On Face the Nation on Sunday, Dr. Mehmet Oz faced a truth: There’s no evidence the MMR vaccine is lethal, despite what President Donald Trump has insinuated.
Oz, the former TV star now serving as the Donald Trump-appointed administrator Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, clarified on the CBS program that the MMR vaccine is “not a lethal vaccine.”
Earlier this month, Trump issued an executive order calling for the immunizations for measles, mumps, and rubella to be offered as three separate shots, according to The New York Times. At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump, claimed that if those immunizations are taken together, there “could be a possibility they’re quite lethal.”
And when Oz appeared on Face the Nation on Sunday, moderator Margaret Brennan prompted the former TV star and current Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator to clarify that statement.
“We want patients to get the treatments that their doctors are recommending to them, but we also want parents to have the autonomy to decide what their kids receive,” Oz said. “The president wants Americans, and he said this many times, to get vaccinated as their doctors recommend, as long as they have a choice in the matter. The challenge we’re running into is that many states have not clarified that, and actually, it’s harder for parents to ask these difficult questions.”
Oz then tried pivoting to another topic, but Brennan pushed for a clear answer, adding that the MMR vaccine is not offered in three separate shots and that isolating the immunizations could take 10 years.
“No, the MMR vaccine is not a lethal vaccine,” Oz asserted.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Fact-checking services like FactCheck.org and PolitiFact also debunked Trump’s suggestion about the MMR’s supposed lethal risk. And PolitiFact noted that a reporter present at the signing ceremony asked the president if there was evidence the MMR vaccine was lethal.
“No,” Trump responded, according to a Roll Call transcript. “What I’ve heard is that there are some people that say it is that way, and I say, well, let’s say there’s a 5 percent chance of it, let’s split it up, let’s split it up. Because they do say that given individual MMR, they’re given individual, there is no impact. In fact, they’ve said how safe it seems to be, but I’ve heard when you put them together, they can be explosive.”
Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sounded off about the executive order in an interview on the Public Health on Call podcast.
“Not a single reputable scientific organization supports separating the MMR vaccine,” Sharfstein said. “With this executive order, it is now the policy of the United States to try to make it happen. … Given the overwhelming evidence that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks, that is very scary and confusing language for parents.”
Face the Nation, Sundays, 10:30a/9:30c, CBS