Three weeks before President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccinations and splitting vaccines into multiple shots, Johns Hopkins University announced that the number of measles cases in the United States had reached levels not seen since “Terminator 2” was in theatres.
If those optics weren’t bad enough, this week the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC) released data showing a sharp increase in kindergarten students who sought vaccine exemptions in the 2025-26 school year. The percentage of kindergartners who received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine dropped to 92.4 last year, well below the 95 per cent coverage needed to prevent outbreaks.
This is significant for a disease that was officially eradicated in the United States 26 years ago and can lead to serious complications, including brain swelling, pneumonia and even death. Similarly low childhood vaccination rates have been reported for other potentially deadly diseases, including polio.
Despite these concerning numbers, Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., directed federal officials last week to split the MMR vaccine into three separate shots and reduce the number of diseases the federal government recommends children be vaccinated against from 18 to 11.
At first blush, splitting an existing vaccine into three doses may not seem like a big deal. After all, these are merely guidelines, not mandates, and children who follow them will still be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella.
But the guidelines will put pressure on states, doctors, pharmaceutical and insurance companies to follow suit. And separating the MMR vaccine into three doses delivered at three separate appointments means more medical bills, more time off work, more screaming children and a greater likelihood that doses will be missed, or parents won’t bother showing up in the first place.
In other words, it’s a surefire way to reduce vaccination rates even further — which is exactly what the president wants. While RFK Jr. has long been a prominent anti-vaxxer , according to a July 27 report in the Wall Street Journal, it was Trump who instructed Kennedy to come up with solutions to reduce the number of childhood vaccinations, going as far as to suggest the health secretary would be seen as a failure if he didn’t take action.
The directive flew in the face of Trump’s own advisors, who had previously told RFK to avoid anti-vaccine rhetoric as it was unpopular with the public and psoed problems for the administration. The new recommendations also contradict the guidance provided by the CDC, which notes that, “No published scientific evidence shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots.”
Although the administration claims to be following “gold-standard science,” it is actually motivated by the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. This myth dates back to a small study published in The Lancet in 1998, which claimed a potential link between the two but was retracted after it was found to have used falsified data and the author was revealed to have numerous undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Further research has failed to uncover a causal connection between vaccines and autism. A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2019, for example, followed over 650,000 Danish children born between 1999 and 2010, and concluded that the “MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination.”
In 2021, the Cochrane Collaboration, the medical research group that became the darling of many conservatives after concluding that masks were of little use during the pandemic, reviewed the available scientific literature and concluded that the MMR vaccine is highly effective and does “not cause autism.” Similar findings were released last year by the World Health Organization’s global advisory committee on vaccine safety after reviewing 15 years worth of data.
Yet Trump has long been fixated on this issue. In 2014, he wrote on social media that, “If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take – AUTISM.” And his views have not changed despite the abundance of evidence showing that vaccines don’t lead to increases in autism and the growing spread of preventable diseases in the U.S.
Upon signing his executive order last week, the president again falsely claimed that the new measures would have a “huge impact on autism,” that “large amounts — like vats — of vaccine are currently pumped into your child’s body” (a typical dose is around 0.5 millilitres) and that the U.S. is merely following the lead of its peers (Canada administers the MMR vaccine as a single dose, and the United Kingdom recently consolidated the chicken pox vaccine into it, as well).
Skeptics will point out that we don’t know why autism rates have been rising and that the scientific method requires assumptions be constantly tested. While true, there are numerous other potential causes for increased autism diagnoses, not least of which is the fact that in 2013, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” combined a range of behavioural difficulties into what is now classified as autism spectrum disorder.
While further study is certainly warranted, the new vaccine guidelines essentially aim to turn the entire country into a giant science experiment, which will put many lives at risk in the process.
Yet this policy did not come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a trend witnessed in American society, and the West more broadly, which has seen a growing confluence between the conspiratorial fringes on the left and the right. Ten or 15 years ago, it was easy to classify most anti-vaxxers as either health-conscious, but scientifically illiterate, soccer moms or hippies — the type of people who dine at vegan restaurants and think crystals will cure their health problems.
But during the pandemic, we witnessed a flourishing of vaccine skepticism on the right, as well. Poor public health messaging during COVID, and the general failure of authorities to account for their mistakes, further eroded trust in medical professionals. Add to this an unconventional president who crafts policy on a whim and has little regard for the advice provided by his own government officials, and you have a perfect storm.
In 1991, the last time U.S. measles cases were higher than they are today, “Terminator 2” showed the world a terrifying vision of a future in which intelligent robots try to wipe out humanity. Today, those fears seem closer than ever. But when historians look back, they may realize that the threat of artificial intelligence paled in comparison to the communicable diseases that vaccines had largely eradicated in the 20th century.
National Post
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