There’s people who disagree that the world is round. People still think Elvis is alive.
Dr. Bill Cassidy, a Republican Senator from Louisiana, has permanently cemented his reputation as a spineless jellyfish who caved to pressure and voted to confirm RFK Jr. Now that it’s too late, he is futilely trying to erase his shameful legacy by making accurate but impotent pro-vaccine statements whenever possible. According to news reports about the confirmation hearing of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya:
In one contentious exchange, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the committee’s Republican chairman, lamented that Dr. Bhattacharya had stopped short of saying the question of whether vaccines cause autism had been resolved. “It’s been exhaustively studied,” said Mr. Cassidy, a doctor and fierce supporter of vaccination. “The more we pretend like this is an issue, the more we will have children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.”
Dr. Bhattacharya responded that more research was needed as long as American parents were concerned enough not to vaccinate their children. “My inclination is to give people good data,” he said.
To that, Mr. Cassidy suggested that there already was good data, and that “precious limited taxpayer dollars” could not be devoted to every last fringe theory.
“There’s people who disagree that the world is round,” he said. “People still think Elvis is alive.”
Though generations of medical students should study Dr. Cassidy as a cautionary tale who betrayed medical ethics and let children suffer in exchange for political power, in this instance he is exactly right.
Science is only settled when everyone is convinced that a hypothesis is proven to be true.
One person who agrees with Dr. Bhattacharya, however, is Dr. Edward Livingston, a former deputy editor of JAMA. I previously discussed how Dr. Livingston wrote a robust defense of Dr. Bhattacharya and the Great Barrington Declaration despite not knowing or even caring about what it said. In his latest defense of Dr. Bhattacharya, Dr. Livingston said:
Interesting that some Senators criticized @DrJBhattacharya for saying he would fund research at the @NIH to show that vaccines do not cause autism. The critics argued that this was ‘settled science.’ Yes, there is compelling evidence against the vaccine-autism relationship. However, a large swath of the public do not believe it. Because of public skepticism, it is not settled science. There is a need for further research intending to convince the public regarding vaccine safety. It is not good enough to say “I am a scientist at a prestigious university, and you should believe what I say because of who I am.” That does not work anymore, especially after the pandemic when science’s reputation took a big hit…
He also added, “science is only settled when everyone is convinced that a hypothesis is proven to be true.”
It’s hard to know where to begin with something like this, but I think it’s important to understand what’s so wrong about calling for more research into the relationship between vaccines and autism.
First, there isn’t just “compelling evidence against the vaccine-autism relationship.” There is overwhelming evidence vaccines don’t cause autism and people have worked hard to curate this material (Vaxopedia, Skeptical Raptor). There’s no evidence that vaccines cause autism. We are in this situation only because of a one man. As Skeptical Raptor wrote:
Over the over 20 years since the retracted paper was first published, Mr. Andy Wakefield, fraud extraordinaire, has continued to propagate the myth about vaccines and autism. But in case it is not clear, nothing in Wakefield’s original paper has any credibility, that’s why it was retracted. Moreover, Wakefield has provided no evidence whatsoever to support his claims.
If you want to read all about Wakefield’s despicable deceit (and unethical study design), you can read it here, here, and here, a series of articles written by award-winning journalist Brian Deer and published in the British Medical Journal (now known as BMJ), a respected peer-reviewed publication. Mr. Deer has even written a book detailing his investigation of Wakefield and his fraudulent research called, “The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Science, Deception, and the War on Vaccines.”
Dr. Livingston wants us to keep chasing after the myths started by this fraudulent research.
Second, no one defends vaccines by saying “I am a scientist at a prestigious university, and you should believe what I say because of who I am.” Dr. Livingston made that up to spread doubt and mistrust about scientists. He implies these jerk scientists, who don’t really exist, are to blame for vaccine hesitancy, not blogs like Sensible Medicine, which published glowing tributes to RFK Jr. such as Why Doctors Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love MAHA.
