Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday pushing for a rethink of school vaccine mandates and repeating calls for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be separated into three individual shots.

Many medical experts cast the push as scientifically baseless and potentially damaging to public health.

Curbing vaccines has been a key priority for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who founded an anti-vaccine nonprofit and has long promoted a disproven link between immunization and autism.

The federal government does not have direct control over several areas covered by the order. States, for example, have the authority to require vaccinations for students to attend school.

On these points Trump’s move is more of a suggestion than an order.

“States and territories are advised to review” the Trump administration’s recommendations on “immunization requirements for contexts such as school enrollment and attendance,” the order states.

In another section, it says the US Health and Human Services department will form a task force to offer the MMR shot as individual vaccines “by working with the private sector and other countries as appropriate, while guaranteeing continued availability of combination vaccines and those vaccines recommended for shared clinical decision-making.”

New York City’s health commissioner, Alister Martin, said the order was based “in politics and conspiracy theories.”

“Fortunately, vaccination recommendations are not set by the president, nor should they be,” Martin said in a statement.

“Cities and states can set their own recommendations and requirements, and many, including New York City, have moved away from the federal government’s recommendations as they’ve become politicized and unscientific.”

Years of clinical evidence support the safety of a combined MMR vaccine.

Public health experts have long advised that the combined shot offers children more protection faster, and also decreases the logistical hurdles for parents who may struggle to make multiple appointments.

Yet during the Oval Office signing, Trump made a series of incendiary and unsupported statements countering that advice.

In a call with reporters, Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), estimated it would take more than a decade to develop approved separated vaccines in the US.

“We’re advising that you continue to give children a vaccine that has decades of safety data,” added Aaron M. Milstone, a member of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases.

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