Senators Voting Against Kennedy: Don't Blame the Messenger

The pain of "not knowing" the causes of autism is not Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s fault. The way forward is robust scientific studies.

Senator Maggie Hassan, who, during the HELP committee hearing, expressed outrage and anger at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for keeping the public stuck and preventing people from moving forward because he wants to study the causes of autism, made a valid and critical point.

We can all agree that someone has kept society stuck on the question of vaccines and autism.

But it has not been Kennedy.

We - the public - have been intentionally kept in the dark about autism, autoimmunity, and pediatric cancers.

The rhetorical idea that Kennedy wants to “relitigate” the question confuses his roles as a lawyer and as HHS Secretary. As Secretary, he will support not just the objective conduct of science on these questions but also be able to enforce it.

That means that with his confirmation, transparency in science is coming, with proper consideration of variables as risk factors that may interact with vaccines, not confounders that are only used to try to exonerate vaccines.

What Senator Maggie Hassan may not know is something that, if she did know, would multiply her anger tenfold: The modus operandi of the CDC has been to abuse the trust of the public by “relitigating” results from studies that have been conducted to ostensibly address the question, within the process of the conduct of each study. They achieved this by analyzing the data many times over, and only publishing the results from specific method that enforced the narrative “exonerate vaccines”.

In my scientific opinion, we know that toxins like mercury and aluminum are among those that can increase the risk of autism in infants who cannot detoxify as well as others. This is known as the toxic overload theory of autism, and it came from the empirical experiences of moms.

In my book, The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism (Skyhorse), for which I read over 2,000 studies, I extended the toxic overload theory of autism formally into an Environmental Toxin Sampling Liability model that came with a heterogeneous genetic risk. In other words, different children can have a genetic risk of being unable to detoxify, but that genetic risk might be unique or peculiar to their family; therefore, different toxins might be more dangerous risk factors for some families than others. Here is just one image of a slide deck from 2019 that showcases the depth of actual comprehension of the pathophysiology of autism from multiple factors, a knowledge that has been available in the literature for a long time.

The silver/grey circles within each of the larger circles represent the number of doses of aluminum-containing vaccines in a child’s early years—exposures that are, importantly, in addition to genetic risk and other environmental factors.

This genetic pattern of risk is similar to the genetic pattern of risk of developing cancer in that different genes might confer risk of the same disease in different families and that some people, even if they carry the genetic risk, may avoid seeing the disease outcome if they avoid specific environmental exposures.

Here is a multifactorial causal pathway for the etiology of autism based on studies cited at the IPAK webite (see the website for all the citations):

As complex as this may seem, it must be correct: billions have been spent to find the autism gene or genes, and they number now in the thousands. A few of them involved genes that would alter the function of proteins in our nervous system, but not enough to explain the increase in prevalence (it’s not better diagnosis, either). Even the largest genetic studies left at least 50% liability to environmental causes. But, even after all this time, no study has been conducted testing the G x E (genetic x environment) interaction term. So, we need to do the studies.

In 2019, I published a study that found that genes that encode proteins that require special care to be folded by our cells are disproportionately represented among the genes that confirm the risk of autism.

The title of that paper is “Autism is an acquired cellular detoxification deficiency syndrome with heterogeneous predisposition”.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr did not ask for a history of medical research in autism to be siloed and kept secret behind the firewall of the CDC and its contract ease. He did not ask for the scientists involved to warp and twist the results of their studies and torture the data until they could find the result that would be palatable to a government that wanted to bury the cause of autism because they took on the liability of one of the potential causes.

The only thing Robert F. Kennedy Jr has ever asked for is objective science and more studies. He has reserved judgment on whether he is pro-vaccine or not, much to the Chagrin of many parents who feel that he should announce that he is anti-vaccine. But this would be premature. Although we have some very good, mature, and sophisticated ideas on how vaccines may and likely do contribute to the risk of autism, the question of whether vaccines are involved in autism, the most important question for public health and medicine regarding vaccines is:

Are vaccines safe enough for general, indiscriminate use without screening for individual risk to avoid adding to the disease burden on the US public or around the world?

Kennedy knows that risk/benefit analyses that could be done cannot because the studies presented to the Institutes of Medicine by the CDC and its contractees were intentionally biased and fraudulent.

When proper studies are done without looking for a particular outcome supporting or not supporting the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism, autoimmunity, cancer, and other population-level concerns, I am reasonably certain that Kennedy will come out with a personal position on vaccines and also with a formal public position. I am even more confident that he will continue to support individual choice. Those two positions do not need to be the same if one respects individual choice. I know medical doctors who smoke.

These are my views based on my assessment after reading almost everything he's written and listening to nearly everything he has said, not based on anything private or personal he has said to me.

One subjective science is in play. We should be able to predict which families and individuals are at the highest risk of damage from vaccines and reduce the iatrogenic disease burden from vaccines. What could result is a brokered stalemate where choices are made based on screening for risk, something that should be done with many medicines. The era of personalized medicine never manifested because the powers that be considered the process too complicated.

“Too complicated” is based on the one-sided view of efficacy, not on consideration of the degree of complication of vaccine injury and disease burden visited upon families that have to deal with the disability and the deaths of loved ones. To date, that has been dealt with by denialism, while vaccine manufacturers profit massively from whole-population vaccine programs.

The good news is I now see a rational path forward, one in which families’ and individuals’ private risks can be mitigated. Suppose any benefits from vaccines do exist, such as reducing the severity of pertussis, for example. In that case, objectivity may allow any actual benefit of vaccines might then be able to come into better focus.

Public Health agencies will no longer have to lie and misinform the public that vaccines can eradicate childhood illnesses or cervical cancer. Instead, suppose there is a disease severity reduction benefit. In that case, that outcome should be studied rather than transmission, and it should be applauded if it reduces the disease burden on the human population. The efficacy of vaccines has been grossly oversold; too many people know it, and they're looking for a path forward where they can get back to their lives and they can use vaccines if they want to, but no one is telling them they have to.

Ironically, we could see a golden age of Public Health in which the value of Public Health comes into its own based on actual merits rather than walking around with an albatross of the horrible reputation it currently wears around its neck.

This is not a naive position, nor is it a hope; it is a challenge. When allopathic medicine is upgraded to consider natural therapies and treatments on par with medicine via Integrative Pathways to Health and Integrative Pathways to Mental Health, perhaps the pain and suffering due to enforced ignorance can end, and the nation can begin to heal.

Senators, don’t blame the messenger. Give science a chance to save medicine. This may be its best and last chance.

Doctors, first, respect your patient. Second, do not harm. That means taking action to minimize any preventable harm, including personal risk screening for adverse events.

Scientists, be objective and remain that way at all costs.