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Leslie Manookian & The Greater Good Movie on Dr. Melinda Wharton

Greater-good-movieBy Anne Dachel

On Sept 16, 2014, released a video of Dr. Melinda Wharton, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (CDC), explaining why there was no research comparing the health outcomes and vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Leslie Manookian wrote,

The fact that this study has never been done is not only sad and frustrating, it is also unscientific, as this study might answer once and for all whether vaccines improve our children’s health, or harm it.

In making The Greater Good  we asked CDC‘s top vaccine official, Dr. Melinda Wharton, why CDC wouldn’t just do the study and put all the questions and worries to rest. Dr. Wharton’s answer may surprise you and leave you wondering whether the problem is truly the difficulty of the study, or perhaps something more frightening, like the answer they might find.

Dr. Wharton:

"It seems like it ought to be possible to compare the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children and address some of these questions.  It's got a kind of intuitive appeal.  ...

"I don't know of any way we can do it, and it's for a couple of different reasons. 

"In the first place, it would be pretty hard to find those 50,000 unvaccinated children to do the study comparing the health outcomes..."\

Leslie pointed out, "The CDC's own data says there are over a million unvaccinated children in the United States."

Wharton had more to say about why UNVACCINATED CHILDREN would be hard to study: 
"They're almost certainly very different than other children because their parents have made this decision not to vaccinate--and they probably made other decisions that are different than the decisions other parents have made....

"Let's just pretend for a moment that autism is actually caused by pesticides residues on broccoli. ...And we think about this group of 50,000 vaccinated children and this group of 50,000 unvaccinated children.  What's their exposure to pesticide residues on broccoli?  Is it the same?  And it's probably not, because probably those people who the choice not to vaccinate their children have other things they're concerned about as well.  And maybe they're not that concerned about pesticide residues on vegetables and they buy their fruits and vegetables at different stories than these other people do."

Leslie ended the video by telling us how ridiculous it is that Wharton blames different diets for the failure of officials to conduct this needed research.

 This wasn't the first time Dr. Wharton has made excuses for not studying vaccinated and unvaccinated children.  Seven years ago, I wrote about her explanation during an interview.    (Back then the autism rate was one in every 150 children.)

"Dr. Wharton said that because of the high vaccination rate in the U.S., it wouldn't be possible to do a comparison study of vaccinated and unvaccinated children for autism rates.  She didn't say anyone at the CDC had even looked for kids who haven't been vaccinated."

In 2007, Wharton said that it was impossible to do the study because there weren't enough unvaccinated kids.  Today, it's because unvaccinated children probably aren't eating vegetables laced with pesticides. 

I really have no response to what Wharton said in the video.  How do these people imagine they're credible to the public?



Alan Roberts

I'm not criticizing HomeFirst at all. I'm just explaining what the numbers mean - or more to the point what they don't necessarily mean. For example take a population of 40 thousand children. How many had follow-ups until age five? That's hard to tell but only about 75% of people born in IL stay there. Five years is about 1/16 of a person's lifespan. So it's reasonable to expect that about 5% are not eligible. Which leaves us around 38 thousand. If this was an average population we would expect 228 autism cases. Now split that population into never vaccinated and everyone else. What proportion is "never vaccinated"? Even given HomeFirst's criticism of national vaccination schedules. I'd expect less than 27% (about twenty times the national average) of HomeFirst's population to be never vaccinated even once. If Big Pharma is right and vaccination doesn't cause autism we would expect about 62 autism cases. To start making our case that there IS a correlation the rate would have to be less than 40 cases...and that's before you control for confounders (parental age, FXS, etc..).

If HomeFirst really does have smoking gun evidence. It would benefit everyone if they just did the math and showed it.


The information from homefirst seems a little strange. 30-30 thousand appears to be the total number of children seen over the years. It seems unlikely that all of them are never-vaccinated (he admits on his blog some have been minimally vaccinated). As autism can be diagnosed anywhere from 18 mo to 5 years. It's also unlikely that every child in that group had adequate follow up. The statement of Eisenstein's which is often quoted is that he is unaware of any autism in the never-vaccinated. His blog states "there is virtually no autism in our unvaccinated children".

So before I'd declare "smoking gun". I'd first want to know: a) How many of these thousands where seen after age five. b) How many of this subgroup are entirely unvaccinated. c) How many of those are diagnosed with autism.

Really? That's your take on this??

Our community has been whining for years about the absence of a vaccinated vs completely un-vaccinated study. And Homefirst Medical Services has furnished us with the expected result of such a study, without even trying

.....and your reaction is to that, is criticize Homefirst, instead of the vaccine peddling organization who refuses to even look into this?


