A Few Facts on a Possible Link Between Autism and Childhood Vaccines

Anyone that says that it is proven that no link exists between vaccine injury and autism is either intentionally lying or ill-informed. This statement is based on two irrefutable facts:

The Unanswered Questions Study published in 2011 which confirmed the ‘Vaccine Court’ compensated at least 83 families for vaccine-induced brain injury that resulted in autism or autism-like symptoms. These cases go back to the very beginning of the compensation program around 1990. https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1681&context=pelr
The ‘Vaccine Court’ settled the case of Hannah Poling: “In its November 2007 decision the vaccine court said that the inoculations Poling received in July 2000 worsened her underlying mitochondrial disorder (which was discovered nearly a year later) and led to brain disease that appeared as symptoms of autism.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccine-injury-case-offer/ Its its important to keep in mind that while in the general population the mitochondrial disorder Hannah lives with is considered somewhat rare, in the autism community it is about 1 in 5, not rare at all.

They Cannot Pay without Evidence of Injury

Keep in mind that the ‘Vaccine Court’ i.e. the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a federally managed compensation program (read the Unanswered questions paper for the details and history) which is funded through an excise tax on vaccines. The managers of this program at HHS, DOJ and the Federal Court of Claims all have an ethical duty to only compensate the injured. If there was not sufficient evidence to support the claim, the government will not/cannot settle. While in my opinion the program has many problems (that need Congressional attention), paying out a claim that is not supported with evidence is not one of them.

Finger Pointing Media (government and medical personnel) have 3 Fingers Pointing Back

The misinformation campaign on the vaccine-autism debate is not from the parents of the injured, or from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. it is from anyone who tells you otherwise. For 20 plus years media outlets, government officials, and medical professionals have pointed fingers at anyone like autism moms, Congressman Burton, and people like Mr. Kennedy who dared speak up about the link between vaccines and autism and said that it was a ‘conspiracy theory’ or ‘misinformation’ or ‘unproven’. For over two decades, as soon as someone calls into question the data on vaccine safety, they are bullied with disparaging labels such as ‘anti-vax’ or ‘anti-vaccine’. It is in fact those pointing fingers and name calling that are the ones providing misinformation.

The truth is that name calling, the censoring is not helping anyone. In fact the data show it is hurting millions who will be at increased risk of preventable brain injury. The censorship has suppressed scientific rigor, the studies to investigate who is at higher risk for injury are not being conducted.

At the end of the day, its the children that matter, and none of the name calling, censoring and bullying is fixing the epidemic of autism. As the staff lead on the initial congressional inquiry into this topic that was launched over 20 years ago, I have first hand exposure to the data, actions, and debates. In fact, after leaving my government position, I stayed involved directly for many years in freedom of information inquiries and reviews. I have seen first hand the numerous attempts to shut down any discussion that might undermine vaccine policy. If you have a fire in your basement and you refuse to acknowledge it is there, does the fire go out on its own? Not likely. That is what is happening with our nation’s children – the refusal to acknowledge the injury is not going to make the injured be less injured; or to prevent future injuries.

Just as the CDC admits below, autism has many causes – including genetic.

What is Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides this description:

“Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability caused by differences in the brain. Some people with ASD have a known difference, such as a genetic condition. Other causes are not yet known. Scientists believe there are multiple causes of ASD that act together to change the most common ways people develop. We still have much to learn about these causes and how they impact people with ASD.

People with ASD may behave, communicate, interact, and learn in ways that are different from most other people. There is often nothing about how they look that sets them apart from other people. The abilities of people with ASD can vary significantly. For example, some people with ASD may have advanced conversation skills whereas others may be nonverbal. Some people with ASD need a lot of help in their daily lives; others can work and live with little to no support.

ASD begins before the age of 3 years and can last throughout a person’s life, although symptoms may improve over time. Some children show ASD symptoms within the first 12 months of life. In others, symptoms may not show up until 24 months of age or later. Some children with ASD gain new skills and meet developmental milestones until around 18 to 24 months of age, and then they stop gaining new skills or lose the skills they once had.

As children with ASD become adolescents and young adults, they may have difficulties developing and maintaining friendships, communicating with peers and adults, or understanding what behaviors are expected in school or on the job. They may come to the attention of healthcare providers because they also have conditions such as anxiety, depression, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which occur more often in people with ASD than in people without ASD.” (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/facts.html)

Once Fairly Rare – Autism has Now Grown into an Epidemic

When I first started looking at the statistics in autism back in 1999, the peer reviewed statistics ranged from 1 in 10,000, to 1 in 2,0000. They quickly jumped to 1 in 500. and today 1 in 36 children are on the autism spectrum.

