It’s an concept as widespread as it’s incorrect: American infants now obtain too many vaccines, which overwhelm their immune methods and result in ailments like autism.
This idea has been repeated so typically that it has permeated the mainstream, echoed by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his choose to be the nation’s prime well being official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“When you feed a child, Bobby, a vaccination that’s, like, 38 completely different vaccines and it seems to be prefer it’s been for a horse, not a, you already know, 10-pound or 20-pound child,” Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Kennedy on a name in July. “And then you definitely see the infant abruptly beginning to change radically — I’ve seen it too many occasions.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump returned to the theme, saying Mr. Kennedy would examine whether or not childhood vaccines induced autism, although dozens of rigorous research have already explored and dismissed that idea.
“I believe someone has to search out out,” Mr. Trump mentioned on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But the concept that at this time’s vaccines are overtaxing kids’s immune methods is basically flawed, specialists mentioned. Vaccines at this time are cleaner and extra environment friendly, and so they comprise far fewer stimulants to the immune system — by orders of magnitude — than they did many years in the past.
What’s extra, the immune reactions produced by vaccines are “minuscule” in contrast with those who kids expertise each day, mentioned Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University who advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines.
