The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has repudiated its past insistence that vaccines do not cause autism after decades of fighting misinformation linking the two, blindsiding career staff and delighting anti-vaccine activists.

The agency’s website on vaccines and autism, updated on Wednesday, now makes several false claims about a connection, echoing longtime rhetoric from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has a lengthy history of disparaging vaccines and linking them to autism.

Longtime vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr was appointed US health secretary in January. Credit: Bloomberg

Career scientists at the agency responsible for information about vaccine safety and autism had no prior knowledge about the changes to the website and were not consulted, accor

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