In reality, vaccine-experts don’t make empty arguments from authority. They share the overwhelming evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism. Dr. Peter Hotez wrote a book titled Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, for example, and under the direction of Dr. Paul Offit, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia uses plain language to discuss the flaws in Wakefield’s “studies”, present studies that disprove the vaccines/autism myth, and discuss what the actual causes of autism might be. Dr. Livingston is willing to conjure imaginary jerk scientists out of thin air while simultaneously ignoring the many actual scientists and doctors who do a great job of explaining vaccine-safety to the public, often at great personal cost.
Third, if the the phrase vaccines don’t cause autism is not “settled science” then what is in medicine and who deputized Dr. Livingston to makes these determinations? Dr. Livingston feels that what is and what is not “settled science” should be determined by public opinion, not by evidence, and that as long as a critical mass of people hold a false belief, that means the science itself is “not settled”. Dr. Cassidy was right that there are people who think the world is flat. According to Dr. Livingston, however, haughty astronomers are to blame for this, and the shape of the earth is not “settled science.” It requires “further research”.
Fourth, although almost no topic in medicine has been researched more than vaccines, Dr. Livingston believes further research will “convince the public regarding vaccine safety.” Even though Dr. Livingston rightly recognizes that anti-vaxxers don’t believe the existing data, in his imagination this “further research” will magically succeed in changing minds of anti-vaxxers while countless other studies from around the world have failed. Dr. Livingston claims that more studies will cause large numbers of anti-vaxxers to say “Wow. It turns our vaccines don’t cause autism after all. I’ve been wrong the whole time.” As those of us who have been paying attention to it know, anti-vaccine sentiment isn’t driven by a lack of research, but rather by a lack of trust and conspiracies. Indeed, the one time RFK Jr. shared accurate information about vaccines, he too became part of the conspiracy. He hasn’t encouraged vaccines since then.
Anti-vaxxers are often angry and vocal, but fortunately they are still a small minority. For now, thankfully most parents still vaccinate their children. Yet, Dr. Livingston feels extreme anti-vaccine voices should set the national research agenda. He feels we are beholden to them in some way, and we must address their “skepticism”. For their sake, we need to repeat studies that have already been done many times before, even though they all show the same thing. Other research projects can take a back seat so that we can once again generate evidence to cater to a minority of people, many of whom are not persuadable with evidence.
Obviously, repetitious studies on vaccines and autism will be a waste of time and money that won’t move the needle at all. We don’t have to let anti-vaxxers hijack our research priorities. Given that doctors believe “settled science” should be determined by a popularity contest, perhaps a better use of resources would to to invest in basic scientific literacy and education.
Finally, Dr. Livingston wasn’t entirely wrong to say that “science’s reputation took a big hit” during the pandemic. However, that is because merchants of doubt portrayed dedicated vaccine-scientists as arrogant bullies who refuse to present data to the public. Though he could have praised the scientists who gave us life-saving COVID vaccines in record time, Dr. Livingston instead glorified Fox News celebrities like Dr. Bhattacharya who misled the public throughout the pandemic. Although there are countless examples, Dr. Bhattacharya said that we “basically” had herd immunity in May 2021 and that vaccines were a perfect panacea that had “defanged” pandemic. Rather than admit his errors and retreat into obscurity, Dr. Bhattacharya encouraged mistrust in frontline doctors, blaming them, not the virus, for unpopular mitigation measures. Meanwhile, he earned $12,000 posting on X last year. More recently, Dr. Bhattacharya has begun to stoke distrust about routine vaccines, as Walker Bragman detailed in his article Trump Pick for NIH Director: Vaccines May Cause Autism, Alternative Schedules Okay. Instead of sharing these examples and explaining how they led to mistrust, Dr. Livingston censored them in his homages to Dr. Bhattacharya.
US CDC Plans Study Into Vaccines and Autism, Sources Say
Unfortunately, Dr. Livingston will probably get his wish. According to the article US CDC Plans Study Into Vaccines and Autism, Sources Say:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links. It is unclear whether U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has long promoted anti-vaccine views, is involved in the planned CDC study or how it would be carried out.
This is a dangerous moment. With mendacious anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr. and Dr. David Weldon in charge, there is little doubt what this “study” will “discover” and what the effects will be. When vaccine-rates fall even further and once-vanquished diseases continue to return, we can point the finger at doctors who called for “further research,” while denigrating scientists and the extensive research they have already done.
