Vaccines are an astonishing achievement of modern science, saving an estimated 154 million lives (including 101 million infants) over the last 50 years, according to a major study led by the World Health Organization last year. Of these, the measles vaccine (often grouped with mumps and rubella in the MMR jab) is the biggest contributor, accounting for around 60 percent of the lives saved by vaccination.

But unfortunately, over the last few decades, skepticism about vaccines has risen, largely stemming from a now-retracted study that claimed there was a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper based on just 12 children that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. The results have not been replicated, and it later transpired that he had falsified data, for which his medical license was revoked.

“The Lancet completely retracted the Wakefield et al. paper in February 2010, admitting that several elements in the paper were incorrect, contrary to the findings of the earlier investigation. Wakefield et al. were held guilty of ethical violations (they had conducted invasive investigations on the children without obtaining the necessary ethical clearances) and scientific misrepresentation (they reported that their sampling was consecutive when, in fact, it was selective),” a report into the case explains.

“The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al. were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts). The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain.”

But the damage was done, as the press around the world continued to push the idea. Since then, there have been many large studies investigating potential links between vaccines and autism, consistently finding no link whatsoever.

Despite this, Reuters reports that the US is planning on conducting research through the CDC. The Trump administration, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., lead of the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), and President Trump himself, have long expressed vaccine-skeptic views. Speaking in Congress on Tuesday, Trump cited rising autism diagnoses – largely thought to be due to better diagnosis and broader criteria for diagnosis, as well as different survey techniques – as a reason for further investigation.

“As an example, not long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, 1 in 10,000 children had autism. One in 10,000, and now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36, think of that. So we’re going to find out what it is,” Trump told Congress, per NBC.

“As President Trump said in his joint address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for HSS, said in a statement seen by NBC. “CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening.”

While more scientific research in the area of autism couldn’t hurt, it would likely find similar results to other gigantic studies that have not found any link with vaccines. It remains to be seen what form this new research by the CDC will take, and whether it will cost more money on top of the $419 million already spent on autism research by the US annually. 

But a government directly calling vaccines into question may have deadly consequences, as Kennedy of all people should be aware. To do so with measles cases on the rise in the US looks like a very risky move indeed.