The US Secretary of State for Health has spent years claiming that the MMR vaccine caused autism, despite a lack of medical evidence.
Published August 12, 2026
The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has accused President Donald Trump of ignoring “decades of evidence” in his push to overhaul U.S. childhood vaccination policy.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ warning on Wednesday came days after President Trump signed an order to reconsider mandatory vaccinations in schools and renewed calls for the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine to be administered in three doses.
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President Trump’s Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has long maintained that the link between MMR shots and autism has been denied.
But Tedros said the science was “clear” and that “vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, are safe and do not cause autism.”
“Vaccine policy should be guided by rigorous, independent and transparent review of the best available science, not political influence,” he said in a post about X.
“The evidence is continually reviewed as new data emerges from around the world,” he added.
The WHO director-general also warned that “delaying vaccinations or unnecessarily dividing doses will not make vaccination safer and may leave children vulnerable.”
Since joining the Trump administration, President Kennedy has launched a sweeping overhaul of longstanding vaccines, rewriting the childhood immunization schedule and cutting funding for new vaccine development.
