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🗓️ 26 June 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
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0:00.0 | Dr. Wakefield, would you like to start this panel? |
0:05.0 | Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the committee, it's a great privilege to be here. |
0:09.2 | 25 years ago, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, then a researcher and physician testified in front of Congress. |
0:15.9 | The purpose of my testimony is to report the results of the clinical and scientific investigation of a series of children with autism. |
0:22.8 | 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. |
0:34.0 | For which he had no evidence. |
0:35.6 | That's Dr. Paul Offutt, director of the Vaccine Education |
0:39.1 | Center at the Children's Hospital, Philadelphia, who was also at the hearing. |
0:43.7 | I was subpoenaed to testify about whether I thought it made biological sense that vaccines |
0:49.7 | could cause autism, and I didn't. In an interview with NPR's throughline podcast, |
0:55.0 | Offit says that Wakefield's theory didn't hold up. And so study after study after study, more than a dozen |
1:00.6 | studies done in seven countries on three kinds involving thousands of thousands of children. |
1:08.3 | The connection between vaccines and autism has been debunked repeatedly, and Dr. Wakefield had his license stripped from him. |
1:16.2 | 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. |
1:27.0 | President Trump noted the rising numbers when he addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this year. |
1:32.0 | And you can't even believe these numbers. |
1:35.0 | And he promised his administration would get to the bottom of the rapid rise in autism. |
1:39.9 | So we're going to find out what it is and there's nobody better than Bobby? |
1:43.4 | Bobby is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. |
1:48.5 | We know it's an environmental exposure. It has to be genes do not cause epidemics. |
1:54.1 | Kennedy has spent years questioning the safety of vaccines and linking them to autism. |
1:59.7 | And now, he's using the power of his office to reopen |
... |
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