Dr. Wakefield, would you like to start this panel?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the committee, it's a great privilege to be here.

25 years ago, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, then a researcher and physician testified in front of Congress.

The purpose of my testimony is to report the results of the clinical and scientific investigation of a series of children with autism.

At this hearing, Wakefield presented research he published in 1998, which suggested that the measles, mumps, and rebella vaccine could be linked to the development of autism and children.

For which he had no evidence.

That's Dr. Paul Offutt, director of the Vaccine Education

Center at the Children's Hospital, Philadelphia, who was also at the hearing.

I was subpoenaed to testify about whether I thought it made biological sense that vaccines

could cause autism, and I didn't. In an interview with NPR's throughline podcast,

Offit says that Wakefield's theory didn't hold up. And so study after study after study, more than a dozen

studies done in seven countries on three kinds involving thousands of thousands of children.

The connection between vaccines and autism has been debunked repeatedly, and Dr. Wakefield had his license stripped from him.

Nevertheless, the theory has persisted for decades, and part of the reason why may be that autism diagnoses have soared over the last 30 years or so.

President Trump noted the rising numbers when he addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this year.

And you can't even believe these numbers.

And he promised his administration would get to the bottom of the rapid rise in autism.

So we're going to find out what it is and there's nobody better than Bobby?

Bobby is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

We know it's an environmental exposure. It has to be genes do not cause epidemics.

Kennedy has spent years questioning the safety of vaccines and linking them to autism.

And now, he's using the power of his office to reopen

...