Forum für

Autisten und interessierte Zeitgenossen

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his controversial stance that vaccinations are linked to what he described as an autism “epidemic.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said at the second main-stage GOP debate on CNN Wednesday night.

“You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — it looks just like it’s meant for a horse," he said of vaccines.

"We’ve had so many instances ... a child went to have the vaccine, got very, very sick, and now is autistic."

The GOP front-runner said he still supported certain vaccines, but in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Under current procedures, he said it's dangerous for the public.

“Autism has become an epidemic, he said. “It has gotten totally out of control.”

Trump was one of several Republican candidates to question the current medical standards for vaccination, including two medical doctors: neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an ophthalmologist.

President-elect Donald Trump met with Robert Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, on Tuesday. According to incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer, the two discussed “the issues pertaining to vaccines and immunizations.”

After the meeting concluded, Kennedy told reporters that Mr. Trump had asked him to “chair a commission on vaccination safety and scientific integrity.” Kennedy said he told Mr. Trump he would chair such a commission, and that their meeting was held at Mr. Trump’s request.

Kennedy, the eldest son of liberal icon Sen. Robert Kennedy, was best known as an environmental advocate before increasingly devoting his time to the supposed dangers of vaccines.

[...]

Kennedy has argued that vaccines, specifically those containing the element thimerosal, may cause autism, a view unsupported by scientific evidence and dismissed as a conspiracy theory by experts.

“Research does not show any link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder,” says the Center for Disease Control on its website. Moreover, studies linking vaccines and autism have been repeatedly been debunked and discredited, although many parents continue to insist that their children were damaged by immunizations.

[...]

“They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” Kennedy said at the screening in 2015. “This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.” It was a comment which he later apologized for, saying, “I employed the term during an impromptu speech as I struggled to find an expression to convey the catastrophic tragedy of autism which has now destroyed the lives of over 20 million children and shattered their families.”