He’s already secured the racist vote. Now, Donald Trump is swaying the vaccine truthers.
On Thursday, the anti-vaccine website Natural News published an article cheering Trump for being “the only mainstream presidential candidate who’s spoken out about vaccine-autism dangers.” To be clear, the website is referring to the scientifically unsubstantiated belief that the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) shot can cause autism.
“There’s only one presidential hopeful currently in the running who has been brave enough to speak out about the link between vaccines and autism, and that candidate is none other than business tycoon Donald Trump,” the article reads.
On the internet, Natural News is the central hub for vaccine truthers. In comments to ThinkProgress, one science editor described it as a “a one-stop shop … of virtually every quackery known to humankind, all slathered with a heaping helping of unrelenting hostility to science-based medicine and science in general.” It’s the project of conspiracy theorist Mike Adams, and hosts more than 2 million unique visitors every month. The site boasts more than 1.5 million “likes” on Facebook.
The site also seems to really like Donald Trump. It specifically lauded a “no-nonsense” 2012 interview the real estate tycoon gave on Fox News, theorizing that the increase in American autism rates was caused by vaccination.
“You know, I have a theory — and it’s a theory that some people believe in — and that’s the vaccinations,” he said. “When you take a little baby that weighs like 12 pounds into a doctor’s office and they pump them with many, many simultaneous vaccinations … then lots of different things have happened.”
Trump’s press office did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment on whether he stood by his 2012 remarks. But Trump has continued to assert that vaccines cause autism since then. In a 2014 tweet storm, he railed against the practice of giving children several vaccinations over a short period of time. “Tiny children are not horses,” one tweet read. “The doctors lied,” read another.
To be clear, there is no evidence that “the doctors lied.” The only reason some are making a link between vaccines and autism is because of a study published by disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield, which was retracted in 2000, two years after it was published. Even so, vaccine truthers continue use Wakefield’s study to assert the claim, even while scientists have published study upon study ruling out the potential link. None of those subsequent papers have been retracted.
Though vaccine truthers have not been successful at getting a scientific paper published to support their claims, what they have been successful at is literally spreading disease. Research published in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this year found that a rapid measles outbreak linked to Disneyland was caused by a low rate of vaccination, which was “quite possibly a direct consequence of the growing anti-vaccination movement in the United States.”