NIH Director Bhattacharya tells Senate hearing he has seen no study showing a single vaccine causes autism
Why it matters
The head of the agency now funding autism-causation research drew a careful line under oath: no study he has seen implicates any single vaccine. That framing, “any single vaccine,” leaves the cumulative-schedule question open, which is exactly where the debate now sits.
At a February 3, 2026 Senate HELP Committee hearing on modernizing the NIH, Sen. Bernie Sanders pressed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on vaccines and autism. Bhattacharya said, “I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism,” and that he does not believe the measles vaccine causes autism.
He also said vaccinating children is the best response to the measles outbreak, and that Secretary Kennedy has been “caricatured quite unfairly.”
Source
AJF reporting.
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