Field Notes

Text size:

Bernadine Healy, MD on the Hypothesis That Vaccines Cause Autism

Published June 1, 2016 | Field Notes

2

7

print this page

I think the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis [that vaccines cause autism] as ‘irrational,’ without sufficient studies of causation. I think they’ve been too quick to dismiss studies in the animal laboratory, either in mice, in primates that do show some concern with regard to certain vaccines and also to the mercury preservative in vaccines.
The government has said in a report by the Institute of Medicine in 2004 that basically said, ‘Do not pursue susceptibility groups, don’t look for those patients, those children who may be vulnerable.’ I really take issue with that conclusion. The reason why they didn’t want to look for those susceptibility groups was because they’re afraid that if they found them, however big or small they were, that that would scare the public away.
…  I don’t believe the truth ever scares people, and if it does have an edge to it, then that’s the obligation of those who are delivering those facts… to do it in a responsible way so that you don’t terrify the public. One never should shy away from science, one should never shy away from getting causality information in a setting in which you can
test it. Populations do not test causality, they test associations. You have to go into the laboratory, and you have to do designed research studies in animals.

— Bernadine Healy, MD, cardiologist and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Reference: