Let me make a small concession on behalf of the medical community: The CDC is technically correct when it asserts, as it did this week in a surprise update to its website, that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
But the underlying logic of this change clearly goes beyond the wispy double negative. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already said that he believes in the affirmative: Vaccines do cause autism. And because he is now secretary of Health and Human Services, he can order his bureaucracy to lean ever further toward that same belief. A causal link hasn’t not been found, the CDC is saying now—at least not completely, not quite yet.
If this pretzel logic is confusing, that’s the point. Bewilderment and doubt are among the anti-vaccine movement’s most powerful weapons.
It’s true that doctors cannot say with absolute certainty that some ingredient in some vaccine, or combination of vaccines, does not contribute in some way, however small or large, to the rise in autism diagnoses.
We also can’t rule out the possibility that infant vaccines cause tornadoes or bad movies. Uncertainty is inseparable from science.
