Former US President Donald Trump has proposed dividing vaccines into smaller doses, claiming it would reduce autism cases, a move criticised by experts and dismissed by scientific evidence as dangerous and ineffective.
President Donald Trump said he would “demand” that drugmakers divide vaccines into five smaller doses given six months apart, a proposal he claimed could bring a “massive reduction in autism”, according to the Washington Post’s Rachel Roubein. It was not clear which vaccines he was referring to, but the remarks quickly reignited criticism from doctors and vaccine specialists who said there is no evidence that breaking up doses would improve safety or outcomes.
Trump’s comments came during a news conference focused on drug pricing, yet they revived a familiar line of argument from a president who has repeatedly questioned the long-rejected idea of a vaccine-autism link. FactCheck.org and PolitiFact have both reviewed the evidence and found that decades of research, including studies involving more than a million people, have found no causal connection between vaccines and autism.
Medical experts warn that spacing out routine immunisations could have practical costs as well as scientific ones. José Romero, a former senior health official in Arkansas and at the CDC, said vaccines are designed to deliver the right total dose for the strongest immune response. The American Academy of Pediatrics has also said claims that multiple vaccines overwhelm children’s immune systems are “inaccurate and dangerous”.
The new remarks also follow other moves by Trump’s administration that would alter childhood vaccination policy. Last month, Trump signed an executive order seeking to reduce and stagger the childhood immunisation schedule, while the administration is separately trying to split the combined MMR shot into three single-disease injections that are not currently sold in the US. That effort has drawn criticism because there is no new scientific evidence showing that separating the shots would be safer or more effective, and some experts say the regulatory process could take years. The issue gained further urgency after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long promoted vaccine scepticism, praised the administration, even as Pennsylvania faced a measles outbreak that had reached 767 cases and four deaths.
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