Trump’s initiative to review childhood vaccinations in the US contradicts scientific evidence. WHO

Earlier in the week, President Trump signed an executive order revising mandatory school vaccination requirements. He also proposed again to split the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three separate vaccinations.

His health minister, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. founded an anti-vaccination group and has long promoted the debunked link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

But WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the science is “unequivocal. vaccines, including the MCC vaccine, are safe and do not cause autism.”

“Vaccination policy should be based on a rigorous, independent and transparent study of the best available scientific data, not political influence,” he wrote on the X social network.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO is “concerned that recent changes in US immunization policy are inconsistent with decades of evidence showing when children are most vulnerable to disease.”

Tedros also warned that delaying vaccinations or needlessly spacing out doses does not make vaccination safer and could leave children unprotected.

Kennedy initiated a major overhaul of vaccines, including some that had been in use for decades, changed the childhood vaccination schedule, and cut funding for the development of new vaccines. These steps have been heavily criticized by the medical and scientific community.

Earlier this year, US courts blocked some of Kennedy’s vaccination policy changes.