CDC covered up study showing 1135% increase in autism with Hep B vaccine…

quote:

---

CDC covered up study showing 1135% increase in autism with Hep B vaccine…

---

quote:

---

Where did this claim come from?

In 1999, a researcher named Thomas Vaerstraeten, who was working at the CDC at the time, presented an abstract at a meeting of the Epidemiological Intelligence Services. The abstract utilizes data from health records, which contain information on immunizations and neurological diagnoses. Based on these data, the authors of the abstract show that autism diagnosis rates are higher among children whose vaccine history indicates a higher dose of thimerosal before the age of one month.

This particular abstract has come up periodically over the years in the anti-vaccine rhetoric, which is likely why RFK Jr. was aware of it. He has some of the details wrong – the abstract suggests an increased risk of 760%, not 1135%, and the paper isn’t about hepatitis B vaccines specifically. But it is fairly clear that this is the data he’s referring to.

---

quote:

---

In this particular case, the abstract compares the groups without any other adjustments for differences (other than gender, year of birth, and geography). There are a lot of other variables you’d want to account for. Perhaps most importantly, people who have more vaccines early on tend to have more well-child visits, and those well-child visits are also where other diagnoses (such as autism) are often made. This is a known and pernicious problem with this particular analysis, and it may be what is going on here.

It is, in fact, impossible to tell from this abstract alone what explains the results. There just isn’t enough information in the abstract. The way science works is that after an abstract, authors will move on to produce a paper in which they usually provide more details, do more careful analysis, and often add more data. The abstract is a first step of the research process.

These researchers did that. In 2003, they published a more complete paper in the journal Pediatrics, which showed no link between autism and thimerosal exposure. Review data based on multiple papers shows a similar result.

---

quote:

---

To the extent that RFK Jr. was using this fact to imply current vaccines are not safe, it is important to point out that in 1999, the FDA required the removal of thimerosal from childhood vaccines. This was done after pressure related to these claims, and even with no actual evidence, they decided it was worth doing since this isn’t an important vaccine ingredient.

So even if you weren’t convinced by the best data here, the particular claim being made is irrelevant to current vaccines.

---

quote:

---

This is not true. There’s no cover-up! The abstract is available online. You can read it. The researchers took that data and added more data, and wrote a paper which was published in a prestigious journal. This is how science works. It is extremely common that when you do further analyses or add more data, results change. (And not, as RFK Jr. claimed, due to pressure from the CDC.) This is especially likely in a setting like this, where the initial results in the abstract were fairly obviously correlation and not causation. In that case, it’s completely unsurprising that once you do a better job addressing these biases, the results change.

---

quote:

---

the abstract suggests an increased risk of 760%

---

quote:

---

Whew. We dodged a bullet there.

---

quote:

---

Well then, full steam ahead. It’s only nearly 800% increase. N

---

quote:

---

Not sure how bringing awareness to this is a fail- it still shows a tremendous risk…

---

quote:

---

Wondering if we can save him back to the old Slopes with some Ivermectin?

---