WHO says Trump’s latest vaccine policy order is misguided

Senior WHO officials, including Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, criticized the Trump administration's executive order to overhaul U.S. vaccination policy, calling it politically motivated and contrary to the best available science. The order, signed Monday, calls for reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccinations and shifting from combination vaccines to single-pathogen shots, starting with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The push is based on the disproven claim that greater vaccine use is behind rising autism rates in the U.S.

Tedros stressed that vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, are safe and do not cause autism, and warned that delaying vaccines or separating doses unnecessarily does not improve safety and can leave children unprotected. He said vaccination policy should be guided by rigorous, independent review of the best available science, not political influence. The order does not automatically change policy but signals intent; the administration says it would bring U.S. recommendations in line with European peers.

However, a STAT analysis of vaccine recommendations in other countries found that lowering the number of recommended vaccinations would actually make the U.S. an outlier, as is Denmark, which the U.S. seeks to emulate. The analysis also highlighted the order's recommendation to abandon combination shots, which increase the number of needle sticks and make vaccination harder on infants and parents. WHO's Brigitte Giersing noted that only 15 of 194 member states use monovalent vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella; all others use the combined MMR. "The MMR schedule is a 2-dose schedule with those three vaccines, and if we break that up, that would actually increase the number of injections and the complexity of the schedule," she said.

Currently, no monovalent MMR vaccines are licensed in the U.S., and early indications suggest manufacturers are unlikely to develop them, given the high cost of licensure and uncertain market demand.