Kennedy Instructs CDC to Change its Position on Vaccines and Autism

By Louis Conte, Health Freedom Editor, The MAHA Report

On November 19, the CDC, under instructions from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., changed its long-held position that vaccines don’t cause autism to the view that there’s a possibility that vaccines can in fact cause autism.

The announcement included a dig at previous CDC studies that had found no causal relationship between being vaccinated and developing autism. Kennedy said such studies did not come from “evidence-based” science.

Following Kenendy’s guidance, the CDC updated its website.

As he promised earlier in the year, Kennedy and the CDC also made it clear that they’re doing a deep dive into the causes of autism and that the science is not settled.

The response of the old guard public health establishment and legacy media was predictable.

The cognoscenti of vaccinology went berserk.

Former CDC Director Dr. Mark Besser told NBC, “It is a dark day for the CDC.”

MS NOW, part of NBC, featured Dr. Vin Gupta, who shocked all twelve of the networks’ viewers, stating, “We can’t trust the CDC anymore.” Gupta blamed Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 MMR vaccine article and attributed autism to genetics, “increasing maternal age” (blame the mothers – again), and, perhaps, air pollution.

As one would expect, CNN rolled out Big Pharma lackey Dr. Paul Offit, who stated, “If RFK Jr. wanted to be honest with the American public, he would make it clear on the CDC’s website that chicken nuggets also might cause autism.” CNN then lied to its audience with the claim that ‘studies find no relationship.’

The truth is that the majority of studies have been inconclusive – often by design. And when studies do show associations, the public health establishment and the legacy media ignore them, or suppress them, retract them, or simply declare the authors ‘anti-vaccine.’

The history of the vaccine-autism controversy is littered with suppressed and manipulated data. When uncomfortable data is published, public health and the establishment media attack the researchers who discovered evidence of harm, thereby straying from the well-crafted, “settled science” narrative. You don’t need to hunt hard for examples: Read Dr. Brian Hooker, who recounted when the CDC “shredded all the evidence.” Hooker publicly disclosed his conversations with the CDC’s vaccine whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson.

Beneath all the shouting is troubling research, like this developmental regression and mitochondrial dysfunction in a child with autism. The referenced case is one ultimately compensated for, by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), due to ‘autism-like symptoms.’ Keep in mind that autism is defined by its symptoms. If you have autism symptoms, you have autism.

A peer-reviewed social science paper published in 2011 in the PACE Environmental Law Review revealed that the children compensated for vaccine-induced encephalopathy by the NVICP featured numerous cases of autism.*

HHS never told the public about these cases but was well aware of the association between autism and vaccine injury as a letter from HHS to investigative journalist, the late David Kirby, shows: “The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually caused by vaccines,” the letter reads.

It continues, “We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease.” The letter continues, “Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures. Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries may have shown signs of autism before the decision to compensate or may ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track cases on this basis.”

The mainstream media has failed to mention this uncomfortable history. Instead, the response was indignation: How dare Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr, take down our article of faith? How dare anyone tell us that our belief in the sanctity of vaccines was not true.

The old statement – ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ – was simply untrue. It was not supported by scientific research.

The old guard needs to be reminded that lying to people is the reason that they are no longer trusted. Lying to people is the reason that their PR machine, otherwise known as the mainstream media, is no longer a trusted source of information.

The new statement is a signal that the old ways are changing.

The CDC webpage takes the reader through facts about which the American people know precious little. The CDC cites a paper that addressed parental perceptions and notes, “Parents most frequently cited immunizations (54%), genetic predisposition (53%), and environmental exposure (38%) as a cause of their child’s autism.”

This statement tells us that despite the endless repetition of the old CDC statement, which was often used to shame and attack those who questioned it, parents of children with autism came to their own conclusions.

Parents did so because they saw what happened to their children.

And despite what the legacy media claims, the autism/vaccine controversy did not start with Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s case series paper on the MMR vaccine or with the hard questions about vaccine safety that Secretary Kennedy has asked in the past.

The autism controversy has been brewing for decades. In the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, Congress directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “complete a review of all relevant medical and scientific information ... on the nature, circumstances, and extent of the relationship, if any, between vaccines containing pertussis ... and the following illnesses and conditions.”

One of the conditions to be studied – autism.

That was in 1986. The studies were never done.

Now, nearly forty years later, Kennedy explained his decision in a meeting with The New York Times, which in its coverage of the meeting stated that Kennedy was ignoring their belief that ‘vaccines save lives.’

The Times quoted public health experts like former CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen who stated, “There is overwhelming evidence that vaccines do not cause autism but do save lives.” Cohen did not mention where that “overwhelming evidence” was.

The Times also brought in the ubiquitous Dr. Offit, who said that studies of the measles vaccine were prompted by the Wakefield paper. He asked, “So what’s his (Kennedy’s) hypothesis?...What is it about the hepatitis B vaccine that he thinks causes autism?”

The Times allowed for some balance, a tactic the legacy media employs as a faux method to make readers believe they’re actually doing honest investigative reporting rather than going in with a foregone conclusion – which, when it comes to anything about vaccines, they’re doing.

And where’s the balance? A statement from Dr. Daniel Salmon, who directs the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Times quotes Salmon saying Kennedy is correct about the absence of high-quality, large-scale epidemiological research on autism. But would we expect a doctor who has devoted much of his life to vaccine safety, and advocated for greater federal investment in vaccine safety science, to address the elephant in the room – vaccines’ possible causal relationship to autism? Of course not. He tells the Times “I think that there are gaps in science that need to be filled. We need a research agenda, and we need to make it a priority to answer these questions, but it’s got to be done with rigorous science, and the science is really hard to do.”

The revised CDC statement states that Kennedy and HHS are now going to engage in rigorous science, the implication being that they’ll do so wherever it leads. Dr. Salmon does not say that.

We credit the Times for engaging Secretary Kennedy in a conversation about his bold change at the CDC, which challenges years of status quo. However, the Times did not devote a single sentence to the ongoing crisis of the autism epidemic. The Times did not describe the impact of the alarming increase in autism on families. No mention of the special education costs or the long-term cost of care. What about the fact that children with autism die from drowning at alarming rates and that the life expectancy of people with autism is significantly shorter than the rest of the population.

Autism was not of significant concern to the so-called ‘paper of record.’ They wanted to not so subtly advocate for public faith in vaccines, and they did that swimmingly.

Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, implicitly saw through the Times’ agenda. “We have known for twenty years that getting five or six vaccines in one day, when one of those is the MMR, has causal relationships with the development of seizure disorder, severe neurological damage, and rapid regression with the loss of skills previously acquired.”

Continued Lyons, “We know that our government covered this up, likely at the behest of its Big Pharma ‘partners’, and that millions of children have suffered unnecessarily as a result. The CDC’s action last week is proof that they are rebuilding trust, looking at the real science and doing their job to protect the public from the greed and corruption that led to the corporate capture of our government agencies.”

Kennedy did not create the autism-vaccine controversy, but he’s willing to take on the challenge of finally getting to the bottom of it.

By changing the CDC’s written position on autism, the HHS Secretary has declared the era of CDC lies over. The new order will be governed by gold standard science, by telling the public the truth.

Do vaccines cause autism? Stay tuned. I’m confident we’ll soon know.

*The author of this story, Louis Conte, was the lead investigator and co-author of the PACE Environmental Law Review article cited above.