Trump: "The high rates of autism now observed did not exist"

President Trump sought Monday to tie childhood vaccines to autism despite years of scientific evidence showing there's no link.

"Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today," he said in the Oval Office. "In those times, people were much healthier and of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So, there's a reason for such epidemic rates of autism, and we're going to bring it back to much closer to where it was."

The president made the remarks before signing an executive order to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule that changes recommendations and seeks to space out some vaccines across separate medical visits.

"While we do not know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism, it is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world," he said. "So, we're reducing them. We're changing it to visits over the period of a year, a year and a half, so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot."

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