Rep.-elect Mark Green (R-Tenn.) is walking back comments at a town hall in which he promoted the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism and said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have “fraudulently managed” data on the topic. “Let me say this about autism,” Green said, according to a video of the exchange posted by the Tennessean. In a statement Wednesday night, Green said that his comments about vaccines had been “misconstrued.”“I want to reiterate my wife and I vaccinated our children, and we believe, and advise others they should have their children vaccinated,” he said. The modern anti-vaccine movement has its roots in a 1998 study that used falsified data to claim a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The percentage of children under 2 years old who don’t receive any vaccines has quadrupled in the past 17 years, according to the CDC.

Source: Washington Post December 13, 2018 01:11 UTC