Pressed by the physician who chairs the Senate health committee, President Donald Trump's third nominee for surgeon general said plainly that childhood immunizations do not cause autism. "I do not believe childhood vaccines cause autism," Dr. Nicole Saphier told the panel this week, according to CIDRAP's account of the hearing. Asked whether the measles, mumps, and rubella shot is lethal, as the president has claimed, she said she does not believe it is, and called MMR the greatest tool available for combating measles.
Those sentences reach ordinary households because parents are making routine immunization decisions against shifting federal signals. The clearest example came minutes later. Saphier called hepatitis B vaccines one of the most tangible ways to prevent cancer and said United States evidence shows universal birth-dose vaccination to be safe and effective, yet she declined to say the birth dose should be recommended, describing it as a nuanced conversation for parents and pediatricians.
