CDC Withdraws Its Claim That ‘Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism’
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“Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism”.
Everybody “knows” that’s true.
We know it because “science” has proven there is no link.
We know science has “proven” that because the CDC tells us so.
And we can accept the CDC’s word for what the science says as a matter of faith.
The mainstream media certainly do.
The concept of examining the scientific literature for onseself and comparing it to what the CDC says seems never to occur within the realm of mainstream so-called journalism.
But this past Wednesday, November 19, something historic happened.
Under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the CDC webpage that has long claimed that “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” was updated to withdraw that claim.
The updated page states,
The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
Below the bullet-point summary, a heading still says “Vaccines do not cause Autism*”—but now with the asterisk.
At the bottom of the page, the explanation provided is,
* The header “Vaccines do not cause autism” has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.
The reference is to Sentator Bill Cassidy, to whom Kennedy had to offer various promises in order to gain support for his nomination by Donald Trump to serve as HHS Secretary.
The updated page is now more truthful—notwithstanding the gnashing of teeth by all the apologists for the official disinformation that the vaccine-autism hypothesis has been falsified.
The CDC’s partner in crime, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), of course, also feigns to tell us what the science says.
In January 2017, for instance, the AAP issued a press release opposing the first Trump administration’s proposal to create a federal commission to examine vaccine safety and efficacy on the grounds we already know vaccines are safe and effective.
Additionally, the AAP asserted that the hypothesis of a causal association betwen vaccines and autism has been “disproven by a robust body of medical literature”.
Since the hypothesis is that some children are uniquely susceptible to vaccine injury manifesting as symptoms of autism, I contacted the AAP to inquire which of the studies in this body of literature it was referring to considered the possibility of genetically susceptible subpopulations.
I also asked for studies comparing health outcomes in children vaccinated according to the CDC’s schedule and unvaccinated children.
The AAP did not respond to my email inquiry, so I called and got on the phone with Lisa Black, their media relations manager, who assured me she’d follow up via email. She did so, referring me to a list of studies at the website HealthyChildren.org.
That’s an AAP site whose current sponsors include the vaccine manufacturer Sanofi; the biotechnology company Genetech, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical giant Roche; and the biopharmaceutical company Regeneron, which nearly acquired 23andMe with its database of customer DNA profiles this past May.
At the recent “MAHA Summit”, Regeneron co-founder George Yancopoulos “spoke about the potential of AI to revolutionize health care, and in that context he said the DNA sequencing of every person could dramatically accelerate medical breakthroughts”, according to attendee Claire Dooley—who rightly expressed concern about the idea of Big BioPharma a massive data mining operation to collect all our genetic profiles.
The AAP’s main website additionally boasts corporate donors including vaccine manufacturers Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, Sanofi, CSL Seqirus, and GSK.
The CDC also receives funding from the pharmaceutical industry through the congressionally created CDC Foundation.
Are you starting to see the picture?
Anyhow, setting aside the Big Pharma-funded AAP’s glaring conflicts of interest, I reviewed the list of studies the pediatric trade organization was relying on to support its claim that vaccines don’t cause autism, and I observed that none had considered the possibility of genetically susceptible children, and none compared fully vaccinated with unvaccinated children.
One of the studies on the list was the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) 2004 “Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism”, which did not say that the vaccine-autism hypothesis had been falsified but that it was “unsubstantiated”—an unsurprising result of the non-existence of studies designed to test the hypothesis.
So, I replied to the AAP to note that none of the studies it had provided even considered the possibility of genetically susceptible children and inquired how, that being so, the AAP could claim that the hypothesis had been disproven.
I received no response to my email follow-up, so I got on the phone again with Black, who replied that the AAP had already provided me with everything it was going to provide.
So, there you have it: the hypothesis has never been tested, but we know it’s false because … “science”.
That is, “science” as interpreted, of course, by the pharmaceutical industry’s partner agencies in government and medicine.
The claim that “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” was always government-sanctioned disinformation.
