Trump says he is demanding drugmakers break up vaccines into five shots to prevent autism

President Donald Trump said his administration is pressuring pharmaceutical companies to break up childhood vaccines into five separate doses based on the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.Trump said during an Oval Office press conference on Friday that his administration is “demanding the drug companies” alter the potency of their vaccine formulas so children receive less from each individual shot.“The vaccine size will be much, much less, and I think you’re going to see a massive reduction in autism, and that’s a big deal,” Trump said. Trump said his administration is requesting that pharmaceutical companies “break it into 20% doses,” decreasing the potency but increasing the number of injections required to achieve the same level of immunity.“We’re going to recommend that they do five doses marked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and that they be given in six-month intervals, so that a small amount of the vaccine gets pumped into the body, and we’re going to be splitting up some of the vaccines,” Trump said. It is not clear which vaccine the president was referring to in his comments. The Washington Examiner contacted the White House for clarification about which vaccine Trump was referencing. Trump has in the past been deeply critical of the measles, mumps, and rubella or MMR vaccine, calling it “lethal” in August. Vaccine skeptics have associated the MMR vaccine with a risk for developing autism since Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a fraudulent study in 1998 in the Lancet, falsely claiming a link between the vaccine and the neurological disorder. The paper was retracted in 2010 after Wakefield’s data manipulation and financial conflicts of interest were exposed.Trump said his administration will “take out certain vaccines that people are a little worried about,” but he also said they would “never even think about the polio vaccine” and others that have “been amazing.”Trump signed an executive order in August reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 18 to 11 after courts blocked similar recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on procedural grounds. WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES ALL MEDICAID PROGRAMS GET TRUMP-NEGOTIATED DRUG PRICESThe executive order also instructed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to negotiate with drug companies that make the MMR vaccine to break up the shot into three separate inoculations for each disease.Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, which make the current MMR vaccines available in the United States, have expressed reluctance in the past to make new vaccines that would require patients to schedule more doctor visits to achieve the same level of immunity.