WASHINGTON >> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its long-standing position that vaccines do not cause autism — a move that underscores his determination to challenge scientific orthodoxy and bend the health department to his will.

In an interview Thursday explaining why the CDC website now says the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based,” Kennedy acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had found no link to autism, and that studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal had also shown no link.

But he cited gaps in vaccine safety science. He said he ordered the CDC to change its guidance in pa

See Full Page