Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in WNDU 16 News Now, in “Medical Experts Combat Vaccine Misinformation at South Bend Panel,” by John Bailey.
The following is an excerpt:
The Medical Education Foundation of South Bend assembled a panel of immunization experts in response to changes made last month to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage. The page, which once stated “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism,” was rewritten to suggest health authorities ignored possible links between vaccines and autism.
The new messaging contradicts the agency’s decades of research debunking any link between vaccines and autism. …
“I think that what we’re witnessing is a full-on assault on vaccine policy and vaccine confidence in this country,” said Richard Hughes, a health lawyer with Epstein Becker and Green. “The secretary really has undermined a lot of our public health institutions and really is taking a lot of actions that undermine evidence-based vaccine policy, and it’s very confusing for patients, for providers, and I think it’s really going to be detrimental for public health.”