Bulwark Takes - Sen. Cassidy Said RFK Jr. Would Not Change Autism Guidance. Now What?

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

The CDC just updated its website regarding vaccines and autism, backtracking on a promise RFK Jr. made to Senator Bill Cassidy during his confirmation. JVL and Jonathan Cohn explain what the CDC actually said, review the scientific evidence on vaccines and autism, and give their takes on the implications this could have on public trust in health agencies. Get 40% off your order during Soul’s Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale at https://GetSoul.com with promo code BULWARKTAKES

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, everyone. I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Jonathan Cohn, and something happened over at the CDC. The Centers for Disease Control yesterday. The CDC changed a page on its website about the link between vaccines and autism. And this page said previously, vaccines do not cause autism. And the new page says, The claim, quote, vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

It goes on from there. Jonathan Cohn, I get pretty worked up over stuff like this. So why don't you give... give me your non-worked-up view of what the fuck is going on with this thing? I mean, it's hard not to get worked up about this. So, I mean, there's the how this decision got made and there's the substance of what they said. Well, let's start with the substance. The claim that the studies have been ignored not paid attention to is just wrong.

You know, all of this, this whole discussion about autism and vaccines goes, you know, if there's sort of the beginning of this, right, or the real sort of intellectual basis for this was a paper by a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield that was published in The Lancet that sort of set off this whole, you know, it's kind of, you know, everything that has flowed since then has come, you know, traces back, a lot of it traces back to there. And that paper was retracted. You know, Dr. Weyfield had his medical license in Britain stripped. Nevertheless, it set off such a so much concern that over the years that followed, there

have been all kinds of studies and all kinds of reviews. You know, there's been original studies. There's been literature reviews where they go back over the old studies. The National Academy of Sciences has gone through every possible vaccine autism link. And, you know, and they proliferated. It's quite hard to keep track because there's several different arguments. Well, it's the thimerosol, no, it's the aluminum. And actually, no, is the volume of vaccines.

Well, all of these have been studied very carefully. And over and over again, the finding is, nope, that's not it. You know, we can talk about, you know, why there's a rise in autism, how much is detection versus some other factors. We do know we're learning more about it. They're genetic factors. There are factors could be like the age of parents, things like that. Very much worth investigating. Vaccines, not on the list.

And yet here we have CDC claiming this wasn't investigated. So and for CDC to just say that is a, it's just, it's remarkable. I mean, you know, we say this thing as unscientific. Unscientific. Science isn't, you know, nothing in science is. Science is not black and white. There's truth and falsehood. What we mean is that in science, we study things a certain way and we come to conclusions.

The scientific conclusion based on all of the evidence we have is there's no link. And CDC just decided, nope. That's wrong. We're going to say something different. Yeah. It's important here to to draw a line between things that politicians say and things that nonpartisan sort of gold standard portions of the federal government say, right? So it's one thing for, it's not a good thing, but it's one thing for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to say, as RFK has said many times. that there is a link between autism and vaccines. It's not good, but at least you're like, well, he's a politician. Politicians lie all the time.

They exaggerate, et cetera, et cetera. It is different for the CDC to do. I mean, there are parts of the government which are supposed to be trusted vectors for information. And this is kind of new territory, I think. to have, you know, a trusted vector of the government. And it is something which we can roll the videotape here, Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to confirm RFK,

specifically said that he had been promised that the CDC would not change anything on its website about the links between vaccines and autism. There's a lot to unpack here. It is worth saying that this is an overdetermined view from the anti-vax crowd because RFK and his confederates are against

all vaccines period as a sort of theological matter and so blaming autism and saying there's linked to autism that's just a convenient thing right this is if there wasn't a if there was no link between vaccines and autism they would still be against vaccines

they don't like vaccines period. They don't like any vaccines period. This is, you know, RFK has said previously, you know, no vaccines are safe. And to have him then being like, well, look at this, you know, nobody has proven this negative, which again is not a thing like science. Science can't prove that it's impossible that I will fly tomorrow. You know, like science can prove that I've never flown before. No person has flown before. Nobody has spontaneously begun to have the superpower of flight. I can't prove that I absolutely won't have it in the morning. That's not how it works. And yet this is the standard that they've adopted. It's, I don't, ma'am. And I think we should say

what the stakes are over this. The stakes are is that this is an attempt to discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated. And so the result of that is going to be more sickness and death among kids. And the other thing, I'm sorry, I'm just like ranting at this point. And I promise to stop. You go. You go. There is a, there is a eugenics component to this, which is the attempt to make neurodivergent

