Did the CDC remove claim “vaccines don’t cause autism” from website? Fact Check

A rumour claims the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) removed the assertion that vaccines do not cause autism from its website after legal pressure from ICAN (Informed Consent Action Network.

FALSE

ICAN, an anti-vaccination group within the United States, wrote on its website and in an email that due to legal pressure from themselves, the CDC opted to remove its “blanket claim” that vaccines do not cause autism. On its website it uses the headline ”The CDC Finally Capitulated To ICAN’s Legal Demands and Removed the Claim that “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” From Its Website!”

The claim is false, and was likely caused by the CDC reformatting its webpage about vaccines and autism.

Previously, the CDC headline on its vaccine page was “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism”. At some point in the second half of January 2021, this headline was changed to “Autism and Vaccines”. However a subheading directly underneath still read “There is no link between vaccines and autism”.

Since this is essentially making the same claim, there is little reason to suspect that “legal pressure” from ICAN had any bearing in the decision to reformat the webpage.

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Regardless, this subheading was subsequently changed again and now reads “Vaccines do not cause Autism.”

As such, at the time of writing, the only real change from the original webpage to the current webpage is that the “Vaccines do not cause Autism” sentence has moved from the main heading to the first sub heading.

The CDC’s position still remains that vaccines do not cause autism, and this is still explained clearly on their website, despite ICAN’s purported “victory”.

See the images below to see the changes made.

The original page

An updated page after a reformat

After a second update