The World Health Organization (WHO) has firmly rejected assertions from the US government suggesting a possible link between vaccines and autism.
The WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety said in a report on Thursday that it had reviewed all relevant studies from recent years and reached a clear conclusion.
“Vaccines do not cause autism,” summarized WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva. “Vaccines are among the most powerful and transformative inventions in the history of humankind.”
The statement follows controversy in the United States after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under the direction of health secretary and vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, recently posted language on its website that raised doubts about vaccines and autism.
The CDC now says: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
The change drew a sharp response from numerous US scientists and physicians who rejected the statement as false and dangerous.
The WHO committee said it assessed studies published between 2010 and 2025. Of 31 studies from 11 countries — including five meta-analyses — 20 found no evidence of any association between vaccines and autism.
The remaining 11, nine of which came from the same US research group, suggested a possible link but, according to the WHO, suffered from “significant methodological issues,” with very low evidentiary strength and a high risk of bias.
