RFK Jnr – Let’s do Vaccines and Autism again!

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Image of Wakefield’s infamous and deeply fraudulent Lancet paper that started all this back in 1998

So what has the newly installed Secretary of Health and Human Services been up to?

If only the answer to that was dull and boring, but alas as a renowned anti-vaccine and whacky conspiracy theorist, that is unfortunately not the case. “wild whacky stuff” is really not what anybody ever wants to hear from the guy who runs the Department of Health, but alas, we now live in “interesting times“.

So what is in the pipeline, what is coming?

Yes, my title gives the game away.

First let’s do a quick back of background on it all.

Vaccines & Autism – The History

The anti-vaccine movement vigorously promotes the claim that vaccine cause autism on the basis of exactly zero credible evidence.

What is true is that there has been a increase in the number of autism diagnoses, but that’s not because the actual rates of autism have increased, it is down to an increase in the ability of medical professionals to conduct screenings and diagnose autism, typically around the time kids also get routine vaccines.

So what does it all come from?

The root behind this specific myth is a medical hoax perpetrated by fraudster Andrew Wakefield in the UK. He supposedly gathered data and then published a paper within The Lancet that promoted the idea of a link between the MMR vaccine and Autism in 1998. Roughly a decade later in 2009 a UK journalist discovered the hoax and published the details …

The medical council in the UK launched an investigation and soon established that it was indeed all true. The paper contained faked data. Wakefield lost his license to practise medicine in the UK and The Lancet redacted the paper.

You might wonder why Wakefield did this.

It was discovered that he planned a rival vaccine and associated products (such as a diagnostic kit based on his theory) that could have made him a fortune. When this was revealed, Wakefield sued for libel, but when faced with the reveal that they had the evidence that this was true, he quickly dropped his case. The key was the release of records obtained from the Legal Services Commission, showing that it had paid £435,643 in undisclosed fees to Wakefield for the purpose of building a case against the MMR vaccine several years before Wakefield published his paper.

Wakefield left the UK in total disgrace and came to the US where he set himself up as an anti-vaccine “expert”. He now earns money by giving talks promoting his fake claim to willing listeners.

The anti-vaccination propaganda film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe that went out in 2016 was directed by him. It promotes the claim that there is some grand conspiracy to cover things up by the CDC. That might fly with some gullible people, but the issue goes far beyond the reach of the CDC. Not one single scientific body within any nation state on the planet finds such a link.

“Yes, but we need to study this …“

No, just stop. We don’t. Literally billions have been spent studying this, one more study is not going to change this.

The bottom line is transparently clear …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),[17] the IOM of the United States National Academy of Sciences,[18]and the National Health Service[19] have all concluded that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. A systematic review by the Cochrane Library concluded that there is no credible link between the MMR vaccine and autism, that the MMR vaccine has prevented diseases that still carry a heavy burden of death and complications

Anybody telling you there is the possibility of a link has either been successfully conned, or knows the truth and is lying to you.

Are we really sure there is no link?

Yes, seriously yes, we really really are.

If you are not sure about that, then here you go …

Their point is this …

If we ask the same questions we’ll get the same answers. We’ve asked the autism vaccine question over two dozen times and each time we get the same response: no relationship. We need to move on. We need to invest in studying genetics, the brain structures of children with autism, and environmental factors that may be playing a role.

RFK Jnr: “No wait, let’s do it again, but let’s rig it this time“

As is well known and well documented, RFK Jnr has a long history of opposition to vaccines and the promotion of quackery that does not work, so it is no surprise that he wants to go back to this, but with a twist to ensure that he gets the answer he wants.

This time we will do it with the very worst possible person – vaccine skeptic David Geier.

Who?

Here are a few facts concerning this crank …

  • He is not a doctor
  • He is not a scientist

This guy is a walking incarnation of bias and deeply flawed methodology. Via the recent Washington Post article that did a deep dive into him we learn …

The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked.

David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory.

Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences. They fear it will undermine the importance of the lifesaving inoculations and further damage trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Putting a quack with a long established track record for junk science in charge will indeed have dire consequences, they are not wrong about that.

Very obviously what is coming is a rigged hit job.

Once his deeply flawed conclusion is published then confirmation bias will swing into action and so the anti-vax community will ignore all the robust evidence and instead latch onto this pile of poo as “proof”.

Public confidence in vaccines will be deeply eroded.

A lot of people are going to die from very preventable things for decades to come because of this.

Resignations

Last Friday (March 28th) the FDA’s top vaccine official, Dr Peter Marks, resigned and cited the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “misinformation and lies” as his motivation for doing so.

Actually, he was told that if he did not quit then he would be fired.

Via The Guardian we gain this insight …

In a resignation letter, referring to Kennedy, Marks wrote: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

Marks also issued a stark warning, according to media outlets who obtained the letter, saying: “Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety and security.”

The Wall Street Journal reported a statement on the resignation by an HHS official: “If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of secretary Kennedy.”

“Restoring Science“!!! … there is a slight typo there, it should read “destroying science“.

Science Based Satire: A Sneak Preview Of RFK Jr.’s Vaccine-Autism Study

Science based medicine has flagged up what is coming with some satire …

Vaccines cause autism and many other horrible things. We totally told you so, and only Pharma $hills would disagree. No further research is needed. Subscribe to our monetized social media content, buy our supplements, and send all your money to Children’s Health Defense.

To all those that confirmed RFK Jnr in his role, the subsequent body count is on you. The warnings that this would be the consequence were there and you opted to ignore it all to appease your orange messiah.

As Dr David Gorski correctly observed, the appointment of RFK Jnr is an “extinction level event” for Federal health policy.

That has been confirmed by all the layoffs.

Further Reading

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