people out to be a dysgenic class of people who they just don't like. they don't like the existence of autistic people and I that's that's really bad like you know I like neurodivergence is just a thing right you know one and what also once you start looking for it you see how like everybody's a little bit neurodivergent in some way right and maybe not you you're a very even killed guy oh I wouldn't assume that and uh you know like the the extent to which these, you know, these folks, autistic folks are being labeled here as like something to be cleansed and stand, man, it just like sets off all sorts of alarm bells. Yeah. In me. I don't know. Am I over interpreting that? No, no. I mean, look, I know there's a bunch

of things there. So let me start by saying that I think you're right about that like they just don't like vaccines. And part of that is, you know, it's not just that vaccines cause autism, right? I mean, their whole theory. I mean, you know, Kennedy is this big believer in what he called natural immunity, right? You know, you acquire, it makes you stronger. And I do think there is, I can't see into the man's brain. I don't, I guess, because that's why I'd see a worm there or whatever, but I can't see into the man's brain or so. I don't know what any individual person believes, but I think when you look at the rhetoric that comes out of this movement, it's very clear. There's a sort of a sense that, well, you know, some natural selection taking place.

We kind of call the herd a little bit. And that's how, you know, we become stronger as a kind of, you know, as a, as a, as a, as a species or whatever, which is, you know, it's horrible. A master race. Yeah. I didn't want to go there, but okay. And so I know there's definitely an element of that. And I was thinking about, you know, the sort of the importance and of the sort of the distinction between what politicians say and what an agency like CDC says.

And I don't want to be seeming like I'm sucking up, but this is the subject of your triad today is excellent. I hope everybody reads it. But there has been this distinction. I mean, you know, agencies, we depend on agencies like the CDC, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You go down the list. And there's been this understanding that there are places where the politics stops. And it doesn't mean that people producing scientific data might not have biases. It doesn't mean that sometimes political agendas don't affect the, you know, the kind of work they do. but we do try to guard against that and there has always been this understanding that at some level like scientific information was something you know you didn't touch and there's a very there's a very practical way to see this change at the CDC and something that I think foretold what we just saw last night which we learned about a couple months ago which is you know CDC in addition to everything else right like every other part of HHS has just been uh slashed in terms of number you know they've cut offices they've cut people and they've also purged most of the senior leadership.

And there's an office of the director of CDC, vacant at the moment. There's an acting CDC director. Not clear he can serve. And there's this whole complicated mess about that. But in the office of the director, there's a set of sort of deputies there who historically, the only person in that office who was a political appointee was the director, right? CDC director was always a political appointee, although even then it was a political appointee who typically was somebody with a lot of background in, you know, medicine, science, whatever.

All of them, they were all, the rest were all career scientists. They are gone, and they've been replaced with political appointees. So this is now an agency run by political appointees serving the agenda of, you know, either Robert F. Kennedy or Donald Trump or some amalgam of the two. Bullard takes a sponsor by Seoul, Cold nights, cozy blankets, and Souls out-of-office gummies. It's my new favorite routine. Throw on a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, grab a gummy, and unwind.

It's a little self-care ritual that keeps me calm through the holiday chaos. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious, hemp-derived THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their best-selling autof-office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood, and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor your dose to fit your vibe from a gentle 1.5 milligram microdose, which, again, is my preferred dose for parenting, to their newest 15 milligram gummy for a more elevated experience. Maybe be careful with that one around the Christmas or Hanukkah table.

Please, folks, it's the holidays. Saul also has a variety of products specifically designed to help you get a better night's rest, including their top-selling sleepy gummies, a fan-favorian. for deep restorative sleep. Take advantage of Seoul's Black Friday, Cyber Monday deal now. For a limited time, get 40% off your entire order. Go to getsole.com and use the code bullwork takes. That's getsole.com promo code bullwork takes for 40% off.

Don't miss their best deal of the year. Yeah, and this is, I mean, to be very clear, this is how authoritarian governments are run. So, you know, you go over to China and the, the Chinese, CDC, they have political commissars there who make sure that, like, hey, you know, we don't publish any data or studies that don't comport with the political project of the Politburo. And, you know, for instance, you see this in their COVID numbers. So, you know, I think the official Chinese count was like 83,000 deaths from COVID.

The answer is more like 1.4 million. And we've seen this. I mean, I'm a demographics guy. We've seen this for decades from Chinese demographers who, like, if you really wanted to understand what fertility rates were in China, you couldn't read any papers. You had to, like, wait until you were at an international conference with some Chinese demographers and then, like, go and talk to them one on one. And they would tell you verbally, but that was it because they couldn't publish stuff.

