— Meanwhile, percentage with "very unfavorable" views of Health Secretary Kennedy is rising
Most Americans don't agree with claims that vaccines cause autism, and half view Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unfavorably, according to a national survey.
In the August survey of 1,904 U.S. adults from the Annenberg Public Policy Center, most respondents didn't agree with repeated false claims by Kennedy and President Trump linking vaccines and autism. More than two-thirds of respondents (68%) said it's false to state that childhood vaccines like those against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) cause autism; 13% said that vaccines cause autism and 19% weren't sure.
These findings are unchanged since 2022 but do represent a drop from the 74% who'd said it was false to claim a vaccine-autism link in June 2021.
In the latest survey, just over half of the respondents said fully vaccinated children are "about as likely" as those who aren't to show signs of autism. While 12% of people in February 2026 said fully vaccinated children were more likely to show autism signs, that percentage slipped to 9% in this survey.
A majority of respondents (55%) said they agreed with a statement from the the American Academy of Pediatrics that "Studies have repeatedly found no credible link between life-saving childhood vaccines and autism," while 18% said their views aligned with new language that now appears on CDC's website since Kennedy -- a prominent anti-vaccine activist before joining...
— Meanwhile, percentage with "very unfavorable" views of Health Secretary Kennedy is rising Most Americans don't agree with claims that vaccines cause autism, and half view Health Secretary Robert ...