By Yasmeen Abutaleb
Aug 6 (Reuters) – The Trump administration is considering an executive order on vaccines and autism that could be released as soon as next week, a person familiar with the discussions said on Thursday.
The effort is driven by President Donald Trump’s interest in further action on autism, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions. The source did not provide details of the scope of the executive order, which was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.
The Trump administration, led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has pursued new studies into vaccines and autism despite research involving millions of people over the past two decades that has concluded there is no credible link.
“President Trump has been clear: America must have the best childhood vaccine schedule in the world,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “The Administration remains steadfastly committed to delivering on this presidential priority with Gold Standard Science for the countless parents whose questions and concerns about vaccinations have been ignored or mocked.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Trump’s push for an executive order comes even as his own political advisers urged Kennedy to stay away from vaccine-related issues until after November’s midterm elections, out of concern it could hurt Republicans. But Trump has continued to press Kennedy in private, asking him what new efforts are underway on vaccines and whether the health secretary believes he will ultimately prove a link with autism, Reuters reported last month.
Last year, Trump linked autism to childhood vaccines and to the use of popular pain medication Tylenol during pregnancy, bringing claims not supported by scientific evidence to the forefront of U.S. health policy.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has associated vaccines with autism and claimed that no vaccine is safe, faced a setback in March when a court ruling blocked key elements of his efforts to rewrite U.S. vaccine policy and revamp a national advisory panel on immunizations.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in Washington and Sneha S K in Bengaluru; Editing by Diti Pujara and Sanjeev Miglani)
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