SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The CDC, long one of the country's top, most-trusted health authorities, is now claiming that a link between vaccines and autism cannot be ruled out. This change comes even though a connection between vaccines and autism has long been debunked by a large body of high-quality research. The guidance is also a break from the American Academy of Pediatrics, who published the so-called "Red Book" on pediatrics guidance. Dr. James Campbell is a practicing pediatrician who helped write that guidance. He's a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and joins us now to talk about what this will mean for the kind of information that parents have access to. Welcome to the program.
JAMES CAMPBELL: Thanks for having me, Scott.
DETROW: What do you make of this change from the CDC and what do you think it means?
CAMPBELL: Yeah. So, I mean, over the last few months, what we've been seeing is essentially a dismantling of our public health guidance, of our public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As people probably know, it's the premier public health agency in the world, and the people that work there are the best public health officers, epidemiologists, statisticians, subject matter experts on everything having to do with my world, which is infectious diseases and prevention of those infections. And recently, they've not really been given the opportunity to continue to do that stellar job of providing evidence-based guidance. And essentially, website pages and others have been hijacked, if you will.
They're still stating that they're representing the CDC, but I think if you talk to the people that work in this field in the CDC, they're going to tell you, like, they had no part in changing those guidelines. So it's confusing, I think, for the general public. It's confusing for practitioners and for parents. But, you know, we believe that people - if they look into what the rationale is behind the guidance, they'll be able to see that the American Academy of Pediatrics continues to do science-based and, you know, data-based guidance.
DETROW: Are there ways that that conversation is going to look different now, given the changes that we've seen at the CDC over the past year?
CAMPBELL: I think it is going to change. Because what makes it to the media, to the news, is that there is controversy between the different groups that make recommendations. And so in the past, pediatricians, you know, had maybe a difficult job sometimes in discussing recommendations about vaccines with families. But now trying to explain the different recommending bodies and why one body would choose one thing and another another thing, I think, is going to make those conversations even more difficult.
DETROW: You've seen the trend lines on public views of vaccines over the decades, and, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening right now who maybe, in one way or another, do have skepticism or worries about vaccines. What would you, as a doctor, say to that just kind of baseline concern or anxiety in a parent, especially at this moment now when there are multiple messages coming in from multiple authorities?
CAMPBELL: Yeah. I mean, the first thing I would say is I'm a parent too, and I vaccinate and have vaccinated all of my children. Because after reviewing all of those data, I know just how much goes into checking on their safety, on their tolerability, on their efficacy. I'm in the unfortunate position, if you will, of being an infectious disease doctor who spends his time in the hospital caring for children who have very severe disease because they were not vaccinated. I see children with influenza who are on mechanical ventilators. I've seen children with COVID lose a lung. I've seen people die from hepatitis B after two liver transplants. All of those were preventable problems with simple vaccination.
DETROW: That is Dr. James Campbell, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Thanks so much.
CAMPBELL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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