The Causes of Autism

Originally posted on X.

This is an open book final exam.

Most of these answers have been provided previously, can be found in the book “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” and/or at the following place which summarizes many key pieces of information in this literature: https://thecausesofautism.com/59-2/vaccines/

Most of you have failed to turn in your pop quizzes and have D’s and F’s in the class, I’m sorry to say. It looks like you’ll need to retake the course in the Fall. If you somehow manage to find all of the answers to these questions, you’ll pass. Good luck.

1. True/False: Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding told CNN host Sanjay Gupta that if children have a rare mitochondrial disorder, then environmental stressors may create a situation where the child’s cells cannot make enough energy to keep their brains functioning normally. She admits vaccines can “occasionally” cause fevers in children, and that if a child had a predisposition to mitochondrial disorder, it can, in her words, “set off some damage, some of the symptoms can be symptoms that have characteristics of autism.”

2. True/False: the CDC recently reported an increase in drowning deaths among African Americans, while also recently for the first time reporting an increase in autism incidence among various ethnic groups, including African Americans. What is the connection between this data and autism?

3. True/False: Step four of the ‘6 Steps to Vaccine Safety’ by Children’s Health Defense is “Reevaluate all vaccines recommended by ACIP prior to the adoption of evidence-based guidelines.”

4. True/False: Hviid et al. (2019) concluded: “The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination.” However, as noted by @BrianHookerPhD, a major issue with the study is the autism incidence within the sample was 0.98%, resulting in approximately 4,400 autistic children missing from the study due to the autism incidence in Denmark at the time being 1.65%.

5. True/False: Data from Vital Statistics of the United States indicates that deaths per 100k from Measles was on steep decline for over 60 years before the introduction of the measles vaccine.

6. True/False: Di Pietrantonj et al. (2020) concludes: “There is no evidence of an association between MMR immunisation and encephalitis or encephalopathy, and autistic spectrum disorders.” This conclusion makes sense because this study omitted in its analysis the study by DeStefano 2004, one of whose authors admitted to omission of data on African American Males.

7. True/False: A common methodological issue in vaccine-autism studies is ‘overmatching.’ Overmatching is comparing a group with ‘little exposure’ to another group with ‘a little more’ exposure, and then concluding there was no relationship between the vaccine ingredient and autism, rather than comparing a ‘zero exposure’ group to a ‘high exposure’ group.

8. True/False: In the year 2000, government officials, university experts, and industry representatives convened a secret meeting to develop strategies to publicly explain the relationship between thimerosal and autism in order to later remove thimerosal from the childhood vaccine schedule.

9. True/False: Using the data from the CDC’s own Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), the CDC’s private database, Geier et al. (2014) found that the triple vaccinated with the Hepatitis B shot had the same odds of autism as those who only received one vaccine.

10. True/False: Hviid et al. (2019) reported “The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination.” Given the omission of data admitted by CDC Scientist William Thompson in the DeStefano (2004) paper, the Hiviid et al. study authors included analyses on African American children to address previous associations and found no relationship between MMR and autism in African American boys.

11. True/False: Robert F. Kennedy Jr is the one who said, “We’ve missed ten years of research because the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. They’re not doing what they should be doing because they’re afraid to look for things that might be associated.”

12. True/False: Gallagher and Goodman (2008) found hat the odds of receiving special education were approximately nine times as great for vaccinated boys than for unvaccinated boys, even after adjustment for confounders.

13. True/False: Tozzi et al. (2009) included a control group in their study that had zero exposure to thimerosal.

14. Schechter & Grether (2008) claims “The DDS data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines.” However, an issue with the study raised by the @ChildrensHD team is that the study did not account for thimerosal received prenatally through flu vaccines. True/False: This is an issue, because the authors conducted their analyses based on the assumption that children were no longer exposed to thimerosal after 2003.

15. Hviid et al. (2003) claims that “The results do not support a causal relationship between childhood vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines and development of autistic-spectrum disorders. “However, a major criticism of the study raised by the @ChildrensHD team is the one-year follow up during which many children would have been too young to receive an autism diagnosis.

This is particularly interesting, because the study reports: “The mean (SD) age at diagnosis was 4.7 (1.7) years for autism and 6.0 (1.9) years for other autistic-spectrum disorders.” -a very high mean considering a one year follow up for many children. This is a similar issue raised by Goldman & Yazbak (2004) who criticized the findings of Madsen et al. (2002) that claims to have found no relationship between MMR and autism. However, at the time of the study, autism was diagnosed at age 5 in Denmark, resulting in many children who had not received an autism diagnosis by the endpoint of the Madsen et al. study.

True/False: These methodological issues are nothing to concern ourselves with. Move along and believe the mainstream narrative.

16. True/False: HHS has submitted all of the annual reports they are supposed to provide to Congress on how they have made vaccines safer, and gladly provided those to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. when he requested them.

17. True/False: The CDC admits vaccines cause autism.

18. True/False: All of the vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule were licensed by the FDA based on a long-term placebo-controlled trial.

19. True/False: Although Madsen et al. (2002) claims to have found no relationship bewteen MMR and autism, Goldman & Yazbak (2004) criticized the findings of the study for the following reason: At the time of the study, autism was diagnosed at age 5 in Denmark, resulting in many children who had not received an autism diagnosis by the endpoint of the study.