The truth is that no studies have been designed to test the hypothesis that vaccinating according to the CDC’s routine childhood vaccine schedule can contribute to the development of autism in susceptible subpopulations of children—and therefore it isn’t logically possible for the hypothesis to have been falsified.
The fact no studies have actually been designed to test the hypothesis was detailed in a peer-reviewed paper I had the pleasure of co-authoring with Dr. Brian Hooker and Dr. Jeet Varia.
Our paper is titled “Hviid et al. 2019 Vaccine-Autism Study: Much Ado About Nothing?”, published last May in the Journal of Biotechnology and Biomedicine.
Here is the abstract:
The controversy surrounding measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination and autism has been ongoing for over 30 years. It is rooted in the parent-led grassroots movements of the 1990s; and a case-series clinical study in 1998 by Wakefield et al. This controversy cascaded through numerous observational studies and US Institute of Medicine reports, culminating in 2019 with a population-based observational study by Hviid et al. This study was hailed at the time by the US media and medical establishment as conclusive proof that the MMR vaccine does not increase the risk of autism, even among “genetically susceptible children”. However, as detailed in this critical review, Hviid et al. did not faithfully intend or interpret the data to test this hypothesis and, therefore, cannot possibly have falsified it. We elucidate methodological flaws, discrepancies, irreproducibility, and conflicts of interest for Hviid et al. In addition, the conclusion from Hviid et al. cannot be generalized to the CDC childhood vaccination schedule. All these salient features have remained oblivious to so many regulators, mainstream media, and professional associations in the USA. This reveals the need for more communication about the limitations of available evidence to facilitate informed consent for the childhood vaccination schedule.
I provided a layperson’s summary along with some additional background in my article “Debunking the ‘Settled Science’ on Vaccines and Autism”.
I had a great conversation about it with Bretigne Shaffer that I highly recommend you watch here:
The same tricks used in the 2019 Hviid et al. study were also used in the study earlier this year out of Denmark purporting to show that aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines are not associated with any harms.
A day after the latter study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine, I published a detailed article exposing how it was systemtically biased in favor of finding no association.
Then in early August, Secretary Kennedy issued a statement highlighting problems with the study and calling for its retraction.
Coming back to the CDC’s withdrawal of its “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” claim, the updated CDC webpage now states:
Evidence from a large Danish cohort study reported no increased risk for neurodevelopmental disorders with early childhood exposure to aluminum-adsorbed vaccines, but a detailed review of the supplementary tables shows some higher event rates of neurodevelopmental conditions with moderate aluminum exposure (Supplement Figure 11 — though a dose response was not evident) and a statistically significant 67% increased risk of Asperger’s syndrome per 1 mg increase in aluminum exposure among children born between 2007 and 2018 (Supplement Figure 4).
Here’s another relevant article of mine exposing how the FDA’s regulatory limit on the amount of aluminum adjuvant in vaccines was based on immunogenicity and not any safety data from toxicological studies:
The CDC’s “Thimerosal and Vaccines” page was also recently updated, on October 28, but still falsely claims that, unlike methylmercury, which is the toxic form contaminating fish because of the coal industry, the form used as a preservative in vaccines, ethylmercury, “doesn’t stay in the body” and “is unlikely to make us sick.”
As I documented in my 2019 article “The CDC’s Criminal Recommendation for a Flu Shot During Pregnancy”, that CDC webpage historically tried to support its claim by citing the 2004 IOM review, which in fact admitted that thimerosal is a “known neurotoxin” that “accumulates in the brain” and “can injure the nervous system.”
The IOM further acknowledged that the vaccine-autism is “biologically plausible” and that none of the studies it reviewed had considered the possibility of genetically susceptible subpopulations—and consequently, the hypothesis “cannot be excluded”.
Another source historically cited by the CDC to support its claim that ethylmercury is non-toxic and rapidly eliminated from the body is a 2005 study by Thomas M. Burbacher et al., published in Environmental Health Perspectives, that in fact criticized the FDA for relying on methylmercury’s toxicological profile in the absence of safety evaluations for ethylmercury, the known neurotoxicity of which the authors found to be a significant cause for concern, especially in light of their finding that while more readily eliminated from the blood than methylmercury, it is more persistent in the brain.
The CDC seems to have since resolved the problem of its claim being contradicted by that study by simply removing it as a reference. It still cites the 2004 IOM review admitting that the hypothesis that vaccines can cause autism in genetically susceptible children was never actually tested.
In an example of teeth gnashing, after the CDC’s “Autism and Vaccines” webpage was updated to truthfully state that the hypothesis has not been falsified, the AAP issued the following statement:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to promote false information suggesting vaccines cause autism. Since 1998, independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people. The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism. Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations. The American Academy of Pediatrics stands with members of the autism community who have asked for support in stopping this rumor from spreading any further.
Of course, the AAP stands opposed to members of the autism community demanding that the science be done because they know the truth already for themselves about how vaccines injured their children, and they are sick and tired of all the gaslighting.
It’s the AAP that’s lying to the public and spreading dangerous vaccine misinformation by falsely claiming that the hypothesis has been falsified despite it never having been tested by any study ever.
I repeat:
The truth is that no studies have been designed to test the hypothesis that vaccinating according to the CDC’s routine childhood vaccine schedule can contribute to the development of autism in susceptible subpopulations of children—and therefore it isn’t logically possible for the hypothesis to have been falsified.
I presume that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was responsible for getting the CDC to finally tell the truth, and I applaud him for it.
The updated page states:
The rise in autism prevalence since the 1980s correlates with the rise in the number of vaccines given to infants. Though the cause of autism is likely to be multi-factorial, the scientific foundation to rule out one potential contributor entirely has not been established. For example, one study found that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines had the highest statistical correlation with the rise in autism prevalence among numerous suspected environmental causes. Correlation does not prove causation, but it does merit further study.
… HHS will evaluate plausible biologic mechanisms between early childhood vaccinations and autism. Mechanisms for further investigation include the impacts of aluminum adjuvants, risks for certain children with mitochondrial disorders, harms of neuroinflammation, and more.
As positive a development as it is to see the CDC finally withdrawing its false claim, we must remain vigilant because it could be a set up, with Kennedy walking into a trap. Just because he heads HHS doesn’t mean we can suddenly trust the government to properly research the issue. We can anticipate a lot of pushback not only from outside but also from within the agency.
The government has been perpetrating a psychological operation against the public for decades with its “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” claim. After the attempts to impose medical tyranny on us with the COVID-19 lockdowns and their coerced mass vaccination endgame, with the vaccines being sold to the public based on brazen lies, a mass awakening has occurred as to the complete untrustworthiness of the entire so-called “public health” establishment.
We can anticipate continued psy-ops against us to “restore public trust in vaccines”—an openly declared goal of Trump’s HHS despite it being the wrong mission.
The decision parents must make for their children about whether to vaccinate must cease being based on “trust” in government agencies and the medical cartel that masquerades as a health care system in the US.
It should never be a matter of faith. Parents need to do their own research, think for themselves, and learn to trust their own judgment. The fact that the CDC and AAP have always viewed their role as being to persuade parents to vaccinate their children instead of simply providing parents with the information they need to make their own informed choice tells us everything we need to know about whom they really serve.
Kennedy wants to fix the CDC, and I believe his heart is in the right place. But I fear that’s a fool’s errand for the simple reason that the CDC is not broken. It has always worked exactly according to design, and this one webpage’s recent makeover isn’t going to fundamentally change its raison d’être being to serve Big Pharma—and increasingly now also Big Biotech.
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About Jeremy R. Hammond
I am an independent journalist and author dedicated to exposing state propaganda designed to manufacture consent for criminal government policies.
I provide deeply researched analyses on critical issues including US foreign policy, economic policy, and so-called "public health" policies.
My books include Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and The War on Informed Consent.
To learn more about my mission and core values, visit my About page.
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