08/16/2026
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the overwhelming consensus among medical, public health, and virologists; and our nation’s leading medical institutions agree that replacing the combined MMR injection with separate vaccines is a dangerous policy that HARMS public health.
MMR is among the most well-studied vaccines on the planet. No published scientific evidence shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots. Hundreds of scientific studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals involving MILLIONS of children have investigated the question of whether autism is linked to vaccines. Their overwhelming conclusion is that there’s NO connection.
In signing the vaccine EO, President Trump falsely suggested that the MMR vaccine was unsafe and that splitting up the combination shot “will have a huge impact on autism. Alongside HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has an established history spreading vaccine misinformation, Trump also repeated many other medical falsehoods.
Trump added that “The worst thing that would happen would be nothing happens. We’re not going to lose anything.”  For starters, developing three separate monovalent vaccines to replace the combined MMR shot will cost hundreds of millions to several billion dollars nationally.
And aside from the huge cost, lets examine what happened in Japan after it withdrew its MMR vaccine in 1993, a “model” that Steven Miller touts as a success. The policy shift to separate individual jabs led to large periodic mumps and measles outbreaks. For this reason, Japan's Ministry of Health recently approved a new trivalent MMR vaccine, moving the country back toward a unified triple-shot system.
Anti-vaccine advocates frequently point to Japan's split schedule to argue it prevents autism. However, public health data in Japan showed that autism rates continued to climb AFTER its combined MMR vaccine was banned. Another 30-years of evidence, which disproves JFK Jr.’s vaccine myth.
Note. The small, fraudulent study of 12 (Twelve) children published in The Lancet (1998) by Andrew Wakefield falsely claimed a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. After it was discovered that Wakefield had manipulated the data and also had failed to disclose his close financial7 ties to lawyers who then were suing vaccine manufacturers, the Lancet fully retracted this study and the author’s medical license was revoked in 2010.
RFK Jr. continues to endorse and receive advice from the discredited Wakefield, as recently as 2026. It is upon this quackery by which our nation’s healthcare policies are now being established. We can only hope that a new administration will one day arrive to restore sanity before too much irreversible damage ensues.
(Artwork by The Seattle Times)
