NIH Director Declines to Fully Rule Out Vaccine-Autism Link During Senate Hearing
Jay Bhattacharya would not categorically denounce the discredited narrative that vaccines cause autism.
The National Institutes of Health Director stopped short of saying that vaccines do not cause autism during his appearance before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Tuesday.
Jay Bhattacharya, known for casting doubt on public health measures to control COVID-19, appeared before the committee to testify about his agency’s efforts to “modernize” and restore trust in science. He said public confidence had tumbled in recent years.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked the official if he believed that having a Health and Human Services secretary—Robert Kennedy Jr.—who promoted the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism negatively affected public trust in science.
Bhattacharya deflected, citing research suggesting the decline in trust began before Kennedy’s tenure. Sanders pressed, asking directly if vaccines cause autism. Bhattacharya replied, “I do not believe that the measles vaccine causes autism.”
When Sanders repeated his question—“Do vaccines cause autism?”—Bhattacharya responded, “I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism.”
The NIH director later clarified to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) that “When you’re studying anything like this, you can’t just say vaccines. You have to say vaccine-by-vaccine.” He claimed that on the autism question, some vaccines were “less well studied” than measles shots.
The idea that vaccines are linked to autism originated with a fraudulent 1998 paper by disgraced researcher Andrew Wakefield, which was published in The Lancet. Although the paper has long since been discredited and retracted, anti-vaxxers like Kennedy have continued to promote the narrative. They suggest that certain ingredients in particular vaccines—or a combination of vaccines—causes the neurodevelopmental disorder.
Bhattacharya has previously expressed his openness to the idea that multiple shots in concert with one another may be linked to autism. During a podcast appearance in September 2024, he suggested more research into the childhood immunization schedule was warranted to rule out vaccines as a trigger.
“I think there is a legitimate increase in autism in the population at large and the question of why—we should be moving heaven and earth to answer it,” he said. “And I don’t think it’ll likely end up being the vaccines, but I don’t know that for a fact. So it should be part of the scientific conversation as a hypothesis that looks at—because we’re asking parents to vaccinate their children with…several vaccines; many vaccines…Each of them could have a different combination of effects.”
Bhattacharya has associated with anti-vaccine activists for years as part of his advocacy against COVID mitigation measures. In November, he accepted an award from the Brownstone Institute, a group with which he was once affiliated, and he spoke at a March 2024 presidential campaign event for Kennedy at which Kennedy’s vice presidential pick was announced.
On Bhattacharya’s watch, the agency has directed $50 million to research to identify the causes of autism, aligning with Kennedy’s priorities.