Make America Healthy Again? RFK Jr. and the Dangerous Vaccine-Autism Myth

“We still live among people who saw firsthand the devastating effects of polio. We have people who say, ‘I remember standing in line at school with my fellow classmates waiting to get the polio vaccine.’ And, you know, that’s what it was like decades ago, when we didn’t have a polio vaccine and you saw hospital wards with iron lung machines lined up taking care of children who were paralyzed and needed a machine to help them breathe. …  I think we as a community need to do a better job of lifting those stories and those voices of, look, this is not where we want to go.”

—Rekha Lakshmanan, Nonresident Scholar, Center for Health Policy, Baker Institute

About the Episode

Kirstin R.W. Matthews and Rekha Lakshmanan join the podcast to discuss the latest policy developments under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again commission, plus the persistent — and dangerous — misinformation linking autism with vaccines.

This conversation was recorded on Sept. 15, 2025. Listen and subscribe to “Baker Briefing” wherever you get your podcasts.

About ‘Baker Briefing’

Hosted by David M. Satterfield,  the “Baker Briefing” podcast delivers timely analysis on breaking policy developments and other critical policy issues of the day in conversations with experts at the Baker Institute. New episodes are released weekly.

Select episodes of “Baker Briefing” are recorded in front of a live audience at Rice University in Houston, Texas. These recordings are free and open to the public. To learn about upcoming recordings and other public programming from the Baker Institute, subscribe to our “Events Digest” newsletter, delivered weekly.

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.