And that's where the parts of the federal government are going. And here's the thing. Like, it's not everywhere, right? We've got a couple high profile cases of this now. But trust doesn't work like. Like trust has to be right every time. And once it's broken once, it takes a long time to put it back together. And this is my question to you, Jonathan.

Like, when we look at, well, okay, let's assume. we get out of this pickle. You know, I just, we'll assume three years from now, we get out, like, liberalism is basically stable, democracy is okay, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. How do we live in a world where you can trust economic data put out by the government when one party is in power and when the other party is in power, we have to turn that off and no longer be able to trust economic data. And so businesses can't make decisions about hiring, firing, CAP-X, et cetera, et cetera.

How do you live in a world where you can trust public health information when one party is in power? But then when the other party is in power, everybody switches their frame and understands, oh, okay, well, we can't listen to the CDC now. Like, how does that work? Oh, an easy question for me. I mean, I don't know how it works. to be honest with you, I would bank on two things, hopefully. Number one, that there is still even now, even with these political people at the top of CDC and so many other agencies like that, you still have career officials there who are doing their best

and will be able to police, you know, do what they can from the inside and when they can't, they will step outside and call attention to the lies, to the misrepresentation. And we've, again, we've had that at CDC. We had those very high profile resignations of several longtime CDC career scientists. I think, you know, and then it is incumbent, right, on whoever, you know, whenever, you know, then three years from now that this be front and center is sort of rebuilding of that trust. And somehow, one of two things has to then happen. Somehow there needs to be a show that wins over some of the skeptics, right?

some of the people who have lost faith and authority for reasons of their own. I mean, you know, there's a whole complex story. Why is trust has fallen. Somehow you rebuild some of that trust and hope that maybe, I mean, I don't know, you're not exactly the optimist on this. I know, but the Republican Party, the other party that you're referring to, decides actually this is not in their interest either, that there's enough people grownups there who say we don't want this going forward

and we want to go back to the way it was. And I don't know. That's the, just put your finger on it, because the problem is that in order to rebuild trust, it isn't the Democrats who have to do it. Right. In order for trust to be rebuilt, you need a Republican administration, which is committed to rebuilding, like, public trust in the functions of government. And I think that that project is actually wholly antithetical to the current Republican project. I don't say that lightly. I think it is literally entirely antithetical. The entire Republican project right now is to destroy trust, to level things and make it so that nobody knows what to believe.

and to wage war on the federal government itself because they want the federal government to be simply an arm of the executive. And so that is their project. They don't want the federal government. They don't want people to trust the federal government unless they're in charge of it. So their position is you can't trust anything coming out of the CDC if it's Joe Biden's CDC. I don't know, man. Like, am I wrong about this?

Am I being too hard on the Republicans? Okay, I'll give two asterisks on this. Okay. I'm not sure I believe that, but I'm just going to throw them out there. Number one, I would say it was not that long ago. There were Republicans who were just as committed to the, to things like reliable information, you know, respecting institutions. and I know they're not part of the Republican. They're not part of the Republican.

It's been a decade, Jonathan. I'm old. That doesn't seem that. But you say it wasn't that long ago, but we are coming up on a decade of this. My world, it wasn't that long ago. Okay. Okay. So I think there's that part of it.

And this is the one thing I'll say. I've actually been trying to think about this a lot lately and why trust has fallen. And as much as I put this sort of blank, you know, as much as I, I, I, the, the bad faith, the dishonesty of the likes of, you know, Robert F. Kennedy and, and who are, you know, totally believing this and people like Trump, who may not believe it, but are happy to enable it, whatever. And then the rest of the party and Cassidy, who's willing to vote for it, even though he clearly knows better. When you, I'd sort of deconstruct why trust is fond. There is, there is, you know, it is not, there's scientists themselves, you know, we look at some of the decisions made during COVID and things. I think, at least the way they were communicated. I, I, I, there were places to, to, there were places to, to, do better where they made mistakes and maybe a sort of show you know maybe there are ways to sort of reach out and and sort of I don't know I'm thinking this as I say a lot of I almost sounds ridiculous but somehow to kind of rebuild some of that there is some measure of this that falls on the scientific community figure out how to at least communicate better in a way that

slowly rebuilds the trust and maybe that helps a little bit I don't know it's all I got I mean It's pretty thin, but I guess we'll take it. Guys, do his favor. Hit like, hit subscribe, follow the channel. Jonathan Cohn, great to be with you, my friend. To everybody else, good luck, America.