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We have all heard the claim that studies have proven that vaccines do not cause autism a million times. It’s a dogmatic mantra in the mainstream media and the “public health” establishment. Anyone who merely raises the hypothesis of an association between vaccinations and autism is met with dismissive labels like “anti-vaxxer”, “anti-science”, or even the dreaded “conspiracy theorist”.
But here’s the fundamental problem with that mainstream narrative: No published study to date was actually designed to test the hypothesis that vaccinating according to the routine childhood schedule recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) can contribute to the development of autism in children with a genetic or environmentally caused susceptibility; therefore, it is not logically possible for the hypothesis to have been falsified.
This fundamental reality is readily apparent just from consulting the CDC’s own cited sources on its webpage declaring that “vaccines do not cause autism”.
In fact, the CDC’s own sources do not support the claim for which they are cited.
For instance, the CDC cites reviews by the Institute of Medicine (IOM; now the National Academy of Medicine, NAM). But therein, the IOM in fact acknowledges that the body of research that the CDC relies on to support its claim included zero studies that considered the possibility of genetically susceptible subpopulations.
Since no studies had considered that possibility, the IOM observed, therefore that possibility cannot be excluded.
The conclusion from the IOM report that the CDC et al. like to quote is the statement that the evidence “favors the rejection” of the hypothesis that vaccines can cause autism.
But by reinterpreting that to mean that the hypothesis has been falsified, those claiming that “vaccines do not cause autism” are in fact rejecting the standard of evidence adopted by the IOM—their own cited source.
Thus, the propagation of the claim that “vaccines do not cause autism” is indicative of institutionalized myopia and cognitive dissonance. But it has the full force and weight of the government behind it, so it dominates the mainstream discourse.
The scientifically fraudulent nature of this claim is evident in the fact that, to support it, the CDC so grossly mischaracterizes its own cited sources.
The medical establishment and mainstream media nevertheless treat the CDC’s word as gospel truth: we know that vaccines do not cause autism because the CDC says so.
The CDC’s position is accepted simply as a matter of faith—notwithstanding the CDC’s long track record of proven untrustworthiness, including the continual addition of mercury-containing vaccines to its childhood schedule throughout the late 1980s and ‘90s without considering the potential neurodevelopmental harm to infants from cumulative levels of mercury that exceeded the government’s own safety guidelines, as admitted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after it somewhat accidentally got around to finally doing the calculations.
Vaccination is a sacred cow. It has become a religion.
And anyone who dares to question the wisdom of strictly adhering to the CDC’s routine childhood vaccine schedule, which starts with the recommendation for all newborns to receive the aluminum-containing Hepatitis B (HepB) vaccine on the first day of their lives regardless of whether they are at risk for the disease, is offhandedly dismissed as a foolish “anti-vaxxer” who is ignorant of “the science”.
To merely question the CDC’s recommendation is to commit the crime of heresy against the vaccine religion.
It is past time for society to drop this ridiculous pretense and perilous self-delusion.
The fact that prior studies had failed to consider the possibility of genetically susceptible subpopulations, and thus that the hypothesis had not been falsified, was tacitly acknowledged by the mainstream media in March of 2019, when headlines erupted with the claim that yet another study had proven that vaccines do not cause autism, but this time the authors had disproven an association even in genetically susceptible children.
Even a cursory glance, though, reveals major problems with the narrative about that study, which was done in Denmark, authored by Anders Hviid et al., and published in Annals of Internal Medicine with the title “Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study”.
First, the study only looked to see whether a single vaccine, the MMR, was associated with autism, not “vaccines”, plural.
They did do a secondary analysis considering other first-year vaccinations in Denmark as covariates that might hypothetically affect the risk of MMR vaccination causing autism, but that’s not the same thing as considering whether other vaccines might be associated with autism, much less the Danish schedule as a whole.
Second, it a hasty generalization fallacy to conclude that since the MMR vaccine is not associated with an increased risk of autism in the context of the childhood vaccine schedule in Denmark, therefore it is not associated with an increased risk of autism in the US, where the CDC’s vaccine schedule is considerably more aggressive.
But setting aside those two obvious flaws in reasoning, there are much deeper issues with the study by Hviid et al.
After that study was published, I pored over it for many long hours, first to understand it to the best of my ability, and then to critically examine its methodology, findings, and conclusions.
To be clear, I have no educational background in science. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in communications, with a film and video emphasis, but I had become comfortable with reading scientific studies from having spent many years deeply researching various topics in the medical literature.
I have spent a lot of time in the literature over the years for a variety of reasons, including:
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to successfully diagnose and treat myself to resolve debilitating symptoms caused by “leaky gut”, a condition that the useless doctors I tried to get help from were completely ignorant about (their ignorance being matched only by their arrogance, condescension, and gaslighting);
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to diagnose my wife with mercury toxicity from amalgam fillings that the establishment still stupidly insists are “safe”, which realization enabled us to successfully resolve her own debilitating symptoms after removal and a detox regimen;
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to be able to make informed choices as a father about childhood vaccinations;
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and to investigate the impact of so-called “public health” policies on public health as a journalist who specializes in exposing deceitful mainstream propaganda that serves to manufacture consent for criminal government policies (which I got started doing in 2002 by warning people that the government was lying about Iraq having “WMD” as a false pretext to advance the neocons’ regime change agenda).
My experiences reading scientific studies had led me to be able to at least get the gist of a paper and to identify key takeaways, even if its complex statistical analyses or other such aspects were well beyond my knowledge.
While we are told to trust “experts”, much like people were reliant on religious high priests for interpretation of the Bible before the invention of the printing press, it ought to be evident to every free-thinking person that so-called “experts” are often wrong.
If there is one key lesson from the lockdown madness, it is that. The so-called “experts” in so-called “public health” have a proven track record of untrustworthiness.
For example, we saw how the mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines were sold to the public based on the scientifically fraudulent claim that two doses would confer durable sterilizing immunity that would stop infection and transmission of SARS‑CoV‑2; then, after the emerging data proved that claim to be false, we were treated to the admissions from top “public health” authorities like the CDC director that instead of being based in science, they had merely “hoped” the vaccines would work that way.
It was strictly a matter of faith for these high priests of the vaccine religion.
I have illuminated incessantly with my work how there are professional propagandists who masquerade as “experts” in whatever field, including “journalists”, “foreign policy analysts”, “economists”, “public health authorities”, and, yes, even “scientists”. (Or perhaps I should say especially scientists given the horrifically detrimental impact the government’s thorough corruption of medical science has had on our society.)
Just as the printing press enabled the masses to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, so has the internet enabled people to access the medical literature (such as via the government database PubMed.gov, where you can at least read abstracts if not full papers for free).
The average layperson lacking an educational background in science can learn to read and gain a practical understanding of a study’s abstract, overview, methodology, findings, discussion, and conclusions.
And for decades, many parents have been doing just that: investigating the literature for themselves, doing their own thinking, drawing their own conclusions, and exercising their own judgment about whether to adhere to the CDC’s schedule—and scientific evidence strongly indicates that completely unvaccinated children are healthier than their highly vaccinated counterparts.
In addition to the many hours I spent poring over the 2019 study by Hviid et al., I consulted with other researchers in my network to better understand its methodology and the implications of its findings, including scientists Dr. Brian Hooker and Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, who had each written an article identifying various problems with the study.
The result of was that I set out writing a detailed paper that incorporated others’ valid critiques of the study while contributing some of my own observations, particularly with regard to a selection bias to which such observational studies are prone, often called “healthy user bias” (or in this case, healthy vaccinee bias).
I had nearly completed the draft of that paper when COVID‑19 emerged, causing me to put the paper on the back burner to be able to focus 100% of my efforts on fighting the lockdown madness and its coerced mass vaccination endgame.
Several months ago, though, I finally managed to get back to work on that paper.
After thoroughly reviewing the Hviid et al. study again to refresh my memory, I reviewed my draft, improving the parts already written as necessary, adding a bit, cutting out a bit, and completing it well enough to share with others for feedback.
Since Dr. Hooker had graciously helped to advance my self-education back in 2019 about such concepts as “person-years”, “hazard ratios”, and “Cox proportional hazards”, when I started working on the paper again in 2024, it was only natural for me to share the updated draft with him.
I usually work solo on and self-publish such writing projects, but this one was particularly important in addition to uniquely challenging, so when Dr. Hooker responded positively, not only expressing a willingness to collaborate with me on it but also encouraging me submit it to a peer-reviewed journal, it was an opportunity I could not pass up.
Dr. Hooker is a professor of biology at Simpson University in Redding California and chief science officer at Children’s Health Defense (CHD). He is widely known for breaking the story about CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson, who in 2014 admitted how the CDC, in a study published in Pediatrics in 2004, had “omitted statistically significant information” suggesting “that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 were at increased risk for autism.” (Which was the subject of the film Vaxxed that caused such a media uproar, which was directed by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and produced by Del Bigtree, formerly a producer on the medical talk show “The Doctors”, founder of the Informed Consent Action Network [ICAN], and host of The Highwire.)
Dr. Hooker also introduced me to Jeet Varia, Ph.D., a fellow in science and research at CHD with over 15 years of professional experience in academia, with whom I had the great pleasure of collaborating to revise and suitably reformat the paper for submission to a scientific journal, an area in which I had no prior experience.
I am excited about the prospect of our paper being published in a peer-reviewed journal and will be sure to keep you updated on any developments.
This is the paper to read if you want to understand why the claim that “vaccines do not cause autism” is disinformation:
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202501.0796/v1
Nobody paid me to do this work, which I spent a great deal of time on first in 2019 and then again over the past several months. Instead, this paper was made possible by financial support from my reader community. |
