Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Says Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

Saphier's testimony puts a vaccine-safety skeptic's nominee on record rejecting the autism link, which matters less for the science than for the confirmation math: she is threading a needle between the administration's base and the committee's vaccine-skeptical wing, notably by declining to explicitly recommend the birth dose. Her disclosed holdings, including McDonald's, add a routine but separate divestiture question. Whether she holds this line under further questioning, and whether the hepatitis B nuance becomes a flashpoint, is the open question.