Autism and Vaccines

Why are we still discussing this?

There never really was a “debate” about whether or not Vaccines caused Autism. The entire idea was one part fraud and one part Russian propaganda.

We always knew the cause of the increase in Autism, it just wasn’t interesting enough for the Media to cover. They preferred sensationalism and fear mongering over reality. This is what happens when our news sources operate for profit instead of people.

Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent study claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and Autism was published by Lancet Journal in 1998. Wakefield knew there was no link, but he wanted to sell his own vaccine, so he tried to kill the competition by publishing a study trashing the MMR vaccine.

Autism is a behavioral syndrome that has considerably changed several times since 1980, causing dramatic increases in the number of children who fall into the category of the syndrome. There are no biological tests to diagnose Autism. The diagnosis is based on a professional observing for the presence of enough behavioral indicators to apply the syndrome as a “diagnosis.”

A lot of evidence “suggests” that Dr. Wakefield had ulterior motives for pushing a fraudulent study accusing the MMR vaccine as causing Autism to promote his own single-dose vaccine and diagnostic tests, and to get kickbacks from lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers.** Since you may not have heard about these inconvenient facts from Anti-Vaxers who are often Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Homeopaths, Reiki-ists, and other alternative-to-real-medicine-practitioners,* here it is:

1. Patent for His Own Vaccine

Before publishing his 1998 paper, Wakefield filed a patent in 1997 for a single-jab measles vaccine, which he planned to market as a safer alternative to MMR. If his study had successfully scared the public into rejecting MMR, he stood to profit from selling his own vaccine.

2. Paid by Lawyers Suing Vaccine Companies

Investigations revealed that lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers paid Wakefield over £435,000 ($700,000 USD) to create research that would help them win cases. This was a major conflict of interest that he did not disclose.

3. Business Plan for Autism Testing Kits

Wakefield also had plans to sell diagnostic tests for "vaccine-induced autism," which could have made him millions. He estimated that his test kits alone could bring in $43 million annually if the MMR vaccine was widely rejected.

4. Fabricated Data

His study involved only 12 children, and it was later found that he manipulated data to falsely suggest a link between MMR and autism. Further studies with millions of children worldwide have since debunked any connection.

5. Medical License Revoked

After a lengthy investigation, the General Medical Council (GMC) in the UK found Wakefield guilty of professional misconduct. His study was fully retracted in 2010 after investigations found that Wakefield had manipulated data and had undisclosed financial conflicts of interest. The General Medical Council (GMC) in the UK later revoked his medical license due to professional misconduct.

Some additional problems I have with the Wakefield study is that Lancet should not have published it to start with, and then it took so long to retract it. The fact that Wakefield had only enrolled 12 children in the study was a serious red flag that his grand conclusions lacked equally grand evidence. However, Lancet, like many journals is vulnerable to sensational headlines. The cure for this problem is to make all studies open source, free to the public all the time.

After ending his medical career in disgrace, Wakefield started a new career grifting people by doubling down on the vaccine-Autism conspiracy theory producing a couple cheesy documentaries, further harming gullible people around the globe for profit.

Vectors for the Vaccine-Autism link were amplified by law firms around the world filing lawsuits using Wakefield’s study as evidence. The damage was immense, as bad science reporting, which is also sensationalized, had spread all around the world. Russia propagandists were also quick to amplify the idea in order to sow distrust in Western governments. Russia had spent the prior two decades promoting the idea that HIV/AIDS was invented by the CIA to kill Africans, directly causing the death of tens of thousands who refused to wear condoms, get tested, or take medications. Wakefield’s bogus study was exactly the type of material they glommed onto to spread lies.

A child with polio receives breathing assistance in an iron lung. Polio is a very contagious and potentially life threatening viral infection that can cause severe disability in children and adults, and children infected can experience late onset disability. Vaccines eradicated polio in America. Vaccines have saved more lives and prevented more disability than any other medical intervention, and they are affordable to produce.

This set the stage of Covid-19 conspiracies, and by 2020, Russia had the world’s most well-developed online propaganda machine. They had just helped Donald J Trump get elected in 2016 using the Facebook data leak through Cambridge Analytica, and were prepared to push more misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation about Covid-19. It was extremely successful in the United States, contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

If vaccines did not cause Autism, then what did?

