During a stunning Senate hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that in the early 2000s, a senior CDC scientist was ordered to destroy data from an internal study that showed a staggering link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism risk in young Black boys.
In 2004, a CDC-backed case-control study in Atlanta compared 624 children with autism to 1,824 without, assessing whether timing of MMR vaccination (before vs. after 18 or 24 months) was linked to autism risk. It found no significant association.
While the 2004 study did not find a causal link, a later re-analysis of the same data received significant attention.
A 2014 study published in Translational Neurodegeneration re-examined the CDC’s dataset and claimed to find an increased autism risk among African American boys who received the MMR vaccine before 36 months of age.