, the science behind why experts have concluded there is no link, and why these questions still persist.

Guest:

Dan Salmon is the director of the Johns Hopkins Institute For Vaccine Safety.

Host:

Dr. Josh Sharfstein is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a faculty member in health policy, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland’s Health Department.

Show links and related content:

CDC Wants to Revisit Debunked Theories of Links Between Vaccines And Autism—Forbes
Vaccines 101: Vaccine Safety Science—Public Health On Call (February 2025)

Transcript information:

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
0:05.9	where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.
0:16.3	If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.
0:23.8	That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:30.5	Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers.
0:33.6	They're back.
0:34.7	Questions about whether vaccines are linked to autism.
0:38.4	Professor Daniel Salman is the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Vaccine Safety.
0:43.3	He joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about where this concern started, why experts have concluded there is no connection, and why nonetheless questions persist.
0:55.4	Let's listen.
1:01.2	Professor Dan Salman, thank you so much for joining me today in Public Health on call. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Dr. Sharfstein. Thank you for inviting me.
1:06.3	So I want to reintroduce you to our audience. You run the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins.
1:14.1	That's correct. Would it be fair to say that your career has been devoted to understanding
1:21.2	safety risks of vaccines and working to make vaccines safer? That's right. You know, I've also
1:26.9	done a lot of work looking at why people get vaccines and their decision-making,
1:31.0	but a lot of my work is focused on vaccine safety science and improving that science.
1:37.8	Why? Why did you pick that topic?
1:41.1	Well, it probably found me more than I found it.
2:11.5	My work in this space started when I was a student at Emory, and an article came out in the Atlanta Journal about a chiropractor telling his patients not to vaccinate, and that caught the attention of David Satcher, the CDC director. And I had initially been working at HIV and was brought in to look at the risks of unvaccinated children, which naturally led to vaccine safety.
2:19.3	So let me ask you roughly what year was that? That was more than 30 years ago. So you've been in and around questions of vaccine safety for more than 30 years.
2:24.2	That's correct.
2:25.1	All right. So I want to ask you about something that has been around maybe for just as long,
	...

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