In today’s news, vaccine developments have been important to us ever since the pandemic, and lately they are being mentioned more and more. With big stories like the claim that vaccines, among other things, cause autism, or less popular stories like Florida’s new vaccine policies and the union of four West Coast states against the CDC’s recent actions, it’s hard to figure out what exactly all of the headlines are trying to tell us we need to know.
Let’s break down the top headlines in “vaccine news.”
Firstly, there has been a lot of attention and panic over the claim that Trump made at a news conference on September 22, 2025, in the White House, where he said that childhood vaccines cause or are linked to autism. The MMR vaccine was one that he named. This vaccine protects against measles, mumps, and rubella all at once and is given to children at around the ages of 12–14 months and 4–6 years old. Trump said that it was dangerous to take all three at once.
For a story that is all over the news lately, this allegation is surprisingly not new. Twenty-seven years ago, in 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor, published the same statement about the MMR vaccine. Wakefield’s claim was debunked by the UK’s General Medical Council, other experts in autism, and the National Institutes of Health. They stated that taking the vaccine, even with all three doses at once, was perfectly safe, proving that Trump’s claim had no evidence behind it.
Another topic in vaccine news is the forming of the West Coast Health Association (WCHA), which consists of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. The purpose of this union is to step away from the actions and decisions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Association was prompted to form after RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of a committee that advises on vaccine use. Now separate from the CDC’s recommendations, the WCHA’s purpose is to consult trusted scientists and medical professionals to create a public health system based on fact and truthfulness to the people in these states, according to the state of California’s website.
Finally, on September 3, 2025, Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo of Florida announced that Florida is moving to ban all of the mandates in the state that require people to get vaccinated. Ladapo, who is in charge of all public health matters in Florida, compared the vaccine mandates to slavery, stating, “Who am I as a man standing here to tell you what you should put in your body?” according to WTVJ, a local news source in Miami. The vaccines that would no longer be mandated include measles, polio, chickenpox, hepatitis B, and more. Access to vaccines is still available in the state, but experts say there are risks of wider spreading without mandates. There isn’t much certainty about this development.
