President Donald Trump has shared a graphic on social media that says, "No published case has explicitly documented an unvaccinated Amish child with autism"—a long-running argument frequently cited by vaccine skeptics. While the graphic Trump posted on Truth Social acknowledges that autism has been documented in Amish communities, it nevertheless suggests that vaccination status may be relevant to autism rates. The claim touches on two separate questions: whether autism exists in Amish communities and whether research has found a connection between vaccines and autism.
The nation's autism rates have been a central concern for Trump's Health and Human Services Department, with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. working to uncover the cause of what he calls the "autism epidemic" amid an overhaul of the U.S. health care system. The 2010 study cited in the graphic examined 1,899 Amish children between the ages of 3 and 21 in Ohio and Indiana over a 13-month period.
Researchers found that 25 children screened positive for autism spectrum disorder, while further evaluation confirmed seven cases of autism. The graphic's claim rests on the fact that the published abstract did not identify a confirmed autism case as completely unvaccinated. Researchers and public health experts caution that the absence of such a published case does not establish a causal relationship between vaccination and autism.
The post comes as Trump and members of his administration have repeatedly raised questions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has in the past promoted claims linking vaccines to autism, while the administration's broader "Make America Healthy Again" initiative has called for further examination of autism's causes. Public health experts, however, continue to point to a large body of evidence finding no causal relationship between vaccines and autism spectrum disorder.
The findings of the 2010 study directly contradict the broader claim that autism does not exist among Amish children. The same study also collected vaccination histories, a point highlighted in the graphic Trump shared. However, researchers did not conclude that vaccines caused autism, that vaccination status explained autism prevalence or that unvaccinated children were protected from developing the condition.
The study population was relatively small compared with national autism surveillance efforts, making direct comparisons difficult. Researchers have also noted that diagnosis rates can be influenced by health care access, screening practices and cultural factors that affect whether children receive formal evaluations. David Mandell, the director of the Penn Center for Mental Health and a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania whose research focuses on autism services and policy, told Newsweek that claims that Amish communities do not experience autism are inaccurate.
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