New Delhi, Nov. 22 -- A day after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said that claims about vaccines not causing autism are not 'evidence-based', the US Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Friday asserted that he personally instructed the agency to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism.

In an interview to New York Times, Kennedy said he ordered the CDC to change its guidance in part because high-quality large studies had not been conducted to examine a potential link between autism and other shots given in the first year of life.

Earlier, the CDC's website stated that studies have shown there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder. However,...