White House vaccine misinformation could put New Jersey kids in danger

During a press conference on Sept. 22, President Donald Trump said that childhood vaccine recommendations should be altered and that pregnant people should stop taking acetaminophen, linking both to autism. 

Appearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, and Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Trump started by saying that he’d been waiting 20 years to “confront the crisis of autism,” since he had met with Kennedy two decades earlier: “It’s probably 20 years ago, in New York. I was a developer, as you probably heard, and I always had very strong feelings about autism and how it happened and where it came from. … It’s turning out that we understood a lot more than a lot of people who studied it, we think. And I say we think because I don’t think they were really letting the public know what they knew.”

In remarks that experts say were not based on scientific evidence and included multiple statements that were contradicted by the facts, Trump declared that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would be notifying physicians that the use of acetaminophen, sold under the brand name Tylenol, “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is not good. All right. I’ll say it. It’s not good. For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary. That’s, for instance, in cases of extremely high fever, that you feel you can’t tough it out. You can’t do it. I guess there’s that.”

Autism New Jersey, a nonprofit agency, notes that the state’s rate of children diagnosed with autism is higher than the national rate of 1 in 31 children, with 1 in 29 children in New Jersey identified with autism spectrum disorder, or 3.5% of 8-year-old children.

Suzanne Buchanan, the agency’s executive director, told NorthJersey.com that recent increases in the number of autism diagnoses are due to decades of research leading to better diagnostic tools.  

“Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen an increase in prevalence at the same time that the diagnostic criteria have broadened,” Buchanan said. “We’re identifying more individuals with average or above-average intelligence, more girls and women, and more people in minority communities. That accounts for a lot of what some are calling a boom.”

At the press conference, Trump also said that childhood vaccines against the measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox, which are generally administered in one shot, should instead be administered over a period of years, because of what he claimed was a link between vaccines and autism.

Scientific studies have concluded such a link does not exist. 

“And on the vaccines, it would be good instead of one visit where they pump the baby, load it up with stuff, you’ll do it over a period of four times or five times.  … The MMR, I think should be taken separately. 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 president said. 

The day after Trump’s press conference, Lisa Asare, president and CEO of New Jersey Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority, said in a statement: “We cannot allow misinformation to deter women from safe, clinically-tested methods to safeguard the health and well-being of both the mother and baby during pregnancy. NJMIHIA is committed to continuing the work of empowering expectant parents to make informed decisions in our collective effort to make the State of New Jersey the safest and most equitable place to deliver and raise a baby.”

Trump also urged parents to delay the hepatitis B birth dose until age 12.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a fact check on its website, notes: “Hepatitis B can lead to serious lifelong illnesses or even death, and a hepatitis B birth dose provides a critical safety net protecting infants from acquiring a potentially serious infection at the time of birth. Late-stage hepatitis B can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer. 

“The U.S. is currently on track to eliminating perinatal hepatitis B, with only 17 reported cases in 2021 and 13 in 2022. However, eliminating the birth dose would jeopardize this progress.”

According to the CDC, 90% of infants born to a pregnant mother with hepatitis B will acquire the infection; about 25% of those infants will die from chronic liver disease.

Just 63.7% of children in New Jersey born in 2020-21 had received all recommended doses of the combined seven-vaccine series by age 24 months, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

In an op-ed published by northjersey.com in early September, Dr. Jennifer Chuang, a New Jersey internist and pediatrician, said, “Our state once had one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, but our measles vaccination rate for New Jersey kindergarteners in the 2023-2024 school year fell to 93.2%, below the recommended threshold of 95% needed for herd immunity.”

In a debate between the New Jersey gubernatorial candidates, Democratic U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Republican former Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli, on Sept. 21, Sherrill said New Jersey parents should be very worried about reports that childhood vaccination rates are dropping. 

“These are eminently curable diseases, and we are allowing children to get sick, and yes, die, because we are not appropriately following medical research, vaccine protocol, and as governor of this state, I’m joining the northeast group of governors that is going to ensure that we follow medical guidelines and keep our kids safe,” she said.

Although during the debate Ciattarelli said he was also concerned about declining vaccine rates, days later, he appeared as a guest at an event hosted by the New Jersey Public Health Innovation Political Action Committee, a group that opposes mandatory vaccination, the New York Times reported. Reporters were barred from the event.

The Times noted that during a town hall event earlier in September, Ciattarelli responded to a question about vaccines and said: “I would never mandate a vaccine. That’s up to you.”