CDC: “Possibility” that vaccines rarely trigger autism
CDC’s immunization safety director says it’s a “possibility” that vaccines rarely trigger autism but “it’s hard to predict who those children might be.” (They’re not even trying.)
[This article was first published on Sept. 2, 2014]
A CDC senior epidemiologist stepped forward last week to say that he and his CDC colleagues omitted data that linked MMR vaccine to autism in a 2004 study. The scientist, William Thompson, said “I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information.”
Dr. Frank DeStefano, CDC Director of Immunization Safety
A coauthor of the questioned study is
Dr. Frank DeStefano,
Director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office. In a telephone interview last week, DeStefano defended the study and reiterated the commonly accepted position that there’s
no “causal” link between vaccines and autism.
But he acknowledged the prospect that vaccines might rarely trigger autism.
“I guess, that, that is a possibility,” said DeStefano. “It’s hard to predict who those children might be, but certainly, individual cases can be studied to look at those possibilities.”
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But instead of allowing Hannah’s case to publicly serve as a precedent for other possible victims, the government took another course:
it quietly settled the case and sealed the results. Other families with autistic children were never to know. Hannah’s family petitioned the court to be allowed to reveal the findings but the government fought to keep the case sealed—and prevailed.
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In a court-submitted opinion, neurologist Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, Director of Medical Research at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, stated that he had “personally witnessed [Hannah’s] developmental regression” following “vaccine-induced fever and immune stimulation.”
Zimmerman concluded that
Hannah was vulnerable to vaccine injury because she had a metabolic disorder called mitochondrial dysfunction. While vaccines are safe for most children, in Hannah, they triggered a brain injury, according to Zimmerman.
Whether vaccines “
caused” or “
triggered” Hannah’s autism,
the result was the same: but for her vaccinations, Zimmerman said, “Hannah may have led a normal full productive life.” Instead, she suffers “
significant lifelong disability.”
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But I asked the CDC’s DeStefano whether it was worth trying to figure out what underlying conditions put kids at risk so they can be tested in advance and, if vulnerable, spared.“That’s very difficult to do,” DeStefano told me. He said the CDC’s priorities are gaining a better understanding of the pathogenesis, genetics and biology of autism. “And then, I think…
it’d be more feasible to try to establish if vaccines in an individual case, say a person with a certain set of genes…if we ever get to that point, then that kind of research might be fruitful.”
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DeStefano: Yeah,
I mean, I mean in that case,
you know, she had a,
I mean, yo u know, she had an underlying uh biological illness that
uh either vaccination, or it could’ve been an infection that that would trigger some physiological stress in her,
uh, seems to have,
you know, could’ve,
could’ve caused uh, um, manifestations that, characteristics of autism which, you, you know, appears to be what happened in her case.
Attkisson: But I mean doesn’t that, is—isn’t that a “link”? It’s not a “causal” link, but isn’t that a potential link between vaccination and autism if certain children with a “underyling biological illness” can have a “trigger” through vaccination?
DeStefano: [Unintell] as you call it,
a secondary link if you wanna call it that way, w–
in certain children,
I mean ri—I mean, I, maybe that, but,
you k now, then
I guess, that, that is a possibility.
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DeStefano: uh, [phone noise] Yeah,
I mean, I think um…
You know, I think it’s something that,
uh,
well I mean, you know, in terms of
uh…
I mean,
It’s hard, it’s hard to say ,
you know, I mean it’s like, um…I mean
how how important that is.
I mean,
it’s a theoretical possibility ,
I guess the, the
Poling case maybe suggested it could happen .
Uh, but [unintell] cause
it’s hard to predict who those children might be, but certainly,
um indivi dual cases,
uh,
can be studied to try to,
uh, to
look at those,
uh, those
possibilities.
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DeStefano: Yeah…[unintell]
I think…[unintell] have a better understanding of
uh of the pathogenesis of autism and the genetics and the biology and
then,
I think, I mean, and then, and then, with these individual cases, it’d be,
you know, more feasible to try to establish
if, uh, if, if vaccines in an individual case, say a person with a
certain, certain set of genes or something,
you know, if we ever get to that point, then that kind of research,
uh, might be fruitful,
you know.
