With health officials reporting 800 measles cases in multiple states already this year, most of the public – and most parents – report hearing at least one false claim about measles or the vaccine for it, and many of them aren’t sure what to believe, the latest KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust finds.
The poll gauges whether the public has heard, and whether they believe, three false statements related to measles circulating amid the outbreak, some of which have been amplified by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children, that getting the measles vaccine is more dangerous than becoming infected with measles, and that vitamin A can prevent measles infections.
Fewer than 5% of adults say that each of the three claims is “definitely true,” and fewer than half say each is “definitely false.” That leaves at least half of people expressing some uncertainty about whether to believe each claim, describing each as either “probably true” or “probably false.”
Of the three false claims, the most common is the one suggesting a proven link between the MMR vaccine and autism, which most adults (63%) and most parents (61%) report having heard. A third of adults (33%) and parents (33%) say they’ve heard the false claim about the measles vaccine being more dangerous than the disease – an increase of about 15 percentage points since March 2024. About a fifth of...
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