Table of Contents
Introduction
“Vaccines do not cause autism.” That is what we are continually told by government health officials, the mainstream media, and the pharma-centric medical establishment. It is the official position of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The idea that vaccines can cause autism is just misinformation spread by “anti-vaxxers”, we are told; it is a claim that has been repeatedly debunked by scientific research.
But has it?
Many parents take offense at the derogatory label “anti-vaxxer” being slung at them since they did vaccinate their children only to witness them being injured and, in some cases, developmentally regressing into autism. The concern that many parents have today is that vaccinating children according to the CDC’s routine childhood schedule can contribute to the development of autism in children with a genetic or environmentally caused susceptibility.
To state that “vaccines do not cause autism” is to claim that scientific research has falsified that hypothesis. But that is simply untrue. It is biologically plausible and has not been falsified by the scientific research conducted to date. This can be demonstrated by examining the CDC’s own cited sources.
The mainstream media, for their part, uncritically parrot the official position of the so-called “public health” establishment, thus serving to propagate official disinformation under the false pretext of combatting “misinformation” from “anti-vaxxers”.
One illustrative example of this that I’ve recently encountered is a CNET article by science editor Jackson Ryan titled “Meta Trained an AI on 48M Science Papers. It Was Shut Down After 2 Days”. The article, published on November 20, 2022, is about a search engine for the scientific literature built by Meta (formerly Facebook) that uses artificial intelligence to “summarize areas of research, solve math problems and write scientific code.” A demo launch of the tool, called Galactica, was deemed a failure due to it spewing gibberish answers to questions. To illustrate, CNET provides the following example:
Almost as soon as it hit the web, users questioned Galactica with all sorts of hardball scientific questions. One user asked “Do vaccines cause autism?” Galactica responded with a garbled, nonsensical response: “To explain, the answer is no. Vaccines do not cause autism. The answer is yes. Vaccines do cause autism. The answer is no.” (For the record, vaccines don't cause autism.)
Ryan thus claims that studies have falsified the hypothesis. But is that so? He provides four sources to support that contention, so we can simply click those links to examine the sources and see if we find any studies that were actually designed to test the hypothesis. The result of this exercise illuminates how the claim that the hypothesis has been falsified is government-sanctioned disinformation propagated for the purpose of manufacturing consent for the CDC’s policy aim of achieving high vaccine uptake.
🔓Continue reading with a FREE or premium membership.
Log in below or choose your membership.
So the solution is what – a randomized trial where half the children go completely unvaccinated and half receive the entire CDC recommended schedule? How do you imagine that would get through an IRB? And assuming you could would you start a new trial every time the CDC recommended schedule is changed?
I think a randomized trial is practically feasible, just not politically feasible. The objection to it, again, is premised on the fallacy of begging the question. I think if this were done, the results would render moot the necessity of having to repeat it if the CDC were to further expand its schedule. However, short of that, as I also discussed, observational studies could be done.
A completely unvaccinated control group is not politically unfeasible – it’s ethically unfeasible. That’s why it would never get approved by an IRB. But if you did this as an observational study where would you find a control group? Where would you find funding and authors with zero potential conflicts of interest?
Your fallacy is begging the question, as I have already pointed out to you in the article.
Why are you insisting that the study must be a randomized clinical trial? Yes that would be preferred, but it is possible to do retrospective cohort studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children. There are plenty of unvaccinated children, and yes this makes things more difficult because there are bound to be other differences with these children that can confound the results. There will be no perfect study on this, but there have been some very good pilot studies which have all come up with very similar fundings:
Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12- year old U.S. children
http://oatext.com/pdf/JTS-3-186.pdf
Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2050312120925344
“Vaccination before 1 year of age was associated with increased odds of developmental delays (OR = 2.18, 95% CI 1.47–3.24), asthma (OR = 4.49, 95% CI 2.04–9.88) and ear infections (OR = 2.13, 95% CI 1.63–2.78).”
Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses Along the Axis of Vaccination
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8674
https://informedchoicewa.org/news/its-here-the-vaxxed-vs-unvaxxed-study/
David,
I literally didn’t. On the contrary, as I said in my reply to you yesterday, “However, short of that, as I also discussed, observational studies could be done.” Also, you present these observational studies comparing health outcomes in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children as though I was unaware of these or ignoring these, when in fact there is a whole section of my article acknowledging this body of research:
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2022/12/12/why-the-claim-vaccines-dont-cause-autism-is-disinformation/#Studies_Find_That_Unvaccinated_Children_Are_Healthier
So, as far as I can see, you and I have no disagreement.
I mean if you like retracted studies…
If you are referring to the Lyons-Weiler/Thomas study, it’s a good study that was retracted without any rational basis, obviously politically motivated censorship of findings that threaten the “public health” establishment:
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2022/10/06/breakthrough-study-shows-unvaccinated-children-are-healthier/
Mawson was also retracted and still isn’t on PubMed although it’s somehow online. Hooker and Miller have quite a history too. But I’m sure it’s all political.
My observation that the findings of the Lyons-Weiler & Thomas study stand stands.
The International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research is an antivax pay to publish rag. Look at the editorial board. Look at what they print. Why aren’t they on PubMed either?
My observation that the findings of the Lyons-Weiler & Thomas study stand stands. You are presenting no argument.
You’re saying a subsequent Lyons-Weiler study validates his retracted study even though it was only published in an online “journal” with him on the editorial board. Ok.
You are trolling. If you think there is some flaw in the study that warrants its retraction, you are welcome to point it out. Otherwise, it is sufficient for me to observe that you’ve got nothing.
OK, it’s a study by a known antivax researcher and an antivax pediatrician. The study was funded by the lead author’s antivax IPAK organization. The database is the antivax pediatrician’s own patient records, mined by their own people from said antivax IPAK organization. And they’re using RIOVs to make their argument when RIOVs haven’t been validated. For starters.
You are engaging in ad hominem argumentation rather than identifying any flaws in the study. As for their use of RIOV, the statement that this measure hasn’t been “validated” is meaningless. You simply are not identifying any justification for the paper’s retraction.
Where else has RIOV ever even been used before?
You know that Relative Incidence of Office Visits is a new measure that they created for this study. And why shouldn’t scientists innovate this way? What is wrong with RIOV as a measure? It makes sense. You have got nothing, and you are trolling. Please cease trolling.
Innovation or p-hacking? Or innovative p-hacking? Let’s just make up new metrics until something sticks. Luckily the editors ultimately understood.
The editors provided no reason for the retraction, and the answer to your question is “innovation”. It makes perfect sense to consider incidence of office visits for a condition as opposed to merely considering incidence of diagnoses. You are not providing any reason why this is not a valid and sensible approach. The fact that this had never been done before does not invalidate this alternative measure. Additionally, they also used the traditional measure of incidence of diagnoses with odds ratios and still found significant results.
Again, you are trolling, which behavior is forbidden under the terms of use of the comments section of this website. Stop trolling.
Does trolling pay good money? Per post? How does it work? I’m keen, you’re so persistent I’m guessing it pays well……
My opinion is the government would lose too much revenue if kids weren’t vaccinated.
So Simple
Excellent information. One comparative study could be with the Amish who don’t vaccinate and don’t suffer from autism, allergies etc.
Yes, that would be an interesting study.