Fact check
Is it true: RFK Jr. anti-vaccine activism / Children's Health Defense (1998-present)?
No — this has been debunked.
The vaccine-autism claim derives from the Wakefield 1998 Lancet paper, retracted in 2010 after the UK General Medical Council found its claims of consecutive referral and ethics approval false; the BMJ's editors called the paper fraudulent in 2011, and Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register. The thimerosal-mercury hypothesis was rejected by the 2004 IOM report and by Hviid et al. 2003 (JAMA, n=467,450) among numerous subsequent studies. A 2019 Danish cohort of 657,461 children found no increased autism risk after MMR vaccination, and a 2025 Danish cohort of 1,224,176 children found no increased risk of autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders after aluminum-containing vaccines. Autism diagnoses kept rising after thimerosal was removed from routine childhood vaccines, which does not fit the hypothesis. HHS's November 2025 rewrite of the CDC autism page cited no new research (AP), and HHS's autism research had not, by August 2026, produced evidence linking vaccines to autism (KFF Health News).
The claim
Routine childhood vaccines, including MMR, thimerosal-containing vaccines and aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines, cause autism and chronic autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Children's Health Defense have claimed, and health agencies covered up the evidence.
Key evidence
Vaccine-injury claims have generated sustained parental concern despite refutation
Wakefield 1998 Lancet paper retracted in 2010; BMJ editors called it fraudulent in 2011
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