Trump and RFK Jr. Repeat False and Misleading Vaccine Claims

During the signing of an executive order on vaccines, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a deluge of false and misleading claims about the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule.

The executive order establishes "Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations" and directs federal agencies and states to advance them. The new recommendations attempt to repeat prior administration changes to the routine vaccine schedule through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reducing it from targeting 17 to 11 diseases. At the time, we explained that HHS had justified this decision with a variety of incorrect or misleading assertions. A judge subsequently blocked these changes after the American Academy of Pediatrics sued HHS.

During the Aug. 10 signing, Trump repeated claims about the childhood vaccine schedule and autism that he has made in the past, often bolstered by comments from Kennedy.

Trump misleadingly claimed that the changes to the vaccine schedule align the U.S. with peer nations. When counting diseases the schedule protects against, the changes would put the U.S. at the low end of peer nations in the size of its vaccine schedule, exceeding only Denmark.

The president falsely claimed that the U.S. requires "72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children." States require certain vaccinations to attend school, but none come close to mandating 72 doses. And there are no federal vaccine mandates.

Trump justified his Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations by misleadingly claiming that the U.S. has been out of step with peer nations in the number of vaccines it recommends. "For long — and far too long — a long period of time, America has recommended more childhood vaccines than any peer nation and even twice as many doses as some European countries, and even more than that," he said during the Aug. 10 signing. He later claimed that "this updated recommendation finally aligns the United States with other advanced and developed nations around the world."

The U.S. childhood vaccine schedule historically has recommended a relatively high number of vaccines, routinely protecting against a few more diseases than the median among other high-income nations, according to our previous analysis. Reducing the number of routinely recommended vaccines to 11, as the executive order suggests, would put the U.S. schedule at the low end compared with peer nations' recommendations.

HHS previously attempted to limit universal recommendations to these same 11 childhood vaccines in January, although this change was subsequently blocked in court. HHS backed the decision to pare down the schedule with a 33-page assessment comparing the U.S. schedule with recommendations in 20 peer nations. Among these countries, only Denmark has a smaller number of universally recommended vaccines than put forward in the proposed 11-vaccine schedule.

Trump erroneously claimed that the U.S. is "requiring 72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children." States mandate that children get certain vaccines to attend school, but the number of shots needed to meet these requirements is nowhere near 72. Kennedy claimed an even higher number of recommended shots, stating that there were "72 jabs before 18, but it actually could be up to 94 jabs." Dr. Paul Offit, a physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, pointed out the contradiction in criticizing large numbers of injections for children while simultaneously advocating that combination vaccines be separated. "Here you have this administration constantly talking about how children get too many shots and then they say they want more shots," he told us.

Trump also criticized the longstanding practice of vaccinating infants against hepatitis B at birth, saying that vaccination isn't necessary until adolescence. Health care providers, Trump said, are "giving the hepatitis B shot to infants and newborns on top of many other vaccinations. The hepatitis B shouldn't be given until they're 14 or 15 years old. They were given early." That ignores what medical experts say are good reasons to vaccinate every newborn at birth, given infants' much higher risk of developing chronic infection.

Trump also claimed, falsely, that children are being injected with massive volumes of fluid when they get their shots, comparing it to "a bottle of soda poured into a little child's body" or "a large glass of something." "Vats of vaccine are currently pumped into your child's body," Trump said. Doses of MMR and other vaccines given to young children are typically around 0.5 milliliters, or a tenth of a teaspoon.

Trump repeated the baseless suggestion that the increasing number of recommended vaccinations is linked to a rise in autism. "Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today," he said. "In those times, people were much healthier. And, of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist." Kennedy compared a 1970 Wisconsin study finding an autism incidence rate of 0.8 per 10,000 to "the rate according to CDC today in this country is 1 in every 31 children." Dr. Eric Fombonne, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, previously told us it was "completely absurd" to compare the autism prevalence estimate from the 1970 Wisconsin study to estimates today, given different diagnostic criteria and awareness levels.