20. True/False: World-leading vaccinologist Dr. Kathryn Edwards who is highly experienced in conducting clinical trials and is familiar with many clinical trials relied upon to license many of the vaccines on the market, admitted that vaccine clinical trials are like totally designed to rule out that the vaccine causes autism.

21. True/False: The study by Hooker & Miller (2020) which studied health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children and found: Developmental Delays – 2.18x Odds Ratio Gastrointestinal Disorders – 2.48x Odds Ratio was definitely not rejected from 5 journals without peer review, and SAGE OpenMedicine definitely did not take 11 months to complete peer review due to many scientific peers declining to evaluate the manuscript.

22. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine could neither reject nor accept a causal relationship between the DTaP vaccine and autism. True/False: Technically, this differs from what the CDC claims, that vaccines do not cause autism.

23. Which of the following is NOT one of the ‘6 Steps to Vaccine Safety’ outlined by @ChildrensHD. a. Support fully informed consent and individual rights to refuse vaccination. b. Short term clinical trials. c. Ensure everyone involved with federal vaccine approvals and recommendations are free of conflicts of interest. d. Subject vaccines to the same rigorous approval process of other drugs.

24. True/False: Vaccines are subject to the same rigorous approval process as other drugs.

25. Zerbo et al. (2017) found a significant association between first trimester flu vaccine and increased risk of autism. However, the authors applied a Bonferroni statistical correction, arguing that this finding was due to chance, and reported there was no association.

True/False: @BrianHookerPhD argues that the Bonferroni correction was appropriate to apply for interdependent associations.

26. True/False: The CDC empathized with Dr. Paul Thomas’s “Vaccine Friendly Plan,” which offered patients the ability to modify or delay the immunization schedule based upon informed consent, medical history, and choice, and did not ask him to produce evidence that his plan was as safe as the CDC immunization schedule in spite of the fact that the CDC themselves have not conducted studies on the entirety of their own immunization schedule.

27. One example of flaws in statistical analysis of studies which claim no relationship between thimerosal and autism is ‘overmatching.’ Over matching is when one group of those exposed to thimerosal are compared to a group slightly more exposed to thimerosal, instead of comparing a group of zero exposure to higher exposure. True/false: But studies on thimerosal absolutely never do this.

28. True or False: The CDC has completed sufficient studies to rule out causal relationships between almost 90% of adverse events.

29. What was the name of the city in Georgia in which officials of the CDC met together to discuss thimerosal which resulted in covering up its negative impact on neurodevelopment?

30. True or False: CDC completes post-market surveillance on multiple, not individual vaccine dosages, only.

31. True/False: Erdogan et al. (2024) found that in the sociability test, the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 male group spent significantly more time with stranger rats.

32. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), now known as the National Academy of Medicine, commissioned a committee to evaluate _____ number of vaccine adverse events that injury reports linked to _____ different vaccines. In spite of _____ of _____ adverse events/vaccine relationships considered, the committee deemed the evidence ______________________, including the relationship between the _____ vaccine and autism. Only ____ number of adverse events “favored acceptance” of a causal relationship with administration of a vaccine.

33. What is another argument used by some in the medical establishment regarding not conducting studies on unvaccinated children, and how are these arguments flawed?

34. Today in 2024, ______ doses are on the childhood vaccines schedule.

35. In the Lazarus study funded by the CDC, what was the rate of adverse events found by the researchers? And what was the chance of experiencing an adverse reaction to a vaccine, based on its findings?

36. How many vaccines were on the childhood schedule in 1962?

37. In the Mercks Gardasil-9 vaccine study, what was the control group given?

38. True or False: CDC completes post-market surveillance on multiple, not individual vaccine dosages, only.

39. In the 1986, _____ doses were on the vaccination schedule.

40. How many peer-reviewed studies did the author of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak” identify in which researchers studied the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations?

41. In another study on flu vaccines given to pregnant women, what was the control group given?

42. True or False: The CDC has completed sufficient studies to rule out causal relationships between almost 90% of adverse events.

43. Many infants following the CDC schedule receive up to 6 vaccines at a time, but clinical trials for vaccine approval by the FDA only evaluate ______________.

44. In three years, ____ percent of all adverse events reported to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) have been caused by ______ vaccines.

45. What was the control group given in the study on the Gardasil human papillomavirus vaccine?

46. In 2013, the National Vaccine Program Office of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) commissioned another IOM committee to update the earlier findings about the lack of evidence to support claims of safety for the entire CDC infant child vaccination schedule. What did the committee find, and what did they recommend the CDC do?

True or False: The CDC dutifully followed the recommendation by the IOM committee.

47. Essay Question: Who was the physician that lost his medical license after reporting that 8 out of 12 of his autistic patients received the MMR vaccine prior to developing gastrointestinal problems? What have the consequences been for other medical practitioners who have researched vaccine safety? What have the collective consequences of this been insofar as their impact on media reporting on vaccines in order to influence public narrative for over twenty years?

48. Extra Credit: What is odds ratio, relative risk, hazard ratios, P-value, and confidence interval?