I don’t have a copy of Peter Hotez’ forthcoming book, but I have a snippet:
“There’s not only no link between vaccines and autism, there’s no plausibility…We’ve learned so much about the neurobiology of autism in the last few years. It can show that the changes in the brains of kids on the autism spectrum are beginning prenatally in the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe, before the baby’s born, well before they ever see vaccine.”
From this alone, we can see Hotez’ book has some serious problems.
(1) These “changes”… maybe he means “differences”… I am very familiar with these studies, they did not study vaccines at all… thus, these “changes” beginning pre-natally could be biomarkers for vaccine risk for ASD. One simply cannot rule out causal factors unless one actually includes them in a study.
Dr. Hotez, like Dr. Francis Collins, appears to think they can divine knowledge without the appropriate study.
The study that is needed to rule out vaccines cannot be an observational study (correlation does not equal causation, remember?) but should instead have two arms:
Children w/early differences, vaccinated
vs
Children w/early differences, unvaccinated
The way we know things and figure stuff out in science, is, well, to do science.
The IRB should be prepared to terminate the trial if when the neurodevelopmental disorders kick in for the vaccinated group, but not for the unvaccinated.
(2) The prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobe are not the only parts of the brain involved autism (for much greater detail see “The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism“;
(3) “…well before they ever see a vaccine”… well, if their mothers did not take doc’s advice and accept the thimerosal-containing flu vaccine, or refused the TdaP vaccine, neither of which is approved by the FDA for use on pregnant women, maybe… but if their mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy, we know that maternal immune activation is not good for neurodevelopment.
We already know there is a genetic predisposition in ASD… but the question is, to what? The science I’ve read tells me it’s a predisposition to ER Stress from vaccine metals.
There is far too much evidence that metals in vaccines can combine with mutational risk to create ER Hyperstress. You can read all about that in
As far as Dr. Hotez’ book, I am looking forward to reviewing all of the medical and genetic evidence he will bring forward to be able to say that vaccines did not cause autism in one person. N=1. One. Sample size, 1. I will also be expecting the full IRB documentation revealed for made available for this case study.
He should have known better. He co-author is a bioethicist, after all. Arthur Caplan, from NYU. Here is Arthur Caplan telling everyone at a conference that they are at WAR with vaccine risk aware parents, and while he admits that one can never say positively that vaccines do not cause autism, in his words “You’ve got to fight unfair”.
Is this book another example of “fighting unfair”?
It is certainly cruel of these two professionals to deny that for some people, vaccines may cause autism. They know the correct studies have not been conducted. They know the lengths to which CDC has gone to make associations go away. What they don’t know is how many people’s lives are adversely affected by vaccines.
A fast-growing number of professionals are calling for an end to the use of aluminum in vaccines [See LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK] in part because no dose escalation studies were conducted by the FDA in which they injected vaccine-relevant amounts of aluminum into infant mice and rats. Newer studies are finding issues.
Instead of accurately portraying the state of knowledge, they choose to “Fight Unfair” because they HAVE to fight unfair – the science is swaying FAR AWAY from their position.
So much so that Nature just published a series of articles – they mention vaccines as a contributing causal factor to autoimmunity.
When I came to this issue while writing “Cures vs. Profits”, I promised myself above all else I would remain objective. I promised to myself that while I was looking to celebrate the best of biomedicine, if I found issues, I would not shy away. They may need to “Fight Unfair”. We don’t. We just share the science, as it comes out, putting together the pieces of the causality puzzle. Science isn’t a fight. Science is for asking questions. Science is a way of knowing. Science is an exploration into understanding.
Hotez, P. and A. Caplan. 2018. Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad John’s Hopkins University Press.