About 1 in 36 (2.8%) 8-year-old children living in ADDM Network sites were identified with ASD in 2020.
For the first time, the ADDM Network found that the percentage of 8-year-old Black, Hispanic, and Asian or Pacific Islander children identified with ASD was higher than among 8-year-old White children, which was the opposite of previously observed racial and ethnic differences across the ADDM Network.
Boys were nearly four times as likely to be identified with ASD as girls among 8-year-olds. However, the
percentage of 8-year-old girls with ASD is now more than 1%.
About one third (37.9%) of children with ASD also had Intellectual disability (ID) (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/pdf/2023-ADDM-Factsheet_508.pdf)

Censorship in the United States

I attended the Congressional hearing on censorship and watched legislators attempt to censor Mr. Kennedy. https://www.c-span.org/video/?529216-1/robert-f-kennedy-jr-testify-censorship-free-speech-part-1 It was an historic day, but not for all the right reasons. I am reminded that censorship in this area goes back at least two Administrations.

HHS Secretary for President Obama Kansas Governor, Kathleen Sebelius “…We (the office of Secretary of Health and Human Services) have reached out to media outlets to try to get them not to give the views of these people equal weight in their reporting.” (From her 2010 Reader’s Digest Interview)
2019 Cong. Adam Schiff engaged with Social media to suppress instruct Facebook and others to American’s freedom of speech in social media dealing with vaccine topics.
Congressman Bill Posey pushed back against the false statements of Cong. Schiff (but was ignored by Zuckerberg et. al.)
Because no one pushed back extensively in Washington on Sebelius or Schiff – the flood gates opened during the COVID Pandemic and finally Congress and the conservative media woke up and are now addressing the issue.

Not every vaccine injury case is about autism – https://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/health-family/article11620775.html Little Angelica suffered seizures and brain injury. And even as the story reports was bullied online.

HHS and DOJ Already Knew There was an Autism-Vaccine Link Before Congress Engaged on the Issue

After leaving my work with Congress, I learned that neither the Congress, nor the public had been fully informed. The entire 4+ year inquiry could have been avoided had there been transparency in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) outcomes. The truth is that individuals at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice already knew that some children suffered brain injury from their childhood vaccines that resulted in the development of autism or autism like symptoms. The fact that officials from HHS and even Special Masters in the program testified and failed to mention that cases of vaccine induced brain injury resulting in autism or autism like symptoms had been compensated since the inception of the program is unconscionable but is exactly what happened between 1999 and 2003 in the Halls of Congress.

This was proven with the independently conducted study done after the Autism Omnibus Proceeding hearings and published in a peer reviewed legal journal. As we learned, the government maintains a database of all of the cases that are filed in the VICP including the outcomes and settlement. This database, was proven to exist by the Associated Press, after they and others were initially told by government officials it did not exist. I’ve seen redacted versions of the database, and know there is a wealth of information that needs to be studied. Transparency and a need to properly inform require that this dataset be summarized and posted on the HHS website.

Instead of government experts providing this data, it took an independent team to gather and review approximately 2500 compensated cases from the VICP. In that small subset of cases, they found 83 compensated cases for vaccine induced brain injury in which autism or autism symptoms resulted. Mary Holland, Louis Conte, Robert Krakow, and Lisa Colin, Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury, 28 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 480 (2011) DOI: https://doi.org/10.58948/0738-6206.1681
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol28/iss2/6

Not unlike the now infamous FDA thimerosal slide, it is more likely than not, that somewhere in the bowels of HRSA, DOJ or the Court there is a buried staff prepared report detailing exactly how many vaccine induced brain injury cases resulting in autism or autism like behaviors have been before the program and how many of those were compensated.

To deny the data simply personifies the statement – there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Over these last 2 decades I have met thousands of the families affected by this type of medical injury. The first wave of the vaccine-induced autism children are now in their mid-30s and 40’s. Is every individual with autism the result of vaccine injury? No, but some are. The unanswered question today is what percentage. Is it 2 percent, 10 percent, 30 percent. Without correctly and honestly studying it we may never know, and the injuries will continue.

Sometimes the truth is inconvenient, but that does not make it any less true.

One day maybe we can talk Justice! That day will not come if we keep denying this inconvenient truth that there is evidence that some children suffered a vaccine induced brain injury that resulted in autism or autism like behaviors.

Two Valued Resources:

Children’s Health Defense – https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

National Vaccine Information Center – https://www.nvic.org/

Both would welcome your donations.

(*Any opinions expressed are my own and do not represent any individual or organization I am now or have been associated with in the past.)

For a walk down memory lane – from C-span.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?156441-1/autism-childhood-vaccines

https://www.c-span.org/video/?174176-1/childhood-vaccines-autism

https://www.c-span.org/video/?167082-1/vaccine-injury-compensation

https://www.c-span.org/person/?86092/KathiWilliams

https://www.c-span.org/video/?173720-1/vaccination-safety-part-1

https://www.c-span.org/video/?173720-2/vaccination-safety-part-2