the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 24, 2025
Following instructions from Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added a sentence to its website. It said, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” That contradicts what the website had said for many years up until now.
Kennedy often plays to people who push anti-scientific and anti-vaccine agendas. But moves like these can leave parents confused about what to do. Childhood vaccination rates have declined in many states in the country. A vaccination rate of at least 95% is considered necessary to achieve herd immunity against an infectious disease. Mumps, Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccination rates in Idaho, Alaska, Wisconsin and Minnesota currently range from 78.5% to 86.5%.
We see a huge increase in measles cases in the U.S. this year with over 1,750 reported. Ninety-two percent have been in unvaccinated people. There have been 211 people hospitalized in the U.S. with measles and three people have died from the disease. There were 762 cases confirmed as part of an earlier outbreak which spread from Texas to several neighboring states. Now there is a new outbreak occurring in Arizona and counties in Utah near their common border which has produced over 200 cases of measles thus far.
The measles vaccine is highly effective. Cases of measles dropped by 97% in the year after the vaccine was introduced. Measles is an airborne disease that spreads easily from person to person, so the drop could not be attributed to better sanitation, as might have been the case with some other diseases.
When pushed, RFK, Jr. calls for people to get the MMR vaccine, but calls it a “personal choice.” Unfortunately, with a highly infectious disease like measles, one person’s personal choice can endanger many others.
The debate over a possible link between vaccines and autism can be traced back to a faked-up study conducted in Britain by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, which claimed that eight of 12 children studied lost acquired skills, including speech, after receiving the MMR vaccine. The medical journal The Lancet, which published the study, later retracted it, saying Wakefield’s study was funded by parents involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and that Wakefield acted unethically.
The supposed link between vaccines and autism spread widely despite many research studies showing no such link. According to the Los Angeles County health department, “Over 40 high-quality studies involving 5.6 million children have found no link between routine childhood vaccine and autism. This conclusion is supported by leading health authorities, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Department of Public Health, the World Health Organization, and leading research institutions.”
While there are certainly limits to the public health system under capitalism, they are not helped when someone like RFK, Jr. decides he knows better than some of the best minds in the current scientific community and pushes anti-scientific theories.