Is CDC overconfident in proclaiming no autism risk from vaccines? | Opinion

One of the most crucial traits an expert can have is a refusal to speak in absolute terms without absolute certainty. Overstatements can be very dangerous — particularly when public health is on the line. Overstatements can obscure the truth.

We need the truth about what causes autism, and whether vaccines are contributing in any way to the record-breaking numbers of new diagnoses we see each year. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reflects that 1 in 36 eight-year-olds (2.8%) had autism in 2020, versus 1 in 44 (2.3%) in 2018. That’s a big leap. Worldwide, it is estimated that 1% of the population has an autism spectrum disorder.

But the so-called autism experts are failing us. Powerful governmental and advocacy groups are speaking in absolute terms about what does not cause autism — vaccines — while conceding they have no idea what does.

Let’s start with the CDC — perhaps the most respected source of vaccine information in America. When a parent visits the CDC’s website for information on vaccine safety, the “Autism and Vaccines” page states in a large, bold font that “Vaccines do not cause autism.” Directly below that statement, it goes a step further, declaring “Vaccine ingredients do not cause autism.”

The Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins declares the same on its site: “Childhood vaccines do not cause autism.” But its statement on maternal vaccines is less definitive: “Maternal vaccines have not been shown to cause autism.”

The nuance separating these two statements is critical: Telling the public a vaccine definitively does not cause a life-altering developmental disability is much different than saying it has not been proven.

This issue is no small potatoes. Lives are being turned upside down over autism diagnoses every day.

Parents are being thrust in the unimaginably difficult position of choosing whether to vaccinate their child from numerous diseases on the schedule recommended by their physician, or whether to hold out, and whether to vaccinate themselves for things like the flu and COVID-19 while pregnant.

An autism spectrum diagnosis is not something children “grow out of.” These children turn to adults who often require intensive treatment, therapy and assistance throughout their entire lives. The costs to family members, insurers and governmental programs are unimaginably high. The physical and emotional tolls are even higher.

While the CDC is attempting to convince the public that no vaccine is in any way, shape or form contributing to any diagnosis of autism, one of its sister governmental agencies, the Health Resources & Services Administration, is busy paying out claims in the vaccine courts to any parent who can prove their child sustained encephalopathy or encephalitis from any vaccine containing measles, mumps and rubella virus (MMR, MM, MMRV) or pertussis bacteria or antigens (DTP, DTaP, P, DTP-Hib).

What do these things have to do with each other: autism, vaccines, encephalopathy and encephalitis? The experts aren’t sure about that, they say — studies are still underway.

The CDC advises on its autism FAQ page that mitochondria — tiny parts of cells that turn sugar and oxygen into energy to power them — sometimes fail to work correctly, which impacts cell function and causes mitochondrial disease.

Studies have shown that some children with an autism spectrum disorder have mitochondrial disease. Studies have shown that some children with mitochondrial disease suddenly stop developing as they should and regress — losing the skills they once had. This is referred to as regressive encephalopathy, a disease which impacts brain function. Studies have shown that some children with an autism spectrum disorder have had regressive encephalopathy. And studies have shown that certain illnesses covered by vaccines, such as the flu, can trigger a regression that is related to a mitochondrial disease.

The CDC agrees with all of this. And the vaccine courts have agreed that many vaccines can cause encephalopathy. Mitochondrial disease, meanwhile, is challenging and costly to diagnose.

A 2011 study in Pediatric Research, a peer-reviewed medical journal, performed a detailed analysis of the link between mitochondrial dysfunction and autism spectrum disorder. It cited to a controlled study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which found that mitochondrial dysfunction may be present in up to 80% of children with an autism spectrum diagnosis.

The point is this: If mitochondrial disease may make the developing brain more susceptible to other environmental hits — such as stress or virus — which can trigger changes leading to autism, how can the CDC tell us that no child with mitochondrial disease can have a live virus vaccine trigger changes which contribute to autism?

Actually, they don’t tell us that — at least not directly. It’s all a matter of legal jargon.

The CDC has plenty of lawyers and scientists around to consider the exact language which should be used on this important website. The phrase “Vaccines do not cause autism” is telling, in that it gives the CDC an out.

The legal definition of “causation” means “causes or contributes to cause.” The message the CDC is sending is that parents should freely vaccinate, because vaccines do not contribute in any way to autism. But if this later proves to be untrue, the CDC can fall back with a different claim: They only meant to say vaccines do not ‘directly’ cause autism, and not that a contributory link could not exist in some cases.

Meanwhile, there’s no pressure on companies like Pfizer — which obtained over half its record $100.3 billion in revenue in 2022 from the COVID-19 vaccine and COVID-19 medications — to do their own research, since they can’t be sued anyway. Our government kindly stepped in and agreed to protect these powerful corporations from suit back in 1986, leaving it on all of us taxpayers to absorb damages caused by vaccine injuries through the government’s vaccine court.

If the CDC is so confident, it should be willing to change the statement on its website to: “It has been confirmed that no vaccine contributes in any way to autism in any child.” Unless it is willing to do so, it should take the current statement down.

If the CDC is so confident, the government should provide some definitive studies telling us what is, in fact, causing record numbers of children to be diagnosed with autism. This information would change millions of lives.

This is no “anti-vaxxer rhetoric.” If parents want to fully vaccinate, they should absolutely do so. But the decision ought to be as informed as possible — meaning there ought to be more data available to the public.

If the CDC is so confident, it’s time to provide all the data. If it’s not an overstatement, prove it.

Blake Shuart is a Wichita attorney and member of the Eagle Editorial Advisory Board.