President Donald Trump reposted a claim Monday that there have been no documented cases of an unvaccinated Amish child being diagnosed with autism, adding to skepticism about public health officials’ claims regarding the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania.But the claim is highly misleading and unsupported by the evidence cited.
The narrow claim: No documented cases
The text of the graphic reads, “Amish + Autism 330 years later … No published case has explicitly documented an unvaccinated Amish child with autism.”A disclaimer at the bottom of the graphic acknowledges that cases of autism have been documented in Amish children, but clarifies the claim as referring “to the absence of a published case of both autism and zero vaccinations.”The graphic cites a 2010 study, published by the International Society for Autism Research, that screened 1,899 Amish children for autism and confirmed 7 cases. The study’s findings indicate that, at the time, approximately 1 in 271 Amish children fit the 2010 definition of having autism, compared to roughly 1 in 91 in the general population at the time. The graphic also says the researchers collected vaccination histories for the children, and the published abstract for the paper “did not report any confirmed case as completely vaccinated.”Truth Social post from @realDonaldTrump 8/31/2026
