“Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots.”
The speaker was Donald Trump in 2007 in an interview with a Florida newspaper, the Sun Sentinel, and “the shots” were vaccines. Trump’s theory related to the suspected rising prevalence of autism. Vaccines, the wealthy New York businessman suspected, were behind it.
Eighteen years later Trump is in his second term as US President and his medical theories in relation to autism, paracetamol (Tylenol in the US), and vaccines are getting fresh and far more potent outings than in the Sun Sentinel. Now Trump can use the authority of the presidency and the weight of the government to spread his theories.
Trump’s theorising on autism seems to go back not just to observation of his own young children but to his friendship with Bob Wright, the former CEO of the NBC television network. Wright’s daughter, Katie, had an autistic son and Wright and his wife, Suzanne, founded Autism Speaks, a non-profit organisation “dedicated to creating an inclusive world for all individuals with autism” in 2005.
Though Autism Speaks is not officially anti-vax, vaccine scepticism has run through its veins. Katie Wright, ABC news reported, said on the Oprah Winfrey show in April 2007, “We give 37 vaccines to babies under the age of 18 months. Nobody has shown that that’s safe … multiple vaccines at once. You look at food allergies, asthma, and autism — it’s all connected.”
Katie Wright’s outspoken anti-vax views led to tension between her and her parents and Autism Speaks. Yet Donald Trump said something similar in the 2007 interview with the Sun Sentinel, complaining that, “today they pump the children with so much at a very young age.” Where his own children were concerned, he said, “We do it on a very, very conservative level,” giving his children single shots of any vaccine with an interval in between.
Trump’s scepticism on vaccines appeared again during the Covid pandemic that emerged during his first term as president. He did not set an example by being vaccinated himself and was reported eventually to have received the vaccine privately only in January 2021, shortly before vacating the White House.
Earlier, in April 2020, since sunlight and disinfectant killed the virus, Trump explored ways of using them as treatments. “So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light,” he said, and, “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.” Trump also advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, and said he was taking it himself.
Some people followed Trump’s advice – and paid the price. A study published in February 2024 in the journal, Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, estimates that 16,990 Covid-19 patients in the U.S., France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Turkey died as a result of taking hydroxychloroquine.
And yet, when vaccines were successful in repressing the spread and deadliness of Covid, Trump was pleased to claim credit. “People that aren’t necessarily big fans of Donald Trump are saying, ‘Whether you like him or not, this is one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine’ or any other medicine — any other age of medicine,” Trump said on December 8, 2020 at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit.
Trump’s views on Tylenol taken during pregnancy and the risk of autism were broadcast yesterday, on September 22, and he also opined on vaccines. “This is based on what I feel. The mumps, measles and — the three should be taken separately. And it seems to be that when you mix them, there could be a problem. So there’s no downside in taking them separately. In fact, they think it’s better. So let it be separate.”
The likely result, especially if the president’s advice is followed by the US government, to which he appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, as Health and Human Services chief, is that it will be more difficult and expensive to vaccinate children, fewer children will be vaccinated fully, and many won’t be vaccinated at all.
Trump’s impact again is likely to be global. His discouragement of the use of vaccines may lead to the revival of some serious illnesses, leading to the deaths of many people, especially children, and do lasting harm to others.
In medicine, as in climate science, Trump takes the world backwards. Sadly, the American President’s words have weight, even when they are based on no science at all, only on the relentless nonsense that is the hallmark of his presidency.
