If Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, did bother to ask CDC scientists about using their website to turn anti-vaccine talking points into agency guidance, it didn’t matter much. “My understanding is that none of the leadership were asked about it, or if they were asked about changing the website, they did not agree with the change,” Daniel Jernigan, the former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told me. But as of last night, there it was: The CDC’s new official stance is that “studies have not ruled out the possibility” that routine childhood immunizations contribute to autism.

A senior CDC scientist told me that many people at the agency heard about the change only yesterday evening, hours before the revamped web

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