Autism is not a disease. It’s a psychiatric syndrome - a behavioral syndrome. To be clear, this means that there is no medical test that can be used to diagnose Autism, for example, there is no blood test, there is no MRI or CT scan that you can do. It’s a behavioral diagnosis, meaning that there are a list of behaviors and features that a professional has to look for, or observe for, and then decide if there are enough behavioral indicators to apply the diagnosis of Autism.

The initial concept of Autism appeared in the 1980 DSM III. The concept of Autism had been around for decades. For example, Psychiatrist Bandura considered Autism to be one of the hallmarks of Schizophrenia - Schizophrenic Autism. This was the observed and severe lack of social interest or social initiative in persons with Schizophrenia. Autism appeared in the DSM II as a feature of Schizophrenia.

The initial concept or idea of Autism was Infantile Autism, and it was a disorder that had to be diagnosed prior to age 30 months. It was by its very nature, severe. The idea of Autism did not include mild or moderate dysfunction. In 1987, in the DSM III-R (revised), the name was changed to Autistic Disorder, and the idea of the disorder was expanded to children older than 30 months. This change in the definition of Autism increased the number of children who were diagnosed with the disorder.

In 1994, the DSM IV was published which changed introduced the idea of the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), separate from Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder and Pervasive Developmental Disorder. This idea of a spectrum allowed for hundreds of thousands of children with mild to moderate behavioral problems to be included in the diagnosis. Again, there was and is no medical test - just behavioral observations and then the application of the diagnosis on medical billing forms.

In 2013, ASD encompassed and replaced all of the other similar disorders. Persons who had grown up and lived as “Asperger’s” were now Autistic. Some 30,000 children with Fragile-X syndrome were also diagnosed as Autistic. Children who were slow to develop were easy to label as Autistic, but could grow out of the disorder due to being misdiagnosed, however, there was no way to document this through medical billing. The new ASD diagnosis also removed the requirement for language delays, something that historically had made Autism a severe disorder. Now, children who had normal speech could still be diagnosed with ASD and were often called, “high functioning.”

ASD is a behavioral syndrome not without controversy and limitations, and probably rampant misdiagnosis or overuse. It should be carefully and cautiously diagnosed, but it is not caused by vaccines. The cause of “Autism” from one child to the next is a complicated mix of environmental, socioeconomic, and biological factors, vaccines not being one of them. The levels of severity and the variety of symptoms that make up the ASD behavioral syndrome allow for many causal factors, like Fragile X, head trauma, seizure disorders, infections to the nervous system, environmental toxins, the age of the father, and many other factors.

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*Alternative medicine practitioners love to rail against “western medicine” as being ineffective and bad for many reasons as a way to elevate their options which lack any scientific basis. See my article, The Legacy of Bullshit. Homeopathy, for example, is just water - there’s nothing else in it. They claim there is an “essence” of things in it that will cure ailments. There is no evidence of this. Alternative medicines do not stand up against fake alternatives, for example, a fake Reiki practitioner has the same effect as a “real” Reiki practitioner. Alternative medicines are appealing to people who want an easy career where they can make a lot of money, but in the end people suffer. Chiropractors are dangerous, for example, and there are many cases of strokes from dissections of vertebral arteries from “adjusting” (cracking) people’s necks. Science based (Western) medicine has it’s problems for sure, but it’s far better because there’s evidence to back it up, and it’s constantly trying to improve, whereas Chiropractors are stuck in the 1800’s still cracking people’s backs.

Alternative Medicine practitioners also need selling points for their add-on sales, which are usually supplements and drinks. Anti-Vax social media influencers also sell ads for supplements, therapist and drinks with bogus claims or suggestions that it will cure anxiety, depression, aches and pains, and made-up illnesses that only exist outside of science, like Leaky-gut Syndrome.

** Robert F Kennedy, Jr. does this kind of law, suing pharma companies to make money. He has his “charity” where he rakes in donations from the public and pays himself a huge salary - in 2022, he made over $500,000. In 2023, he was paid over $300,000 for just 15 weeks of work.