Trump CDC: There's No Evidence That Vaccines *Don't* Cause Autism, Please Ignore All This Evidence!
See also: Birthday cake, curling irons, overshoes, dining room tables, the musical stylings of William Shatner ...
Oh boy, we’re finally here! The day has finally arrived! And it’s just as deeply embarrassing as we thought it would be.
The CDC has now officially updated its page on vaccines and autism to heavily insinuate that vaccines cause autism, despite the fact that there is literally zero non-faith-based evidence to suggest that they do.
Now, because there is, in fact, literally zero non-faith-based evidence to suggest that there is a connection between vaccines and autism, the page now mostly just points out that there is no proof that there isn’t a link — because, hey! It’s pretty hard to prove a negative.
Awkwardly, because of an agreement with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions chairman Senator Bill Cassidy (a medical doctor, and R-LA), the heading on the site still says “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism,” but they’ve added a lil’ asterisk and a long explanation suggesting that maybe they do, after all.
The “key points” section now reads:
The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.
HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.
To be clear, “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities” because they have been poorly executed and subsequently retracted, not because the health authorities wanted to hurt the feelings of stupid people.
The paragraphs below the main header now read:
Pursuant to the Data Quality Act (DQA), which requires federal agencies to ensure the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information they disseminate to the public, this webpage has been updated because the statement “Vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim. Scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism. However, this statement has historically been disseminated by the CDC and other federal health agencies within HHS to prevent vaccine hesitancy.
HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links. This webpage will be updated with gold-standard science that results from the HHS comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism as required by the DQA.
The following, as required by the DQA, details the state of the evidence and studies, and the lack thereof, regarding vaccines and autism spectrum disorder (autism) and outlines HHS future research directions to provide answers.
The page then goes on to point out, repeatedly, that while no studies exist providing a causal link, some parents believe their child’s autism was caused by vaccines and no one can prove that they didn’t.
Similarly, no one can prove that anything else that obviously does not cause autism does not cause autism. Name a thing! Anything! And you probably cannot prove, for certain, that it does not cause autism, or anything else for that matter. For instance, no one could say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that vaccines do/did not cause epilepsy or meningitis, or dishpan hands or crop circles or the Blood Falls of Antarctica or the Montauk monster or spontaneous human combustion or synesthesia or literally anything else you might be able to think of off the top of your head.
Nevertheless, this belief is presented as being plausible simply due to the fact that people believe it to be true.
It is critical to address questions the American people have about the cause of autism to ensure public health guidance is adequately responsive to their concerns. Approximately one in two surveyed parents of autistic children believe vaccines played a role in their child’s autism, often pointing to the vaccines their child received in the first six months of life (Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP), Hepatitis B (HepB), Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), Poliovirus, inactivated (IPV), and Pneumococcal conjugate (PCV)) and one given at or after the first year of life (Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR)). This connection has not been properly and thoroughly studied by the scientific community.
In fact, the scientific community has thoroughly studied it, and regardless of what these folks “believe,” autism is not caused by vaccines. There is absolutely nothing that they can do, no experiment that they can run, nothing they can say, to prove that to them. Multiple, large scale studies have shown that unvaccinated children are diagnosed with autism at the exact same rate as vaccinated children.
Meanwhile, the “evidence” that they do cause autism — other than people personally believing that they do — is one very, very small study of literally 12 children who received the MMR vaccine, eight of whom subsequently developed autism. The “study” was so patently ridiculous and methodologically flawed that its author, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license as a result.
Since then, however, terrible people all over the world have decided that they’d much rather have a dead child than a child with autism. Strangely, not one anti-vaxxer has yet been able to prove — or even tried to prove, that anyone knows of — that they develop autism at a lower rate than children who have been properly vaccinated. One would think that this would be the very first thing these people would look at, but it is not.
The CDC’s page acknowledges that no one has officially ruled out anything as a “cause” of autism. Technically, that is true. There is also no evidence that birthday cake, curling irons, overshoes, dining room tables, the musical stylings of William Shatner or anything else doesn’t cause autism, and they are all just about as likely to have caused it as vaccines are.
The rise in autism prevalence since the 1980s correlates with the rise in the number of vaccines given to infants. Though the cause of autism is likely to be multi-factorial, the scientific foundation to rule out one potential contributor entirely has not been established. For example, one study found that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines had the highest statistical correlation with the rise in autism prevalence among numerous suspected environmental causes. Correlation does not prove causation, but it does merit further study.
The author of that study, Cynthia Nevinson, is a biochemist who has written for the newsletter published by RFK Jr.’s Children’s Defense Fund. Outside of that, her primary focus is on “biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen, carbon and oxygen and their impact on atmospheric trace gases, including nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and atmospheric potential oxygen,” not vaccines or autism or anything remotely to do with human beings. Nevinson follows in the footsteps of the many scientists with no background in climate science who do not believe in climate change and those with no background in evolutionary biology who believe in “intelligent design.”
The anti-vaccine crowd, of course, will grasp onto anything they can if it means discouraging people from taking vaccines. CDC chair Martin Kulldorff recently claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine causes birth defects, because of a clinical trial in which “eight babies born to women who received Pfizer’s covid vaccine while pregnant had birth defects, compared with two born to unvaccinated women.”
“It is very concerning to have a fourfold excess risk of birth defects in these pregnant women,” Kulldorff said in September, as per a Texas Tribune article published this week.
However! Actual scientists say that this is not even remotely supported by the evidence, because the women were given the vaccines at a point in their pregnancies in which birth defects would have already occurred. But he doesn’t care and neither do any of his compatriots. They’re willing to say that vaccines cause literally any malady on earth so long as it helps them discourage people from taking them — because they’ve committed to this “vaccines are bad” bit and can’t back off now.
I’d feel bad for them, except that they’re going to get a whole lot of people very sick as a result. Because of folks like Kulldorff and the creeps currently running the CDC, the United States is likely going to lose its measles elimination status soon — as Canada did last week — if the measles outbreak that started in Texas in January of this year continues into January of next. Which, you know, it almost definitely will.
So far, this year, there have been over 1700 measles cases, 45 outbreaks, 211 hospitalizations (100 for children under the age of five), and three deaths. Whooping cough cases have also been surging. It’s not going well, but hey — as long as some very poorly informed people are happy, I guess that’s all that matters.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I have had all the vaccines and am not autistic, but I also have cats. Ipso facto, the presence of cats negate all vaccine autism causing. Protect your children with vaccines plus cats!
Juan, my little dog, gets a rabies booster every year because I value his life. He is not autistic, but he is delusional in that he thinks he is a badass.