“The CDC is no longer a reliable and trustworthy source of information regarding vaccination," said Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu MD, MPH.

November 23, 2025

After the CDC publicly backed away from the stance that vaccines definitively do not cause autism last week, Boston Public Health Commissioner told residents to not trust the federal government’s preeminent health agency.

“The statements on the CDC’s webpage are now false,” Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu MD, MPH wrote in a statement posted to Facebook and Bluesky. “Under our current federal administration, the CDC is no longer a reliable and trustworthy source of information regarding vaccination.”

The CDC’s website was updated Wednesday to instead say that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is not “evidence-based.”

“Studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities,” the site now says. “HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”

The change did not go through normal scientific clearance, a resigned CDC leader told STAT News. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who canceled $500 million in vaccine research in August, then personally took credit for the change, telling The New York Times that the phrase “Vaccines do not cause autism” is “not supported by science.”

However, the secretary acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and separate studies of mercury-based preservative thimerosal had found no link to autism, the Times reported.