We Can End the Autism Epidemic — By Telling the Truth

Today, on World Autism Day, let’s honor autistic children and adults everywhere by demanding our federal agencies unlock the four decades of data that hold the secrets to why autism rates are soaring.

by Mary Holland, J.D.

Today is World Autism Awareness Day, established in 2007 by the United Nations (U.N.) to kick off a month devoted to raising public awareness of autism. Incomprehensibly, the U.N. has chosen as its 2025 theme: “Advancing Neurodiversity and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

I suggest an alternative theme: Ending the autism epidemic by unlocking the data that hold the hard truth about the links between vaccines and autism.

As the mother of an adult son who was injured by a “routine” MMR vaccine, I fully support advocating for the inclusion and rights of children and adults with autism.

But I am also fiercely devoted to ending the autism epidemic, especially among children who were senselessly injured by a burgeoning childhood vaccine schedule.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) latest estimates, 1 in 36 children have an autism diagnosis. A recent JAMA Open Network study suggested the number is closer to 1 in 33. We’re not talking about adults diagnosed later in life — these are children, between the ages of 5 and 8.

Public health officials and media routinely ascribe rising rates of autism to improvements in doctors’ ability to diagnose autism. But any parent of a healthy, normally developing child who regressed into severe autism following vaccination knows better.

And for those who question what parents witnessed with their own eyes, there’s no shortage of studies to back them up — including this recent peer-reviewed study, which found vaccinated children have a 170% higher chance of being diagnosed with autism compared to unvaccinated children.

No, the link between vaccines and autism hasn’t been ‘debunked’

Public health officials and mainstream media can assert that the link between vaccines and autism has been “debunked” by “many studies” as often and as unequivocally as they want — but that won’t make those assertions true.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and others have repeatedly asked the CDC to see these “many studies.” Each time, the CDC has failed to produce them.

Here’s what we know about efforts to “debunk” the link between vaccines and autism:

• Only one vaccine — MMR, a combination vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella — has ever been studied as a potential trigger for autism. The most frequently cited study is one published in 2002 in The New England Journal of Medicine, which examined over 500,000 children in Denmark — a study riddled with simple arithmetic errors and inconsistencies that render it useless.

There are 15 different vaccines on the CDC childhood schedule — a study of only one of those vaccines can’t be used as the basis for the claim that “vaccines don’t cause autism.”

• Only one vaccine ingredient — thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative still used in some flu vaccines — has ever been independently studied for its potential to trigger autism.There are no studies on the cumulative effect of injecting multiple vaccines containing more than 20 ingredients, none tested for a possible link to autism, into young children.

• No studies on pertussis vaccine and autism: When Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 — the bill that protects vaccine makers and healthcare workers from liability for injuries caused by their products — lawmakers ordered federal health authorities to investigate claims that the pertussis vaccine may cause autism.

In 1991, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) — since renamed the National Academy of Medicine — conducted a review of studies on the pertussis vaccine and autism. The institute could not find a single study examining whether the pertussis vaccine causes autism. Why? Because the studies have never been done.

• No studies on DTaP, tetanus, or diphtheria vaccine and autism: In 2012, the CDC commissioned the IOM to conduct a review of studies potentially linking the DTaP, tetanus and diphtheria vaccines to autism. The IOM did not find a single study supporting the claim that these vaccines don’t cause autism.

• No studies on the cumulative impact of multiple vaccines: The CDC childhood immunization schedule recommends multiple doses of many of the 15 vaccines — 72+ doses by age 18. If a child today is vaccinated according to CDC recommendations, by age 2, that child will have received 34 doses of 14 different vaccines, including Hep B, Hib, DTaP, IPV, MMR, varicella, rotavirus, RSV, PCV, flu and COVID, each containing at least 10 unique ingredients and/or adjuvants.

Running scared, pharma-owned Big Media ramps up fearmongering

Today, I am more hopeful than ever that we, as a movement, are about to expose the truth about vaccines and autism. Why?

Because Big Pharma, through its mainstream media megaphone, has unleashed an unprecedented torrent of attacks on medical freedom and fearmongering designed to scare parents into vaccinating their kids — a clear sign that industry is terrified its dark secrets will be exposed, and its global $69 billion gravy train will dry up.

In the past two months, media outlets have pumped out an endless stream of hysterical headlines over a non-life-threatening measles outbreak. Although they repeatedly refer to a recent “death from measles,” we at CHD exposed that the child’s death was caused by medical error, not measles.

In fact, during the past decade, there have been no deaths directly attributable to measles while 42 deaths and 2,908 serious injuries were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, following the MMR vaccine. Where were the headlines for those deaths and injuries?

Major media have ramped up their attacks on the very mention of an investigation into the possible link between vaccines and autism.

For example, media attacks on Dr. David Weldon, an outspoken advocate for vaccine safety, tanked his nomination to lead the CDC.

The attacks on data analyst and researcher David Geier were even more vicious after The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tapped Geier to oversee a study on vaccines and autism.

Public health officials are terrified their reputations will go down with the ship — and with good reason.

Last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. forced out the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine cheerleader, Dr. Peter Marks. The news sent vaccine stocks plummeting — proof that the FDA has been serving pharma, not our children.

Americans deserve to see the 40 years’ worth of healthcare data we paid to collect

For almost 40 years, our public health agencies have been collecting healthcare data on more than 10 million Americans. We know those data hold the answers to the autism epidemic.

We, as taxpayers, paid to collect and house that data. But not only have our federal agencies refused to share the data with the public, including scientists, researchers and journalists — they’re now trying to keep Secretary Kennedy and his team from accessing it, too.

When Kennedy announced the restructuring of HHS, he revealed that agencies within HHS are hoarding and hiding healthcare patient data — even from him.

These are the actions of public health officials, beholden to Big Pharma, who live in fear.

Fear that their crimes against our children will be exposed for all to see. Fear that their obscene profits will dry up. Fear that they will no longer be able to frighten or bully or mandate parents into harming their own children.

For decades, Big Pharma has relied on fearmongering, mandates and laws that protect vaccine makers and the medical establishment from liability for the injuries their products cause.

But the jig is up. Kennedy recently announced that HHS is creating an agency within the CDC that will focus on vaccine injuries — that’s the best news parents have heard in decades.

Today, on World Autism Day, let’s honor autistic children and adults everywhere by demanding our federal agencies unlock the four decades of data that hold the secrets to why autism rates are soaring — so we can end the autism epidemic once and for all.