Brandeis is one of a sizable number of doctors who allow their patients to avoid or delay vaccines if they are concerned about their health effects. It’s unknown how many of these physicians there are, but dozens of names—some even organized by state—come up on earthy mommy blogs and other web communities. “We are hoping to find a pediatrician/pediatric group in the … area who is an MD, but open-minded to alternative medicine, as well as less aggressive vaccination schedules,” wrote one California parent on the Berkeley Parents Network in December.

These doctors—and patients who seek them out—could be emboldened if President-elect Donald Trump goes through with the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, an environmental activist and vocal vaccine skeptic, to lead a commission “on vaccine safety and scientific integrity,” as was reported last week. Trump met with Kennedy in Trump Tower on January 10, and Kennedy later told his environmental-group colleagues that he would be taking a leave to chair the vaccine commission. (Trump’s team said later that no decision had been made yet.)

It wouldn’t be Trump’s first flirtation with the anti-vaccine community. “You take this little beautiful baby and you pump—I mean, it looks like just it's meant for a horse and not for a child,” he said last year about the vaccine schedule. “We had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, 2 years old, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.” In August, Trump met with British researcher Andrew Wakefield, who concocted the vaccine-autism connection in 1998 and whose work has been widely discredited as fraudulent.

“Anti-vaccine beliefs track closely with lack of confidence in the government,” Arthur Allen, the author of Vaccine: The controversial story of medicine’s greatest lifesaver, told Politico’s Pulse Check podcast recently. “We’re in the middle of the perfect situation for [anti-vaccine beliefs] to rise.”

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Brandeis is a naturopathic physician, or ND, a type of alternative medicine specialist who uses herbs, supplements, and lifestyle counseling alongside standard medical treatments. Most NDs get thousands of hours less formal training than do traditional family doctors, and 20 states license them to practice. Brandeis says other than the focus on holistic health, his practice resembles that of any other family physician—except that he doesn’t accept insurance.

Brandeis told me he has no opinion on Robert F. Kennedy or Trump’s vaccine commission, but “I’m looking forward to seeing if any new science is exposed. It’s really hard to get to the bottom of this one.”

By contrast, most mainstream doctors say the vaccine question is beyond settled: Vaccines are some of the safest and most important preventive-health measures around. There is no evidence they cause autism or any other health problem. Meanwhile, measles killed 130,000 people in 2015 and can cause brain damage that lingers for years.