Trump's vaccine conspiracy theories are a threat to your children | Celine Goudner

Vaccines have been shown safe and effective. When he hints otherwise, the president-elect is gambling with young livesThis week, vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr announced that he ’d beennominated by President Elect Donald Trump to chair a commission on vaccine safety. A few hours later, the transition team issued a statement saying that that Trump was “exploring the possibility of forming a committee on autism”. Last summer, Trumpmet with Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license and was found to have producedfraudulent research linking vaccines to autism. Whether Trump is creating a commission on vaccine safety or autism, the message is clear. Trump is offering prominent support to the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism.The science on vaccines is very clear: they are safe and effective. Vaccines do not cause autism. It ’s a waste of our tax dollars to rehash this issue yet again. Vaccines are one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine. Let’s consider measles, just one of many vaccine-preventable diseases. Before 1963, when the measles vaccine became widely available, 3-4 million Americans got measles each year, of whom 48,000 were hospitalized, 4000 developed encephalitis resulting in long-term brain damage, and 4-500 died. The country’s population has almost doubled since that time.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: US politics Health Society US news World news Source Type: news