The message is hammered over and over, in news conferences, hearings and executive orders: President Donald Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., say they want the government to follow “gold standard” science.Scientists say the problem is that they are often doing just the opposite by relying on preliminary studies, fringe science or just hunches to make claims, cast doubt on proven treatments or even set policy.This week, the nation’s top public health agency changed its website to contradict the scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. The move shocked health experts nationwide.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementDr. Daniel Jernigan, who resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August, told reporters Wednesday that Kennedy seems to be “going from evidence-based decision making to decision-based evidence making.”It was the latest example of the Trump administration’s challenge to established science.In September, the Republican president gave out medical advice based on weak or no evidence. Speaking directly to pregnant women and to parents, he told them not to take acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. He repeatedly made the fraudulent and long-disproven link between autism and vaccines, saying his assessment was based on a hunch.“I have always had very strong feelings about autism and how it happened and where it came from,” he said.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAt a two-day meeting this fall, Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisers to the CDC raised questions about vaccinating babies against hepatitis B, an inoculation long shown to reduce disease and death drastically.“The discussion that has been brought up regarding safety is not based on evidence other than case reports and anecdotes,” said Dr. Flor Munoz, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.During the country’s worst year for measles in more than three decades, Kennedy cast doubt on the measles vaccine while championing unproven treatments and alleging that the unvaccinated children who died were “already sick.”Scientists say the process of getting medicines and vaccines to market and recommended in the United States has, until now, typically relied on gold standard science. The process is so rigorous and transparent that much of the rest of the world follows the lead of American regulators, giving the OK to treatments only after U.S. approval.AdvertisementAd …
