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‘Between a Shot and a Hard Place’: Autism, Vaccines and the Illusion of Certainty

By Dr. Joel ‘Gator’ Warsh | The Defender | June 25, 2025

For years, the public has been told the vaccine-autism question is closed — case dismissed, myth debunked, science settled.

But when you peel back the headlines and actually examine the evidence, a startling truth emerges: We haven’t really studied the question at all. Not thoroughly. Not independently. Not with the urgency or integrity the issue demands.

The most commonly cited research? A handful of studies on the MMR vaccine and thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was largely removed from childhood vaccines over two decades ago. That’s it.

No comprehensive analysis of the full vaccine schedule. No robust long-term comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. No meaningful investigation into the timing, combinations, or cumulative biological impact of dozens of shots now given in infancy and early childhood.

In other words, we haven’t looked. And yet we claim to know.

As a pediatrician with formal training in epidemiology, I approached the research with trust in the system and confidence in the data. But what I encountered while investigating for my book, “Between a Shot and a Hard Place,” left me stunned.

I expected to uncover a vast body of high-quality science — long-term trials, robust safety evaluations, rigorous comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Instead, I found a shallow pool of studies — many small, some outdated, most narrowly focused on just one vaccine. There was no comprehensive scrutiny of the full schedule, no real curiosity about timing, interactions, or vulnerable populations.

It wasn’t that the science had disproven a link — it’s that the science had barely asked the question. And that silence speaks volumes.

We cannot claim certainty where inquiry has been suppressed. We cannot dismiss parent experiences as coincidences when they follow the same patterns again and again.

And we cannot afford to confuse lack of evidence with evidence of safety. The stakes are too high — and our children deserve better.

The rise in autism, and the refusal to ask why

Autism now affects 1 in 31 children in the U.S., with rates as high as 1 in 12.5 boys in California. The increase in diagnoses isn’t just about better awareness — more children today are deeply affected, with significant developmental and intellectual disabilities.

This is a public health crisis. Yet somehow, asking whether vaccines might play a role is taboo.

Parents see the change firsthand. A baby babbles, smiles, and makes eye contact — then suddenly, after a routine doctor visit, that progress stops. Words disappear. Eye contact fades. Regression sets in.

These stories follow a pattern, and while correlation is not causation, patterns are where science begins. But instead of investigation, we dismiss these parents. Instead of listening, we silence them.

The research we’re missing

I combed through decades of vaccine safety literature. The results were sobering.

• There are no long-term, large-scale studies comparing fully vaccinated children to unvaccinated ones using standardized developmental assessments.
• No comprehensive evaluation exists of the full CDC vaccine schedule as administered in real life.
• Most studies focus narrowly on the MMR vaccine or thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative largely removed from pediatric vaccines two decades ago.

Even the Institute of Medicine acknowledged in a 2013 report that the safety of the full childhood vaccine schedule — especially its timing, spacing, and cumulative exposure— had not been rigorously studied.

If vaccines were a pharmaceutical drug administered in 70 doses before kindergarten, with a suspected link to any chronic disease, we’d demand independent oversight, transparent trials, and long-term tracking.

But because these are vaccines, we declare the science “settled” without proving that it is.

Buried data, ignored whistleblowers

In my research, I came across the 2010 study by Gallagher and Goodman that found a higher autism risk in boys who received the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. It wasn’t widely publicized or followed up.

More disturbing was the 2014 revelation by William Thompson, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who admitted that his team omitted key data in a pivotal MMR-autism study — data that showed increased risk in African American boys. The study was never corrected.

How can we claim the science is settled if major findings are buried and whistleblowers ignored?

A path forward

The vaccine-autism debate won’t be resolved by censorship or soundbites. It will be resolved by doing the science we’ve avoided for too long.

If we truly care about children’s health — and public trust — then we must stop circling the same studies and start asking better questions. That means:

• Funding large, independent, open-label prospective studies comparing fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, and unvaccinated children — evaluating real-world vaccine schedules, not just single shots in isolation.
• Studying combinations, timing, and aluminum adjuvants using updated toxicology, neurodevelopmental, and immunological tools.
• Taking parental reports seriously as part of observational data—treating them not as “anecdotes to dismiss” but as signals to investigate.
• Removing all financial conflicts of interest from vaccine safety research and creating full transparency for both data and funding sources.

This isn’t about choosing sides. It’s about restoring balance. We can demand rigorous, independent science without being “anti-vax.” We can protect children and respect parental intuition.

But we can’t do either if we keep denying the blind spots in our current system.

To move forward, we must be honest about what we know — and courageous enough to admit what we don’t. Because when it comes to our children’s long-term neurological health, vague reassurances are not enough.

No, the science is not settled. And it’s time we stopped saying it is.

Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh is a board-certified pediatrician, specializing in integrative and holistic medicine, and the author of “Between a Shot and a Hard Place.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

June 26, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science