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He Helped Build the Anti-Vaccine Movement. RFK Jr. Just Hired Him.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has hired anti-vaccine activist and author Mark Blaxill as a senior adviser, according to three current and former senior CDC officials and an internal profile reviewed by MSNBC. Neither a physician nor a scientist, Blaxill claims without evidence that every child who takes vaccines is in some way injured, and has written books and articles promoting the disproven claim that childhood the shots cause a broad range of health conditions and that autism is a consequence purely of environmental exposures.
Blaxill once helped lead the advocacy group, SafeMinds, which funded research aimed at proving a link between vaccines and autism and served as editor-at-large of the anti-vaccine website, Age of Autism. Blaxill has long and wrongly blamed thimerosal, a preservative in some vaccines, for what he calls an autism “epidemic.” His claims have been refuted by decades of rigorous research. The Institute of Medicine officially rejected any causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism in 2004.
Blaxhill’s role and remit at CDC is unclear. The internal profile showed he will be working directly under CDC chief of staff Matthew Buzzelli. One of the senior CDC officials said Blaxill’s name had been floated for weeks as a potential leader for a program that tracks autism within the Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
As Immunization Rates Fall, Vaccine Skepticism Grows as a Wedge Issue
Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey, stood in front of a debate audience on Sunday and said that he supported childhood vaccines and the state’s role in expanding the number of children who are immunized. Four days later, Mr. Ciattarelli was a featured guest at an event hosted by a group that has emerged as one of New Jersey’s main opponents of mandatory vaccination.
The keynote speaker was a doctor who has falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine magnetizes patients. (“They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks,” the doctor, Sherri Tenpenny, testified in 2021 in Ohio. “They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick.”) Mr. Ciattarelli’s appearance at the New Jersey Public Health Innovation Political Action Committee’s Health Freedom Gala in Hazlet, N.J., on Thursday came as President Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has elevated immunization skeptics and limited access to COVID-19 vaccines nationwide.
On Monday, in an extraordinary White House address, Mr. Trump also warned pregnant women that Tylenol has been linked to autism in claims unsubstantiated by science.
Mr. Ciattarelli’s appearance also came as a new independent poll showed the governor’s race tightening, and as each party’s battle to energize its base intensified ahead of the Nov. 4 election. Representative Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor, said Mr. Ciattarelli’s appearance at the gala showed “we can’t trust him to keep New Jersey kids safe and healthy.”
“Jack is taking his cues from fringe activists, conspiracy theorists and the likes of Donald Trump and R.F.K. Jr., whose extreme policies will result in reduced access to vaccines and more of our children catching preventable illnesses,” Ms. Sherrill said in a statement.
Democrats, Republicans Target Ultraprocessed Foods With State Laws
California Republican James Gallagher, the GOP’s former Assembly leader, has often accused the state’s progressive lawmakers of heavy-handed government intrusion, but this year he added his name to a legislative push for healthier school meals.
His party followed suit, with all but one Republican voting to send a bill to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that would put into law a first-in-the nation legal definition of ultraprocessed foods, followed by a public school ban on those deemed most concerning. And while it was California Democrats who led the passage of the nation’s first state-level bans on certain artificial food dyes and additives, now conservative state lawmakers across the country have embraced new scrutiny of Americans’ food as the Trump administration makes a push to “Make America Healthy Again.”
“We see with our kids that they don’t have access to necessarily the best food in their schools,” said Gallagher, a father of five who as the GOP leader co-authored the recent bill with Democratic Assembly member Jesse Gabriel. “And we see it all around us, not just in California but throughout our country, that our kids are suffering from an epidemic of obesity.”
Bipartisan Alignment on ‘Forever Chemicals’ Regulation in Pa.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported:
Advocates taking aim at the wide array of “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, found in common personal care and household products spoke before the House Consumer Protection, Utilities and Technology committee Tuesday. Experts testified about the dangers to human health and child development posed by products from makeup to baby clothes that contain the chemicals.
“The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Pennsylvania Department of Health have found associations between PFAS exposure and health effects like lower antibody response to vaccines, immune system suppression, increased cholesterol levels, pregnancy-induced hypertension, reduced fertility, liver damage and increased risk of thyroid disease and the potential for cancer,” said Ian Louda, legislative coordinator for Clean Water Action.
Stephanie Wein, statewide water and conservation advocate at PennEnvironment, said that the dangers are especially pronounced for children, who are still developing.
“Babies and young children are more vulnerable to the impacts that PFAS has on our hormones,” said Ms. Wein. “If you have endocrine disruption at that critical juncture, you’re going to have far-reaching effects, and so there’s a robust body of evidence that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals on fetal and neonatal childhood growth and the development of the reproductive system can be linked to the early on puberty with estrogenetic effects linked to that, both girls and boys.”
Illinois Lawmaker, Physician Pushes Back on Trump Tylenol Announcement
Illinois health officials push back on new federal guidance, saying Tylenol use in pregnancy does not cause autism. A lawmaker, who is also a physician, weighs in.
State Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton, is pushing back against the Trump administration’s handling of recent claims linking acetaminophen use during pregnancy to autism. He called the rollout “political” and “dangerous.” Hauter said the announcement lacked new evidence and contradicted established medical consensus.
“There was no new evidence, only a rehashing of older studies that medicine has already addressed,” Hauter said. “If there was a true risk, the FDA would issue a black box warning. That hasn’t happened because the science doesn’t support it.”
Hauter warned that telling women to avoid Tylenol during pregnancy could put mothers and babies at greater risk, since high fevers are a proven danger to fetal health. “When there’s a known risk to babies from high fevers, and the only drug we have to treat that is Tylenol, telling women not to take it is reckless,” Hauter said. “A rare, reasonable dose is not a risk at all.”
U.S. To Impose 100% Tariff on Branded, Patented Drugs Unless Firms Build Plants Locally, Trump Says
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the U.S. will impose a 100% tariff on “any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product” entering the country from Oct. 1.
The measure will not apply to companies building drug manufacturing plants in the U.S., Trump said. He added that the exemption covers projects where construction has started, including sites that have broken ground or are under construction.
“There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Branded or patented pharmaceutical products are drugs sold under trade names and protected by patents or other intellectual property, which block generic competition until those protections expire.
Trump has said tariffs will incentivize drug companies to move manufacturing operations to the U.S. That is an effort that Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie and others are already pursuing at a time when domestic drug manufacturing has shrunk dramatically over the last few decades.
