RFK Jr.’s CDC: Vaccines may cause autism even though there’s no evidence to support this belief

I can’t see anybody else smiling in here:

Awkwardly, because of an agreement with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions chairman Senator Bill Cassidy (a medical doctor, and R-LA), the heading on the site still says “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism,” but they’ve added a lil’ asterisk and a long explanation suggesting that maybe they do, after all.

The “key points” section now reads:

• The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
• Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.
• HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.

To be clear, “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities” because they have been poorly executed and subsequently retracted, not because the health authorities wanted to hurt the feelings of stupid people. . .

The page then goes on to point out, repeatedly, that while no studies exist providing a causal link, some parents believe their child’s autism was caused by vaccines and no one can prove that they didn’t.

Similarly, no one can prove that anything else that obviously does not cause autism does not cause autism. Name a thing! Anything! And you probably cannot prove, for certain, that it does not cause autism, or anything else for that matter. For instance, no one could say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that vaccines do/did not cause epilepsy or meningitis, or dishpan hands or crop circles or the Blood Falls of Antarctica or the Montauk monster or spontaneous human combustion or synesthesia or literally anything else you might be able to think of off the top of your head.

Nevertheless, this belief is presented as being plausible simply due to the fact that people believe it to be true. . .

 terrible people all over the world have decided that they’d much rather have a dead child than a child with autism. Strangely, not one anti-vaxxer has yet been able to prove — or even tried to prove, that anyone knows of — that they develop autism at a lower rate than children who have been properly vaccinated. One would think that this would be the very first thing these people would look at, but it is not.

The CDC’s page acknowledges that no one has officially ruled out anything as a “cause” of autism. Technically, that is true. There is also no evidence that birthday cake, curling irons, overshoes, dining room tables, the musical stylings of William Shatner or anything else doesn’t cause autism, and they are all just about as likely to have caused it as vaccines are.

John Cleese as a Merchant Banker consults a volume of philosophy . . . “Cartesian certainty, Cartesian certainty . . .”

The musical stylings of William Shatner include the single greatest cover song in the history of pop music, so let’s listen to that while we contemplate the truly terrible things that should be done to RFK Jr. and his minions once this country is restored to something resembling sanity: