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DR. ELIZABETH MUMPER ON AUTISM, VACCINES, AND HONEST SCIENCE

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 9, 2025

Pediatrician and researcher Dr. Elizabeth Mumper joins Del to discuss experiences throughout her career, including the vast increase in autism observed since she was in medical school, the clear health differences she’s seen between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and how scientific inquiry has been captured. She explains why the upcoming film ‘An Inconvenient Study’ could mark a turning point for both doctors and parents questioning vaccine safety.

 

October 11, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Calls for journal to retract Danish study after corrected data show link between aluminum in vaccines and autism

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 24, 2025

The authors of a recent Danish study widely reported on by mainstream media claimed they found no link between the aluminum in vaccines and autism.

However, corrected data added after the study’s original July 15 publication date show the authors got it wrong — in fact, the data in the study of 1.2 million children clearly indicate a link between aluminum in vaccines and autism, according to scientists with Children’s Health Defense (CHD) who reviewed the study and the corrected data.

On July 17, the Annals of Internal Medicine, which published the Danish study, added a disclaimer stating that it “included an incorrect version of the Supplementary Material at the time of initial publication.”

The updated materials are available with the link to the study at “Correction: Aluminum-Adsorbed Vaccines and Chronic Diseases in Childhood.”

CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski broke the news of the buried autism link on Monday’s episode of “Good Morning, CHD.” Today, Jablonowski told The Defender :

“According to the corrected data, nearly 10 (9.7) of every 10,000 children who were vaccinated with a higher dose of aluminum (compared to a moderate dose) developed a neurodevelopmental disorder — mostly autism — between ages 2 and 5.”

On Monday, The Defender reached out to lead author Anders Hviid, a professor and department head of epidemiology at the Statens Serum Institut, for comment on the allegation that the corrected data show a link between increased aluminum exposure and autism. In response, we received an automated email from Hviid stating that he was “out-of-office for the summer,” until Aug. 11.

The study’s corresponding author, Niklas Worm Andersson, M.D, Ph.D., an epidemiology researcher at the Statens Serum Institut, did not respond to a request for comment.

On July 14 — a day before the study was published and three days before the journal issued a correction — Hviid told numerous media outlets that the study showed aluminum in vaccines does not cause autism.

As of press time today, the authors of the study had not revised their findings to concur with the corrected materials that contradict the findings they shared with media outlets.

NBC News, which reported on the uncorrected version of the study on July 14, criticized U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for saying during a 2024 “Joe Rogan Experience” interview that the aluminum in vaccines is “extremely neurotoxic.”

Last month, Kennedy appointed new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee. Last month, during the first meeting of the new members, they voted to remove thimerosal, a preservative that contains mercury, from vaccines. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it formalized the recommendation.

Reuters reported that Kennedy also considered asking the committee to examine vaccines that contain aluminum, but to date, the CDC has not announced any new recommendations related to aluminum.

Danish researchers ‘completely obfuscated what they really found’

According to the authors of the Danish study:

“This nationwide cohort study did not find evidence supporting an increased risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders associated with early childhood exposure to aluminum-adsorbed vaccines.”

However, after reviewing the corrected data, Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender the authors “completely obfuscated what they really found — a statistically significant relationship between aluminum exposure and autism.”

The buried link appears on Figure 11 (page 19) of the corrected supplemental materials.

The original version showed that children who received a large dose of aluminum were not at greater risk of getting a neurodevelopmental diagnosis, including autism, than kids who received a small or moderate dose.

Yet the corrected version showed that kids who received a large dose had a statistically significantly higher risk of being diagnosed with autism or other “pervasive” developmental disorders compared to those who received a moderate dose of aluminum.

Jablonowski said he and Hooker determined that the results were statistically significant — meaning they couldn’t be attributed to chance — by looking at the confidence intervals for each statistic.

A confidence interval “shows the range of values you expect the true estimate to fall between if you redo the study many times.”

The corrected figure also showed that children who received a large dose of aluminum had a statistically significantly higher risk of Asperger’s syndrome compared to kids who received a small dose of aluminum. However, kids in the large-dose group weren’t at a higher risk of any other neurodevelopmental issues compared to kids who received a small dose.

The low-dose group included roughly only 42,000 children. That could make it difficult to detect a statistical signal, Jablonowski explained.

“It’s not surprising that we see a strong signal among the groups that had more participants but not among the group that had fewer participants,” he said.

The moderate-dose group consisted of about 700,000 children, while there were about 460,000 children in the large-dose group.

How did authors make autism link disappear from original figure?

The original version of the study reported 2,961 fewer diagnoses of neurodevelopmental outcomes than the corrected version.

It appears the study authors “deleted the sicker kids,” Jablonowski said. “Or at least, just their diagnoses.”

The study also included allergy and autoimmune diagnoses, but none of those statistics were missing. Only the number of neurodevelopmental diagnoses differed between the original results and the corrected ones.

That suggests the authors didn’t make a random mistake, but intentionally fudged the number, Jablonowski said.

In hope of shedding light on what happened to the missing data, Jablonowski emailed the journal’s editors on July 18, asking them to publicize the comments between themselves and the anonymous scientists who peer-reviewed the study.

The inconsistencies in the study are specifically in “the figures in the main manuscript and the figures in the supplemental material,” Jablonowski wrote to the journal. “I believe the nature of those inconsistencies may be understood by examining the reviewer comments and subsequent exchanges.”

The journal editors have not responded.

‘Glaring signs’ Danish authors ‘didn’t practice good science’

The authors have not released the study’s raw data, citing Danish privacy law.

This frustrates independent scientists like Jablonowski, who said having access only to the data that the authors statistically adjusted makes it difficult to accurately critique the study, and impossible to replicate it.

Andersson did not respond when The Defender asked if the authors could share a de-identified version of the data that wouldn’t violate privacy law.

Jablonowski said:

“So if the raw data can’t be shared and Andersson is not going to reveal their unadjusted data, the appraisal of this paper is solely based on trust that the authors are practicing good science in good faith and they do not need to be scrutinized.”

But there are “glaring signs that the authors didn’t practice good science,” he said.

There were other inconsistencies between the original and corrected supplemental material. For instance, the corrected version shows different results in multiple places when tracking the prevalence of Asperger’s syndrome among kids.

The authors may have been more inclined to produce results that favored vaccination, given that they work at the Statens Serum Institut, a government agency responsible for procuring and supplying vaccines for the national vaccination.

Hviid reported funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which is directly linked to the pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk.

“The researchers are integrally involved in pushing vaccines and sweeping vaccine safety under the rug.”

Original study also riddled with flaws, critics say

Even before the corrected materials were added to the study, Hooker and Jablonowski noted a host of flaws.

For instance, the authors failed to mention there were increased risks of certain diseases for kids vaccinated with aluminum-containing vaccines, compared with kids who received no aluminum-containing vaccines.

Before Hviid went on summer break, he told The Defender in an email that his team didn’t include a control group of unvaccinated children who had no aluminum exposure because differences between unvaccinated and vaccinated children likely would have biased the results.

Instead, the team opted to compare groups of vaccinated children who were exposed to different amounts of aluminum, Hviid said.

Yet the study reported results for 15,237 children who were either unvaccinated or vaccinated only with a shot that contains no aluminum, such as the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The MMR vaccine used in Denmark has no aluminum, according to the authors.

That creates a cohort of children unvaccinated with an aluminum-containing shot, Jablonowski said.

Hooker and Jablonowski compared the outcomes of children who didn’t receive an aluminum-containing vaccine with the outcomes of children who received aluminum-containing vaccines.

“Kids who received an aluminum-containing vaccine were 26% more likely to have atopic dermatitis” than kids who were unvaccinated or only got the MMR shot, Jablonowski said. Those kids were “50% more likely to have allergic rhinoconjunctivitis — and these are really strong, statistically significant signals.”

Jablonowski said the study authors might criticize the analysis he and Hooker conducted for failing to consider possible confounding factors.

“I’d be happy to redo the analysis and account for possible confounding factors, but I’d need the authors to release sufficiently detailed data,” Jablonowski said.

Calls grow for journal to retract study

The findings in the corrected study still maintain the authors’ claim that aluminum-containing vaccinations are not associated with all 50 of the negative health outcomes they analyzed. In fact, their analysis claims protection against 12 categories of disease, including autism.

“These findings are not just counterintuitive — they are biologically absurd,” James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., wrote on Substack. “No plausible mechanism exists by which aluminum salts could prevent neurodevelopmental delay.”

Lyons-Weiler is the founder of IPAK-EDU, an adult online institution of higher learning run by the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge.

Lyons-Weiler and other critics are calling for the study’s retraction. He told The Defender the study’s “fatal methodological flaws … violate the principles of valid causal inference.”

Guillemette Crépeaux, Ph.D., associate professor at École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort, told The Defender that the Annals of Internal Medicine should never have accepted the study — especially with its incorrect supplementary data. “Retraction should be the bare minimum,” she said.

Guillemette said she and her colleagues are writing a rebuttal to the study. They plan to submit it for publication later this summer.

Chris Exley, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading experts on the health effects of aluminum exposure, told The Defender, “There is no question in my mind that the authors of this study used the data available to them to come to an afore determined conclusion.”

In 2020, Crépeaux and Exley co-authored an article in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology that called for “independent, rigorous and honest science” on aluminum in vaccines.

Exley said the authors of the Danish study should make the data they used available for independent scrutiny. He said:

“I understand that they have already refused such requests and the compliant journal publishing the study is not prepared to press them on this issue. Surprise, surprise.

“Hviid and his band of conspirators are only interested in pedaling nonsense and nonscience to what they and others … believe is a gullible public. I think we have news for them. The times are changing, at long last.”

Related articles in The Defender

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.

July 27, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Study Claiming No Link Between Aluminum in Vaccines and Autism Riddled with Flaws, Critics Say

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender  | July 17, 2025

Mainstream media widely promoted a new study by Danish researchers that found no link between aluminum in vaccines and 50 negative health outcomes, including autism, asthma and autoimmune disorders.

However, critics told The Defender the study used flawed methodology and “statistical tricks” that muddied the findings.

The authors published their report on July 15 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. On July 14, even before the study went live, mainstream and health industry media, including NBC News and STAT News, publicly announced the results.

Chris Exley, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading experts on the health effects of aluminum exposure, and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said that in order to determine if aluminum exposure is linked to health conditions, the researchers should have compared children with no aluminum exposure to children with aluminum exposure.

But that’s not what the Danish scientists did. Instead, they compared children who received vaccines containing aluminum to children who received vaccines with slightly less aluminum.

Not only that, but there was only a one-milligram difference between the amount of aluminum in the vaccine doses received by the children in one of the groups compared to those in another group. Comparing children with similar aluminum levels rather than comparing children with low levels of aluminum to children with high levels of the metal further muddled the findings, Hooker said.

The researchers examined national vaccination records of about 1.2 million children born in Denmark between 1997 and 2018 and tracked the rates of 50 chronic health conditions.

Using statistical analyses, the authors concluded there was no link between aluminum content in vaccines and increased risk of developing autism, autoimmune diseases, asthma or allergic conditions, including food allergies and hay fever.

Anders Hviid, a professor and department head of epidemiology at the Statens Serum Institut and lead study author, told MedPage Today, the results “provide robust evidence supporting the safety of childhood vaccines.”

“This is evidence that parents, clinicians, and public health officials need to make the best choices for the health of our children,” Hviid said.

In a press release, Hviid called the results “reassuring” and said large studies like his are important in “an era marked by widespread misinformation about vaccines.”

According to Hviid, the aluminum in vaccines is in the form of aluminum salts, “which is not the same as elemental aluminum which is a metal.” He told NBC News, “It’s really important for parents to understand that we are not injecting metal into children.”

Hviid justified the choice not to include a control group of children with no aluminum exposure by saying there are “very few” children who are “completely unvaccinated.”

The study came out just weeks after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. considered asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee to review vaccines containing aluminum ingredients, according to Reuters.

Aluminum-containing adjuvants are used in many vaccines to create a stronger immune response in the person receiving the shot, according to the CDC. Vaccines containing aluminum adjuvants include DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), HPV and pneumococcal.

Kennedy previously suggested that aluminum may be partially responsible for the rise in allergies among U.S. kids, according to The New York Times.

J.B. Handley, author of “How to End the Autism Epidemic,” said aluminum in vaccines may trigger autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders by activating the immune system in a way that alters the developing brain of a fetus or child.

This happens because the aluminum in vaccines travels easily to the brain. There, it can cause inflammation in vulnerable people by triggering the production of a key cytokine — interleukin 6 or IL-6 — a protein that affects the immune system. Elevated IL-6 has been linked to autism.

Is aluminum industry running scared?

The new Danish study affirms that aluminum is safe — a convenient narrative for the aluminum industry and one that has come under greater scrutiny since Kennedy became head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“I spent forty years of academic research on aluminium and I never really believed that I would see the day when the aluminium industry was running scared,” Exley wrote on Substack about the media response to the Danish study. “This is what is happening now.”

Exley said he suspects the aluminum industry influenced the Danish researchers. Hviid pushed back on the claim, telling The Defender he and his co-authors have no financial ties to the aluminum industry.

The study’s authors are employed by the Statens Serum Institut, which has a long history of developing vaccines, Hooker said. “The researchers are integrally involved in pushing vaccines and sweeping vaccine safety under the rug.”

Researchers excluded kids most likely to show early signs of aluminum-related injury

Failing to have a control group with no aluminum exposure was one of several criticisms leveled at the Danish study.

James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., wrote a lengthy Substack post detailing numerous methodological problems. He is president and CEO of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, an advocacy group that supports accuracy and integrity in science.

Lyons-Weiler said the study’s authors adjusted for children having aluminum-related chronic illness before 24 months, which meant they removed the kids most likely to show early signs of aluminum-related injury.

He explained how this was a “statistical trick”:

“Imagine studying the association between smoking and lung disease, adjusting for having nicotine-stained fingers, carrying a lighter, or frequency of coughing in the 24 months before lung cancer diagnosis.

“What you are doing, in effect, is mathematically erasing the very signal you are supposed to be detecting.”

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD’s senior research scientist, noted that over 34,000 children were excluded from the study because they received more than three of any one of the aluminum-containing vaccines before their second birthday. The study described this as an “implausible number of childhood vaccines.”

“Was this a documentation error or a medical error?” Jablonowski asked. “The group had the opportunity to investigate the health of these children and chose not to.”

Recommendations for aluminum-containing vaccines are higher in the U.S. than in Denmark. Before a child turns 2 years old, the U.S. Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule calls for four doses of DTaP, four doses of pneumococcal, three or four doses of Hib, three doses of hepatitis B and one dose of hepatitis A. Other vaccines that don’t contain aluminum are also recommended.

Researchers stopped following kids’ diagnoses at age 5

Hooker cited another flaw in the study: the authors tracked chronic disease diagnoses in children only from ages 2-5. It’s possible some of the kids were older than age 5 when they were diagnosed with a health condition, but by then, researchers were no longer tracking them.

“This is much too young for developmental and autoimmune diagnoses and will cause everything to move to the null hypothesis,” he said.

For example, the number of autistic kids in the study was only about 1 in 500, “which we know is much too low,” Hooker said. Denmark’s autism rate is over four times that amount, according to data from World Population Review.

Additionally, the researchers did nothing to ensure that the kids in the study were exposed to the amounts of aluminum that the authors assumed, based on the kids’ vaccination records.

“There were no biomarkers, no aluminum levels measured in serum, hair or tissue,” Lyons-Weiler told The Defender.

Prior research links aluminum to neurotoxicity, asthma

The results of the new Danish study stand in contrast to the findings of other researchers on aluminum’s negative health impacts, according to Lyons-Weiler.

“The literature contains multiple lines of evidence implicating aluminum adjuvants in neurotoxicity, immune dysregulation and developmental injury,” he said. “The consistency of these findings — across model systems, exposure levels and endpoints — demands attention, not erasure.”

In 2023, a federally funded U.S. study found a 36% higher risk of persistent asthma in children who received three or more milligrams of vaccine-related aluminum than kids who got less than three, but the study’s authors were careful not to suggest a causal relationship.

Exley said he hopes Kennedy will commission independent research that will provide “unequivocal” evidence on aluminum’s role in infant mortality and ill health.

Lyons-Weiler added, “The public deserves studies that test hypotheses honestly, not ones built to produce desired headlines.”

Related articles in The Defender

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.

July 19, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

EXPERTS CONCEDE ‘VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM’ IS NOT SUPPORTED BY SCIENCE

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | April 17, 2025

Jefferey Jaxen exposes the myth that the science on vaccines and autism is “settled.” Despite repeated claims, the CDC and FDA have failed to produce credible long-term studies proving vaccines don’t contribute to autism, while top experts admit under oath that no such studies exist.

April 21, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | 1 Comment

‘Genes Do Not Cause Epidemics’: Kennedy Lambastes Media for Denying Autism Epidemic, Vows to Research Environmental Triggers

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 16, 2025

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today criticized mainstream media for pushing the narrative that rising autism rates are just a result of better diagnosis.

“One of the things that I think we need to move away from today is this ideology that autism diagnosis, that the autism prevalence increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnosis, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said at his first press conference since taking office.

HHS called the press conference to share results of the latest study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on autism prevalence, published yesterday.

An estimated 1 in 31 (3.22%) 8-year-old children had an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 (2.8%) in 2020, the CDC said in its latest report from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM), which is published every two years.

Overall, the prevalence of autism in U.S. children rose approximately 17% between 2020 and 2022, continuing a decades-long trend.

The mainstream media responded in lockstep to yesterday’s report by denying that autism is an epidemic and doubling down on the argument that rising rates are simply the outcome of better diagnosis. The Washington Post called the 17% increase “small,” and The Hill labeled it a “slight” increase.

Kennedy responded today, saying the rate increases “are real,” and that each year there has been “a steady, relentless increase.” Kennedy said that while some people may be genetically predisposed to autism, it takes an environmental exposure to trigger the condition.

He added:

“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media, and it’s based on an industry canard. Obviously, there are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.”

Kennedy shared data from other previous studies on autism prevalence, including a 1987 study from North Dakota, in which researchers attempted to identify every child with autism in the state. In 1987, 330 out of every 1 million kids were diagnosed with autism. “Today there are 27,777 for every million,” he said.

“If you accept the epidemic denier’s narrative, you have to believe that researchers in North Dakota missed 98.8% of the children with autism,” Kennedy added. “Thousands of profoundly disabled children were somehow invisible to doctors, teachers and parents.”

“Doctors and therapists in the past were not stupid,” Kennedy added. “They weren’t missing all these cases.”

Kennedy also underscored that a high and growing percentage of children diagnosed with autism were severe cases. In a press release Tuesday, HHS outlined specific numbers:

“The increase in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prevalence cannot be solely attributed to the expansion of diagnoses to include higher functioning children. On the contrary, the percentage of ASD cases with higher IQs (> 85) has decreased steadily over the last six ADDM reports to 36.1% in the 2022 survey. Nearly two-thirds of children with ASD in the latest survey had either severe or borderline intellectual disability (ID).”

“So we know what the historic numbers are and we know what the numbers are today, and it’s time for everybody to stop attributing this to this ideology of epidemic denial,” Kennedy said today.

He called out the National Institutes of Health for spending 10 to 20 times more on research into genetic causes than into environmental ones, and pledged that under his leadership, that will change. He said HHS will make grants available to university scientists and others to research the environmental causes of autism.

“People will know they can research and they can follow the science no matter what it says, without any kind of fear that they’re going to be censored, that they’re going to be gaslighted, that they’re going to be silenced, or that they’re going to be delicensed.”

“This is a preventable disease,” Kennedy said. “We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics.”

One of the authors of the CDC study, and head researcher of the ADDM’s New Jersey site, Walter Zahorodny, Ph.D., from Rutgers Medical School, joined Kennedy at the press conference. Zahorodny said autism should be treated “as an urgent public health crisis.”

Zahorodny said:

“There is better awareness of autism, but better awareness of autism cannot be driving a disability like autism to increase by 300% in 20 years. That’s what we saw in New Jersey. That’s what the CDC report of yesterday indicates. And that’s what, in my opinion, future reports from epidemiologists will show.”

Zahorodny said a lot of data had been collected over 20 years, indicating that the “epidemic, tsunami, or a surge in autism” is significant. But no real progress had been made in understanding the environmental risk factors.

Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker told The Defender he was “very encouraged” by Kennedy’s response to the latest autism prevalence report.

“The magnitude of the autism epidemic is staggering and the ‘better diagnosing’ reasoning for the increase in prevalence is utter nonsense and has been debunked ad infinitum.”

“Secretary Kennedy has demonstrated his commitment to address this issue directly. I look forward to not only answers but real solutions on how to clean up the mess created by a prior HHS that couldn’t care less about autistic children and adults,” he added.

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.

April 17, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

CDC Will Study Possible Link Between Vaccines and Autism, Pledges to ‘Leave No Stone Unturned’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 10, 2025

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed it plans to study the possible link between vaccines and autism, after Reuters reported on the plan late Friday, citing two sources inside the agency.

In response to the Reuters story, the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided an identical statement:

“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.”

The revelation came days after President Donald Trump, in an address to Congress, referred to the rising rate of autism in the U.S. Trump, citing CDC data showing that 1 in 36 U.S. children have autism, said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is well suited to lead efforts to study the increase.

“There’s something wrong,” Trump said. “So, we’re going to find out what it is, and there’s nobody better than Bobby [Kennedy] and all of the people that are working with you.”

According to The Washington Post, Trump administration officials asked the CDC to perform the study. Newsweek reported that it is “unclear” whether Kennedy is involved in the new study. However, HHS oversees federal health agencies, including the CDC.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense (CHD) senior research scientist, applauded “the CDC’s newfound curiosity in vaccines and autism.” He said the U.S. “passed an inflection point” in the 1990s, where autism “went from being a rare disease to a more common one” that has been “increasing exponentially ever since.”

“When is an appropriate time to conduct a large study on vaccines and autism? Apparently, two generations later,” Jablonowski said.

Sayer Ji, chairman and co-founder of the Global Wellness Forum, called the news a “pivotal moment, not just in the scientific exploration of vaccine safety, but in the broader issue of public trust in our institutions.”

Ji said the CDC’s plan for a large-scale study “is an implicit admission that prior investigations may have been insufficient, biased or incomplete.” He said the new study “could represent a breakthrough moment” in “resolving this critical health question” and “restoring faith in the integrity of scientific inquiry itself.”

‘A seismic shift toward accountability’

According to the Post, the CDC will conduct the study using data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a database of patient health records. The Vaccine Safety Datalink draws on data from 13 U.S. healthcare organizations, CNN reported.

Biologist Christina Parks, Ph.D., said the study should examine the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule.

“The cumulative effect of giving multiple vaccines at once as well as over a short period of months has not been studied as a potential contributing factor to autism,” Parks said. “Vaccines have the potential to alter a child’s immune system in ways that are unexpected.”

Parks referred to studies performed in 1970 and 1987 that found autism rates of 0.7 and 3.3 children per 10,000, respectively. “If autism were as prevalent then as it is now, we should have a large number of older autistic adults, which we do not,” Parks said.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for CHD, suggested the CDC study should use an unvaccinated control group. Hooker cited his experience performing research using data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, noting that the database already contains data on unvaccinated children.

A 2021 study co-authored by Hooker found that vaccinated children were significantly more likely than unvaccinated children to be diagnosed with autism.

Ji said any CDC study examining a possible vaccine-autism link should reflect Kennedy’s recent calls for “gold-standard science.”

He said:

“It must be a true gold-standard study. The methodology must be rigorous, transparent and independent, with no industry or government interference. It should be a prospective, controlled, long-term study comparing fully unvaccinated and vaccinated populations.”

Hooker said the CDC has previously not made data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink available to the public, even though it is taxpayer-funded.

“We’ve never had access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink. We’ve never had access to such a gold-standard database, and that thing takes $50 million worth of tax dollars to maintain every year. It should be open to the public,” Hooker said.

Ji said many past vaccine safety studies were flawed due to a lack of transparency.

“Historically, vaccine safety studies have been marred by selective reporting, data manipulation and redacted findings. Kennedy has long advocated for open access to government data, and if this study follows through on that promise, it would be a seismic shift toward accountability,” Ji said.

Rise in autism cannot simply be attributed to ‘better diagnosis’

Reuters attributed the rise in autism rates to “more widespread screening and the inclusion of a broader range of behaviors to describe the condition.”

Research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., said such claims are “pure disinformation.”

“No rigorous study has shown that these factors are responsible,” Lyons-Weiler said.

“These criteria cannot explain the 7% increase in autism following the removal of vaccine exemptions from California, which has 1 in 22, the highest rate among all states,” Lyons-Weiler said.

Ji said that prior studies claiming to debunk the vaccine-autism link should be called into question, noting that many such studies “suffer from conflicts of interest, flawed methodologies and a lack of truly unvaccinated control groups.”

According to Hooker, many previous studies were flawed because they focused only on a limited number of vaccines and vaccine components.

“The CDC and most of the open peer-reviewed literature focuses on one vaccine and one vaccine component, the MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine and thimerosal” — a mercury-based preservative used in some vaccines. A 2013 study found a link between thimerosal exposure and the risk of an autism diagnosis.

Recent independently performed studies have indicated a connection between vaccines and autism.

A peer-reviewed study published in Science, Public Health Policy and the Law in January found that vaccinated children have a 170% higher chance of being diagnosed with autism compared to unvaccinated children. The study also found that the autism risk increases in children with a higher number of vaccinations.

A ‘new era of openness’

Reuters quoted Dr. Wilbur Chen, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and former member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, who suggested the CDC’s new study could fuel vaccine hesitancy.

“It sends the signal that there is something there that is worth investigating, so that means there must be something going on between vaccines and autism,” Chen said.

But other experts suggest that such statements conceal concerns that vaccines may not be as safe as frequently claimed.

“Americans and those who receive our vaccines overseas should be able to have confidence that American products, especially biologics that are injected into children, meet the highest safety standards,” Parks said. “By addressing parent concerns, the CDC can help to reestablish trust in its guidelines.”

“If the vaccines are safe, transparency should increase confidence, not the opposite,” Ji said. “If vaccines are as safe as claimed, then the data should confirm that and bolster confidence. The fear of ‘hesitancy’ suggests a deeper concern that the results may contradict the official narrative.”

Hooker said the new CDC study is representative of a “new era of openness” and will “encourage greater faith in our institutions and their recommendations regardless of where they fall.”

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.

March 16, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Why vaccines for children are Big Pharma’s holy grail – Part 1

This is the first article in a two-part report.

By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | October 18, 2023

James A Shannon, director of the US National Institutes of Health 1955-68, said: ‘No vaccination can be proven safe before it is given to children.’

When he made that statement, it was still possible in the US to sue vaccine manufacturers under tort law for vaccine-induced deaths and injuries, which is no longer the case.

Today the US has the world’s most aggressive vaccine schedule and ranks as the sickest country, with the highest infant mortality, in the developed world. The UK does not lag far behind.

Vaccines carry three separate areas of potential risk. Firstly, they artificially stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies, which temporarily inhibits another part of the body’s defence mechanism. In an infant, whose immune system is just developing, this high demand of energy can in some cases overwhelm its metabolic reserves, and cause brain inflammation. The brain is the highest energy-consuming tissue in the body, followed by the gastro-intestinal tract and the immune system.

Secondly, vaccines contain chemicals, metals and drugs. Thirdly, according to the former pharmaceutical R&D executive Sasha Latypova, traditional vaccines are consistently contaminated with plant and animal proteins which hyper-sensitise the body, especially in children, giving rise to allergies.

In the US in the 1970s there were three inoculations recommended for children: the combined diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough) (DTP), polio, and the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), introduced there in 1971. The DTP which was used in the US until 1992 contained the carcinogen formaldehyde. Both the DTP and the MMR contained the preservative thimerosal, which is almost 50 per cent mercury, and in infants can pass through the blood-brain barrier.

A wave of sudden infant deaths (SIDs), severe brain injuries, seizures and other neurological problems were linked through studies to the DTP. In 1977, a study published in the Lancet established that the risks of the whole-cell pertussis used in the DTP vaccine exceeded the risks associated with wild pertussis. Six years later, in 1983, a National Institutes of Health-funded study found that Wyeth’s DTP vaccine was killing or causing severe brain damage to 1 in 300 vaccinated children.

Lawsuits against the manufacturers shot up. In 1984, the president of pharmaceutical manufacturer Lederle declared that the dollar demand of DTP lawsuits against the company was 200 times greater than their total sales of DTP vaccine in 1983. Another vaccine manufacturer, Connaught Laboratories, had damages suits filed against it in 1985/6 amounting to a billion dollars. Wyeth, now Pfizer, faced a similar plight, and bankruptcy threatened the industry as insurers withdrew their indemnity cover.

The industry therefore lobbied Congress for a liability shield from damages, which led to the passing of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986, and the establishment of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) in 1988, administered by the US government through the Health and Human Services Department.

Parents of vaccine-injured children from 1988 were directed to apply to what is commonly referred to as the ‘Vaccine Court’ to present their cases. This was supposed to be a neutral forum where the adversarial nature of civil litigation was removed, their cases would be dealt with swiftly and compensation, where applicable, paid in a timely manner. The reality could not be more different, and how the ‘Vaccine Court’ actually operates will be described in Part 2.

Meanwhile, freed from any consequences and related costs of selling unsafe products, vaccine manufacturers wasted no time in creating new lucrative vaccines and lobbying Congress to include them in the Childhood Vaccine Schedule. That same year of 1988, Hepatitis B and the Hib vaccine, against haemophilus influenza type B, were introduced, both containing mercury-laden thimerosal. In The Real Anthony Fauci, Robert F Kennedy Jr writes that more than 450 studies attested to thimerosal’s devastating toxicity, and because testosterone amplifies the neurotoxicity of the mercury molecule, boys were disproportionately affected.

Cases of autism, ADHD, speech delay, and other neurological conditions soared, in direct parallel with the fast-expanding vaccine schedule. In 1986 autism cases in the US were approximately 1 in 2,500. By 2017 they had jumped to 1 in 36. From the three recommended vaccines in 1986, by 2017 the schedule had risen to 69 doses of 16 vaccines.

Not one paediatric vaccine has ever been tested for safety against a genuine placebo. In 2017 TV producer Del Bigtree asked the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) how it justified licensing any paediatric vaccine without first conducting a long-term clinical trial in which the rate of adverse reactions in the subject group was compared with a control group receiving an inert placebo. In January 2018 the HHS replied: ‘Inert placebo controls are not required to understand the safety profile of a new vaccine.’ 

If randomised control trials (RCTs), the so-called gold standard of safety testing, are kicked aside, how can any conclusions reached on the safety profile of a product be scientifically valid?

There are, however, real-life comparison studies between cohorts of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

As reported by RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense, for years American paediatrician Paul Thomas, now retired, witnessed healthy 12-month-olds regress into severe autism following the MMR vaccination, so in 2010 he devised a new, bespoke approach to the vaccination of children in his practice Integrative Pediatric.  He offered parents a comprehensive discussion and autonomy over whether to vaccinate their children as per the US schedule, selectively vaccinate them, with longer intervals between shots, or not vaccinate them at all.

As reported in TCW yesterday, he and colleague James Lyons-Weiler PhD studied the health outcomes of the children over almost ten years, and in 2020 published the results in a groundbreaking paper which showed unequivocally that unvaccinated children enjoy better health than vaccinated children. The results showed a dramatic reduction of cases of ADHD and autism. They were almost entirely absent in the unvaccinated cohort, and greatly reduced in the partially vaccinated cohort. The same applied to anaemia, asthma, allergies, dermatitis, eczema, ear and eye infections and sinusitis.

In a recent discussion with Paul Thomas, the mother of an autistic son explained that he had been developing normally until he received the MMR vaccine, when his temperature shot up, he came out in an appalling rash, and screamed incessantly while hitting his head against the wall. She said she kept telephoning her paediatrician, who said it was ‘normal’.

Dr Thomas explained that when paediatricians say it is ‘normal’, what they mean is it is ‘common’. Many in the medical profession have become so blinded by dogma that they see frequency as indicating normality and cease to recognise what is profoundly abnormal.

That one vaccine-generation child in two graduates from high school in the US taking medication for a chronic condition should be regarded as both highly abnormal and an indictment of US public health policy.

How this has been allowed is, at least in part, down to the corrupted working of the US Vaccine Court, and the total protection from liability this gives to Big Pharma and its profit driven vaccine enterprise, and I will discuss this in Part 2.

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

10 Years After HHS Asked CDC to Study Safety of Childhood Vaccine Schedule, CDC Hasn’t Produced It

By Brian Hooker, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 21, 2023

In 2013, the National Vaccine Program Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commissioned an update of earlier findings on the lack of evidence to support claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) infant/child vaccination schedule was safe.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee, charged with producing the update, found that “few studies have comprehensively assessed the association between the entire immunization schedule or variations in the overall schedule and categories of health outcomes, and no study has directly examined health outcomes and stakeholder concerns in precisely the way that the committee was charged to address in its statement of task.”

According to the IOM committee, “studies designed to examine the long-term effects of the cumulative number of vaccines or other aspects of the immunization schedule have not been conducted.”

The lack of information on the overall safety of the vaccination schedule was so compelling that the committee then recommended HHS incorporate the study of the safety of the overall childhood immunization schedule into its processes for setting priorities for research, “recognizing stakeholder concerns, and establishing the priorities on the basis of epidemiological evidence, biological plausibility, and feasibility.”

The IOM also recommended the CDC use its private database, the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), to study the overall health effects of the vaccination schedule using retrospective analyses.

Ten years later, the CDC has yet to do such a comparison study, even though it is sitting on a vast repository of data in the VSD, which include comprehensive medical records for more than 10 million individuals and 2 million children.

The VSD also contains records for a significant number of unvaccinated children, yet the CDC refuses to compare the health outcomes of vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children.

The CDC also prohibits VSD outside researchers from accessing the VSD data so they can do the studies.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the researchers who had VSD access as I worked with Dr. Mark R. Geier and his son, David Geier, on a series of studies on thimerosal-containing vaccines in the early 2010s.

However, the CDC subsequently revoked the Geiers’ access because one of the health maintenance organizations (HMO) participating in the VSD project did not like the results the Geiers were obtaining, tying thimerosal exposure to a variety of childhood chronic disorders including autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), birth defects, acute ethylmercury poisoning, fetal/infant/childhood death, premature puberty, emotional disturbance, tic disorder and developmental delays.

In Chapter 2 of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and I present the very few studies completed on the entire infant/child vaccination schedule, including the groundbreaking study, “Pilot Comparative Study on the Health of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated 6- to 12-Year-Old U.S. Children,” by Anthony Mawson, doctor in public health.

Mawson and his co-authors studied fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated home-schooled children for both infectious and chronic disease incidence.

Not only were chronic diseases more prominent in fully and partially vaccinated children — where the incidence of these diseases ranged from 30 times higher for allergic rhinitis to 3.7 times for neurodevelopmental disorders — but there also was a higher prevalence of infectious diseases like pneumonia and ear infections in vaccinated children.

In a separate 2017 study, “Preterm Birth, Vaccination and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: a Cross-Sectional Study of 6- to 12-Year-Old Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children,” Mawson et al. also found that the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders among vaccinated children was compounded by low birth weight.

Low birth weight, vaccinated children were 14.5 times more likely to get a diagnosis compared to unvaccinated, normal birth weight children.

I also completed two studies with Neil Z. Miller on vaccinated versus unvaccinated children using medical records from six separate pediatric practices.

Our first study, “Analysis of Health Outcomes in Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children: Developmental Delays, Asthma, Ear Infections and Gastrointestinal Disorders,” published in 2020, focused on vaccines administered during the first year of life and specific diagnoses occurring after the first birthday.

Those children who received one or more vaccines during their first year of life were 2.2 times more likely to be diagnosed with a developmental delay, 4.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with asthma and 2.1 times more likely to suffer from ear infections when compared to unvaccinated children.

In our second study, “Health Effects in Vaccinated versus Unvaccinated Children, with Covariates for Breastfeeding Status and Type of Birth,” published in 2021, we compared fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated children for incidence of autism, ADHD, asthma, chronic ear infections, severe allergies and gastrointestinal disorders.

Most notably, fully vaccinated children were 5 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism, 17.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with asthma, 20.8 times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and 27.8 times more likely to be diagnosed with chronic ear infections compared to completely unvaccinated children.

In a separate analysis within this same study, we changed the statistical model to reflect breastfeeding status and type of birth (normal or Cesarean). Breastfed unvaccinated children fared much better than non-breastfed vaccinated children when comparing the incidence of autism, asthma, ADHD, gastrointestinal disorders, severe allergies and chronic ear infections.

We obtained similar results when investigating the type of birth and vaccination status.

James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., and Dr. Paul Thomas also published a study in 2021, “Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses Along the Axis of Vaccination,” investigating children in Thomas’ Portland, Oregon, pediatric practice.

This study compared the relative incidence of office visits for different disorders between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Lyons-Weiler and Thomas found significant increases in office visits among vaccinated children for fever, ear infections, conjunctivitis, asthma, breathing issues, anemia, eczema, behavioral issues, gastroenteritis, weight/eating disorders and respiratory infections.

Notably, there were no ADHD diagnoses among unvaccinated children, whereas the rate of diagnosis among vaccinated children was 5.3%.

Unfortunately, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health retracted the study on the basis of a lone, anonymous complaint. Lyons-Weiler and Thomas were not allowed to rebut the complainant’s concerns regarding the healthcare-seeking behavior of families of unvaccinated children.

However, Lyons-Weiler fired back with Dr. Russell Blaylock in their 2022 paper, “Revisiting Excess Diagnoses of Illnesses and Conditions in Children Whose Parents Provided Informed Permission to Vaccinate Them,” published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research — an article in which the authors definitively showed that vaccinated children tended to visit their pediatrician more not less than unvaccinated children, which affirmed their original analysis.

Chapter 2 of “Vax-Unvax” also highlights the 2022 study, “Association Between Aluminum Exposure From Vaccines Before Age 24 Months and Persistent Asthma at Age 24 to 59 Months,” by CDC scientists who used the VSD to calculate the level of aluminum exposure in infant vaccines administered up to 2 years of age.

The authors compared the health outcomes of children exposed to more than 3 milligrams of aluminum in their vaccines versus those exposed to less than 3 milligrams of aluminum.

Although this was not a true “vax-unvax” study as there was no unvaccinated control group (the CDC never includes one, unfortunately), Kennedy and I decided to include it in the book because of the study’s alarming findings.

The study authors found that children exposed to higher levels of aluminum were 1.36 times as likely to be diagnosed with persistent asthma prior to their 5th birthday.

Children diagnosed with eczema and exposed to the higher level of aluminum fared even worse and were 1.61 times as likely to be diagnosed with persistent asthma prior to their 5th birthday.

Each of these results was statistically significant, leading us to wonder what the risk of asthma would have been if the CDC had chosen to compare vaccinated children exposed to aluminum to an unvaccinated cohort of children.

“Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak” will be released Aug. 29 and is available for preorder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., is senior director of science and research at Children’s Health Defense and professor emeritus of biology at Simpson University in Redding, California.

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.

August 22, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Age of Autism: Group Gives Award to Author They Knew Had Lied in his Book

Minnesota Book Award Goes To Error Laden Entry: With Committee Knowledge

Age of Autism Editor’s Note: You know when an author writes about Thimerosal and MMR in the same sentence that he or she has no grasp whatsoever on the autism/vaccine issue and is merely spouting from other uneducated sources.

By Patti Carroll – Age of Autism – April 18, 2012

The results of the 24th Annual Minnesota Book Awards were announced last night at a gala celebration in downtown St. Paul. The Minnesota Book Awards have been coordinated by a group called The Friends of the St. Paul Public Library for the past few years, and are intended “to showcase the tremendous literary talent and output of our state.”

However, a stain has been cast on The Friends of the St. Paul Public Library after a book called “Fool Me Twice – Fighting the Assault on Science in America” was given an award in the General Nonfiction category. The award is tainted by the fact that not only did the author blatantly lie in this supposed “nonfiction” work, but the coordinators of the event were aware of this fact well in advance of the awards ceremony.

I first heard of this book when my local community newspaper published a glowing, half page review of it back in December. It caught my eye because the review claimed that this local author had identified potentially harmful myths, including vaccines cause autism. I checked the book out of the library a few weeks later, and was outraged when I read the small section on vaccine refusal. Even though this topic was listed in the review and on the book jacket itself as one of the main “myths” the author covered, there were only a few pages in the book that even touched on the subject. And the coverage was downright insulting to one who had actually lived through most of what the author was writing about.

I called Ann Nelson, the coordinator of the book awards, in mid-February to notify her that there were several factual errors in this book.  During a rather strange conversation, she told me that there are many different opinions on this topic – to which I calmly replied “Yes, but this is not a book that was nominated in an “opinion” category, this is supposed to be factual”. She then said that they do not really concern themselves with content in the books they consider for awards, but rather writing style and general appeal. “What?” I said, “How can you not consider content in a NON-FICTION book?” She then went on to say that she had never heard of a nominated book that was pulled from consideration for an award, and that there was no process in place to do this. But I continued to appeal to her, listing some of the blatant errors. She seemed concerned, and asked me to put something in writing for her and Alayne Hopkins, the director of the book awards.

Here is what I sent to them two weeks later:

February 29, 2012

To: Ann Nelson

Friends of the St. Paul Library Book Awards

325 Cedar Street

St. Paul, MN 55101

From: Patti Carroll

Consumer Safety Advocate

Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota

6031 Culligan Way

Minnetonka, MN 55345

Dear Ms. Nelson –

I am following up on our recent phone conversation during which we discussed the fact that a book titled “Fool Me Twice” – by Shawn Lawrence Otto is being considered for a Minnesota Book Award under the general nonfiction category.

The sub-title of the book is “Fighting the Assault on Science in America” – and among the topics the book claims to cover is vaccine refusal. As a parent of a child with vaccine-induced autism, and knowing dozens of others, I have been studying this issue and reading the science pertaining to it for nearly a decade. When I read the portion of the book concerning vaccines, it was evident that Mr. Otto has attempted to re-write the recent history of vaccine refusal into a few tidy paragraphs to support what appears to be a strong bias.

The book contains several bizarre and blatantly untrue statements, and the author makes many broad generalizations on this topic – but includes little “science” to back up his inaccurate and defamatory claims.

There are far too many fallacies to list them all in this memo, but I would like to bring your  attention to just a few.

Page 152 – “The MMR vaccine contained thimerosal”

This is a stunning statement to read in a book that purports to be about “Fighting the Assault on Science” – as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of science would know that a mercury-based compound could never be used in a vaccine that contains live viruses, such as the MMR vaccine. The mercury would immediately kill the viruses. The MMR vaccine has NEVER contained thimerosal.

Page 152 – Dr. Andrew Wakefield “doctored his evidence to fit his a priori conclusion” in his paper published in the Lancet in 1998, and the paper has been discredited as “fraudulent”

I was shocked to read a published book that contains such pure hearsay. Not only has Dr. Wakefield never been convicted of doctoring evidence or committing fraud, he has never even been charged with these things. Mr. Otto appears to have taken his “facts” straight from tabloid headlines. Dr. Wakefield has filed a defamation lawsuit against the British Medical Journal for printing the false allegations that Mr. Otto is parroting in his book. If you follow the link in Otto’s footnote, you will see it leads to an article that accuses Wakefield of fraud – with absolutely no proof, and certainly no such charges or convictions.

General theme throughout this section – Vaccines do not cause autism

Four years ago, former CDC head Julie Gerberding admitted that vaccines can indeed cause autism, and last year it was revealed that the U.S. government has been aware of this fact for some time. There are many cases of vaccine-induced autism that have been successful in proving their cases in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, including Poling, Banks, Freeman, and others.  Interestingly, Otto bemoans the “Crisis in American Journalism”- where he claims “serious journalism is being forced into small outlets on the web, many of them non-profit.”  But on the topic of vaccine-induced autism, Otto appears to have violated his own standards by merely copying mainstream media headlines or someone else’s work. Had he done some firsthand investigating on this topic, he would have discovered that among confirmed NVICP cases (those being compensated by the U.S. government for their vaccine-induced brain damage), the rate of autism is one in about every two cases. And since the NVICP’s inception in 1986, there have been over 1300 such cases settled.

Page 153 – Regarding mercury in the form of thimerosal, Mr. Otto states “despite there being no scientific evidence of negative health effects…”

It is absolutely absurd that anyone would make such a ridiculous statement, especially one who claims to be a supporter of “science”. There are hundreds of peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the toxicity of mercury, and the serious issues it can cause – including death. Surprisingly, the link at footnote 17 takes the reader to the FDA website, where the following statement is found:

“Several cases of acute mercury poisoning from thimerosal-containing products were found in the medical literature with total doses of thimerosal ranging from approximately 3 mg/kg to several hundred mg/kg. These reports included the administration of immune globulin (gamma globulin) (Matheson et al. 1980) and hepatitis B immune globulin (Lowell et al. 1996), choramphenicol formulated with 1000 times the proper dose of thimerosal as a preservative (Axton 1972), thimerosal ear irrigation in a child with tympanostomy tubes (Rohyans et al. 1994), thimerosal treatment of omphaloceles in infants (Fagan et al. 1977), and a suicide attempt with thimerosal (Pfab et al. 1996). These studies reported local necrosis, acute hemolysis, disseminated intravascular coagulation, acute renal tubular necrosis, and central nervous system injury including obtundation, coma, and death. (IOM)”

 In his haste to make his point, Mr. Otto apparently did not read through his references in their entirety.

Page 153 – “Thimerosal had been removed from vaccines in 2001”

A quick check of the current vaccine schedule will show that thimerosal is still in several vaccines at what is called a “trace” level (and it should be noted that there is no safe level of thimerosal established by the FDA). It is also in the majority of influenza vaccines routinely administered to pregnant women and infants as young as six months old. Vaccine manufacturers were never required to remove thimerosal from vaccines.

Page 154 – In reference to Dr. Wakefield coming to Minnesota to meet with Somali autism parents, Otto quotes a gentleman named Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed as saying (regarding Wakefield), “ He’s using a vulnerable population here, mothers looking for answers. He’s providing a fake hope.”

Interestingly, Dr. Mohamed was not at any of the meetings between Somali parents and Dr. Wakefield.  As one of the organizers of these events, I can attest that it was the Somali parents who implored Dr. Wakefield to come and meet with them.  Dr. Mohamed infers that Dr. Wakefield sought out and “used” the Somali parents, when in fact – it was quite the opposite. When you follow the link in Otto’s footnotes, again you will find that he has merely referenced someone else’s article – an article also written by someone who was not even present at the meetings. If Mr. Otto truly wanted to get to the crux of the matter, he would have interviewed Dr. Wakefield, some of the Somali parents who were present at these meetings, or one of the meeting hosts.

These are only a few of the false claims I discovered in this book – and I only read the few pages devoted to vaccines. When people begin to read this recently-published work and realize the poor quality of the coverage on vaccines, it will no doubt reflect poorly on the judges of the Minnesota Book Awards if they have rewarded this author with a prize. I have included several links and two documents to support my arguments, and will gladly provide further backup for you, if needed. It is unfortunate that the author of this “nonfiction” book was unable to provide such meticulous corroboration for what he published.

Otto’s book jacket states – “Whenever the people are well- informed,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “they can be trusted with their own government.” But what happens if the people aren’t well informed?

Sadly, the author of “Fool Me Twice” has either been “fooled” himself or is deliberately trying to keep people from being well-informed on the extremely important topic of vaccine safety.  Either way, I respectfully request that this book be removed from contention for the Minnesota Book Awards.

Sincerely,

Patti Carroll – Board Member

Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota

cc.  Alayne Hopkins

Book Awards Director

Attachments:

Banks vs. HHS

Freeman vs. HHS

References:

FDA: Thimerosal in Vaccines

http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t1

Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s recently filed defamation lawsuit against UK reporter and the BMJ

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/04/BritMedJ.pdf

“CDC Chief Admits that Vaccines Trigger Autism”

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviews former CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding, now working for Merck Vaccines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-nkD5LSIg

Vaccine Autism Case Gets US Government Compensation 07 Mar 2008

“Hannah’s father, neurologist Dr Jon Poling who practiced in Athens, Georgia, told the press on Thursday that he and his wife, Terry, a registered nurse and former trial attorney, were ‘very pleased’ with the decision, reported CNN.”

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/99826.php

SafeMinds Research Database: Vaccine Mercury Toxicity Studies

http://www.safeminds.org/research-database/

Vaccine Mercury Toxicity Studies

Compiled by mercury researcher Boyd E. Haley, PhD

Former chair, Chemistry Department, University of Kentucky

Toxicity of Thimerosal: An Organic Mercurial Added To Vaccines

http://www.iaomt.org/testfoundation/thimerosal.htm

Thimerosal Toxicity Slide Show

http://www.iaomt.org/testfoundation/thimtox.htm

Selected Studies on the Toxicity of Thimerosal Published in Peer Reviewed Scientific and Medical Journals

A. Toxic Effects of Thimerosal on Vital Mammalian Enzymes

B. Chromosomal Aberrations Induced by Thimerosal Exposure

C. Disruption of Calcium Homeostasis by Thimerosal

D. Allergic Responses to Thimerosal in Vaccines and Opthalmics

E. Thimerosal Exposure from Vaccines

http://www.iaomt.org/testfoundation/thimstudys.htm

SafeMinds Launches Mercury-Free Pregnancy Campaign

December 2011

“For the 2011-2012 flu season, approximately 53% of the flu vaccine supply still contains mercury in the form of thimerosal.”

http://safeminds.org/news/mercury-free-pregnancy-campaign.html

Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury

Mary Holland Esq., NYU School of Law; Louis Conte; Robert Krakow, Esq.; Lisa Colin

Pace Environmental Law Review

Volume 28, Issue 2 Winter 2011, Article 6: 5-10-2011

http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1681&context=pelr

Measles, Minneapolis and Somali Kids

By Abdulkadir Khalif

March 28, 2011

“We, the Somali parents of Minnesota have taken upon ourselves to invite caring scientists to help us unravel the mysteries of autism. The CDC woke up from the deep slumber afterwards and is now scrambling to scuttle that process by initiating yet another research to confirm prevalence. Their aim is to put a stop to this perennial Somali story by ‘scientifically’ disproving prevalence.”

http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/03/measles-minneapolis-and-somali-kids.html

After giving the awards group an opportunity to review the references I provided and compare them to the footnotes provided in the book, I called and spoke to Alayne Hopkins, the book awards director. She had received the letter and backup. (I actually printed out the case decision summaries for Banks and Freeman, and sent those along with the memo) In what turned out to be another strange conversation, I listened to this woman say that the judges look only at the book, not the facts – even in a nonfiction category. When I asked what the judges thought after reading my memo, she told me that they did not pass this information on to the judges, and stated that their rules dictate that they take the publisher’s information as factual. I wondered why they had even asked me to document my objections. Like Ms. Nelson, she hemmed and hawed quite a bit, talked about differing “opinions”, and eventually confirmed that they would not remove the book from contention. She said this was really an issue between me and the author and the publisher, and that I should take it up with them, to which I replied that I had planned to, but wanted first to save her organization some embarrassment.

She tried to pacify me by saying that publishers often make corrections on subsequent printings, and that she had passed my memo and contact information on to the author and publisher.  She then said that “Shawn” (I guess they’re on a first-name basis) would love to talk to me. But when I asked for his contact information, she would only give me a generic website for him.  I decided to wait and see – if he would really “love” to talk to me, he has my number. I’m still waiting for that call.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by the amount of ignorance and misinformation that is spread every day on the topic of vaccine-induced autism. But I can’t help but be amazed at the blazing speed in which:

  • A pharma-funded medical journal prints an opinion piece that alleges fraud
  • Some guy writes a book repeating that opinion  but claims it’s a fact
  • A publisher prints and distributes the “nonfiction” book without fact-checking the claim
  • A group supposedly dedicated to excellence in writing gives this book an award knowing it contains false information

All in the course of 15 months. Wow.

I would like to think that the judges and sponsors of this event will be shocked to learn that they were never given an opportunity to review important information before they gave this book an award. But after over a decade in the trenches I am losing faith in humanity. Regardless of whether these people just didn’t want to “make waves”, they have done more damage than any of us will ever know. Each person who knowingly gives a pass to dishonest reporting on the dangers of vaccines is an equal partner in harming more of our innocent children.

Shame on them all.

November 29, 2015 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment