When the Science Isn’t Settled: CDC Retracts Claim

BUZZ MAGAZINE – I want to talk to you today about something very important. Something HUGE. Yet strangely enough, almost no one is talking about it.

For decades the CDC has told the American public - with absolute certainty - that vaccines do not cause autism. This was presented as settled science. End of discussion. Case closed.

Well apparently not so fast, because now that statement had to be retracted under a federal law called Data Quality Act. That law requires government agencies to present information that is factual, objective and evidence-based. Which seems pretty reasonable. But here’s what the review actually found: there has never been evidence - let me repeat that... THERE HAS NEVER BEEN EVIDENCE... proving that infant vaccines do not contribute to autism.

So all those years of “certainty”, all the posters with this message, were not built on rock solid science. They were built on preventing “vaccine hesitancy.” Those are the government’s own words - not mine.

Now I’m not saying vaccines do cause autism. I’m saying the research to rule it out, has never been done. Never. And I think that matters. You see, in science, when you can’t rule something out, you don’t declare it settled. You investigate it.

So let’s walk through what the federal review actually showed.

In 1986 there was the 1986 Mandate where Congress ordered Health and Human Services to investigate whether the old pertussis vaccine (DPT, now called DTAP), could cause neurologic injury, including autism. Over the next 30 years, the “kangaroo court” of the Institute of Medicine and the Agency for Healthcare, Reseach and Quality kept saying the same thing: the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship. Translation: We have no idea.

And this isn’t just DTAP. This included infant vaccines like Hepatitis B, HIB, Polio, Rotavirus and other vaccines. Not one of these vaccines has been shown to NOT contribute to autism. That’s a very different statement than “they’re safe and effective.”

They don’t know because they never bothered to study it. Why would they want to do something like that?

The second part of this: the MMR story. MMR is the one vaccine that’s had more research attention, but here’s the part the public never heard...

In 2012, The Institute of Medicine (remember our bouncy court?), reviewed those MMR/Autism studies, and found that all but four had serious methodological limitations. In other words - they weren’t reliable studies. And those four studies - they were only observational! They weren’t even studies. They had no unvaccinated comparison group. They couldn’t detect vulnerable subgroups. And they used foreign vaccine schedules - not the ones the US uses. What? How do you use that stuff?

These studies weren’t designed to detect a problem. And so they didn’t. That’s not the same thing as “proof and safety.”

The third part of this, the aluminum question. This is where things get interesting. Several infant vaccines contain aluminum as an adjuvant - it induces an immune response or a fever - anywhere from .25 to .625. per dose. But according to one analysis, a child following the recommended CDC vaccination schedule receives 5 milligrams of injected aluminum by the age of 18 months. That’s a whole lot more than .25! A large Danish study said this was safe, but in the supplemental tables (the part few people ever read) was something a little unexpected: a 67% increased risk of Aspergers for every 1 milligram of aluminum exposure in children. That doesn’t prove causation, but it is a significant red flag. And red flags deserve careful investigation.

Now, for the first time, HHS is saying the same thing. They are launching research into aluminum midochondrial vulnerabilities, immune activation and neuroinflammation. That’s a major shift, and you can kind of thank Kennedy for it.

So what does this mean for all of us?

It means something simple and very important. Many parents over the last 20-30 years noticed something about their child - a regression in speech, a loss of eye contact, developmental changes - that appeared after early vaccinations. They were told there was no connection. But it means those parents weren’t imagining things, they weren’t making it up, and they weren’t wrong. They were paying attention, like good parents do, and they were way ahead of the science.

For decades the door was shut, now it’s suddenly being opened. Even the federal government is admitting those statements were not based on evidence. Because the evidence was never gathered.

What I want to leave you with is this...if one of the most repeated public health claims in the last 30 years wasn’t actually supported by evidence, what else deserves a second look? That’s not conspiracy. That’s called responsible thinking.

This story originally published in the January 2026 issue of The Prairie Land Buzz Magazine, http://www.thebuzzmonthly.com. All rights reserved.

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