Americans More Likely to Accept Guidance from AMA than CDC on Vaccine Safety
Posted on December 3, 2025
For decades, health-related statements by major professional health associations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) agreed with those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because both relied on the same body of scientific knowledge, much of it funded by the federal health sector. However, the public can no longer assume that the CDC and major public health organizations are on the same page.
In late November 2025, for example, when the CDC website legitimized the discredited link between vaccination and autism, mainstream professional health organizations condemned the changes. Fueling the outcry were two additions to the CDC website, under the leadership of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The first declared that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The second alleged that “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” These claims now appear as the first two key points in a box at the beginning of the CDC’s Autism and Vaccines page.
“Despite recent changes to the CDC website, an abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism,” declared an AMA statement. Casting the changes as “reckless and harmful,” the Infectious Diseases Society of America argued that “this change is not driven by science but by politics and will only serve to increase mistrust in science and medicine.” The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics called on the CDC to remove the false information and “stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims …”
To determine what the public is making of the controversy, the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania engaged SSRS to survey a nationally representative sample of 1,006 adults online from November 21-24, 2025. The survey has a margin of error of ±3.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The survey, created by APPC’s Annenberg Health and Risk Communication Institute (AHRCI), asks about the public’s confidence that the CDC is providing trustworthy information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, how people react to conflicting cues about vaccine safety from the AMA and the CDC, and public views about whether vaccines and autism are linked.
The Annenberg survey finds that:
- By a 2-1 margin, the public would be more likely to accept the AMA’s recommendation (35%) on vaccine safety than the CDC’s (16%) if the two bodies issue conflicting recommendations;
- Regardless of party, Americans would accept the AMA’s recommendations on vaccine safety over the CDC’s;
- Half of older Americans age 65+ (50%) would be more likely to accept the AMA’s recommendations on vaccine safety over the CDC’s (13%); the only age group more likely to accept the CDC over the AMA are 18- to 29-year-olds, by 24% to 19%.
Americans More Likely to Accept Guidance from AMA than CDC on Vaccine Safety | The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania |
