US health chief Kennedy overhauls federal autism panel and taps vaccine critics

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has overhauled a panel that helps the federal government set priorities for autism research and social services, installing several members who have said

vaccines can cause autism

despite decades of research that has failed to establish such a link.

The panel, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, was established in 2000 and has historically included people with autism, parents, scientists, clinicians and federal employees who hold public meetings to debate how federal funds should be best allocated to support people with autism.

The 21 new public members selected by Mr Kennedy include many outspoken activists. They include a former employee of a super political action committee that supported his presidential campaign, a doctor who has been sued over dangerous heavy metal treatments for a young child with autism, a political economist who has testified against vaccines before a congressional committee, and parents who have spoken publicly about their belief that their children’s autism was caused by vaccines.

The group, which also includes 21 government members from many federal agencies, will advise the federal government on how to prioritise the US$2 billion (S$2.5 billion) allocated by Congress for autism research and services over the next five years.

The chairwoman of the new panel will be one of the new public members, Dr Sylvia Fogel, a psychiatrist from Boston who has a teenager with profound autism.

In an interview on Jan 29, Dr Fogel said she was unaware of why she had been chosen to lead the group.

She also expressed a more moderate stance towards vaccines than some of her new colleagues on the panel and appeared to push back on the idea that the group would reopen settled science on vaccines and autism.

“Large-scale, population-wide studies of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and of thimerosal as an ingredient have not demonstrated a causal link with autism,” she said.

“That evidence is important and established. My interest is not in revisiting settled population-level questions nor in making vaccine recommendations, which are outside the committee’s role.”

But Dr Fogel cited the steadily

rising prevalence of autism among US children

to argue that more research was needed on whether there are subpopulations that might be vulnerable to vaccines and other environmental exposures. NYTIMES