Alan Roberts





I agree that the example of Dr. Mayer Eisenstein's Homefirst practice is impressive. Many of them are Amish, which might skew the results one way or the other. I don't know how many, but they intermarry a lot, inevitably, but also are physically very pure, the result of most of them unpolluted by chemicals, drugs, or vaccines. Possibly their gene pool is healthier than most, despite the intermarrying.



No , 35,000 completely un-vaccinated children who have completely avoided autism, is a God damn smoking gun.

Because there's not a vaccinated population anywhere in this world , who can truthfully make the same claim.

And to be honest, your weak attempts to explain it all away, are hard for me to understand.

Alan Roberts

50,000 is a bit optimistic (or something of a weak test). You are probably looking at 2-3 hundred thousand depending on what level of sensitivity you want.

Jeannette Bishop

I probably I need even more detailed help with research terminology, but aren't we essentially asking for study of the never-vaccinated, because we are concerned that vaccines are major confounders improperly handled, even so "improperly handled," as far as determining vaccine risk goes, that these confounders are often allowed to be used as "placebos" outright?

And now we are being given these reasons for not doing the research: 1) using a "control group" in the special case of vaccination science is immoral, at least in the gold standard of double-blind research (which we sometimes pretend all our modern health practices are based upon), or otherwise 2) we can't control for the confounders in terms of other vaccines, because it will be too hard to control for the confounders that are certain to be the "real" culprits?

In other words, possibly better, isn't the call for an unvaccinated (my spell checker doesn't even know this word) health survey, essentially a call to eliminate the most prevalent improperly handled confounders in the entire body of vaccine research to date? And further, the national "health" agencies seem to simply not want to do vaccine safety research without vaccine confounded control groups?

Maybe there's a better way to word this?


Ah, I guess I should point out that NASA went to the moon - the CDC - ah; is not so modern for they are still using very old technology that was developed by the Ottoman Empire some 300 or 400 years ago -discovered by scratching small pox into the skins of prisoners to cause them a hard death --


And TaxiMom - as proof we go to the movies.
esp the ones that we get to watch over and over again because that is the way it is with some of our family members.

In this case it is an movie from 1998 "Armageddon"
Elmo of Sesame street -- just so you know they do some times move on only to get stuck again.

Harry Stamper: What's your contingency plan?
Truman: Contingency plan?
Harry: Your backup plan. You gotta have some kind of backup plan, right?
Truman: No, we don't have a back up plan, this is, uh…
Harry: And this is the best that you-that the government, the U.S. government could come up with? I mean, you're NASA for crying out loud, you put a man on the moon, you're geniuses! You're the guys that're thinking shit up! I'm sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up and somebody backing them up! You're telling me you don't have a backup plan, that these eight boy scouts right here [gestures to USAF pilots], that is the world's hope, that's what you're telling me?
Truman: Yeah.


TaxiMom said:

"They ARE intellectually sophisticated--they are very clever. They're PAID to be clever, they were hired because of their intellect."

No, that was our first wrong assumption. We thought that just because they worked for a federal government agency.

That was just our first mistake.

cia parker



The other thing is that I've read that he says that most of the patients who have been with him since birth are completely unvaccinated, and that among them there has not been a single case of autism and not many of allergies etc. I'd like to know how many of his patient base he's talking about, how many got vaccines before they came to him, or even after, if they asked for vaccines, and may have autism etc. I would really like to have more exact figures, but he, as much as I admire and respect him, is probably not going to give the complete story.


They aren't going to do a study that will point to the need to stop selling any product. The answer will never be to buy less of anything. The official answer will always be to buy more drugs, more treatments, more services. The only answer that will get past the government's first base will be good for the economy, their masters' economy, not individual family's economies. Not that autism is good for the economy, but in the short-term, which is all that counts, sales and profits of the major controlling corporations must and will be maintained at the highest level possible, no matter what that does to the people or the planet.


Re Homefirst, I was trying to point out how ridiculous the argument is against conducting such a study. I agree with you 150%.


Yeah, but Barry, those Homefirst Medical Services families didn't partake of the rest of the health care system offerings the way others do - they tend to give birth at home, don't take a lot of other pharmaceuticals, they eat pure food, have less toxins in their homes, etc.


More than 35,000 completely un-vaccinated children, who have completely avoided autism.

The rest is noise.


Jenny Allan, I don't want to underestimate them. They ARE intellectually sophisticated--they are very clever. They're PAID to be clever, they were hired because of their intellect. Let's not confuse intellect with decency.

And yet, because too many of the lies have been exposed, they've run out of arguments, and have had to resort to personal insults and jeering. Nobody with a shred of decency would stoop to jeering at parents of severely injured children, no matter how strongly they disagree with them, but this isn't a matter of personal disagreement. It's more a matter of their values--they value the Big Lie over human life.

All the intellectual ability in the world can't make that any less evil.

Jenny Allan

I do not think persons who "mock and demean people who criticize the safety and efficacy of an invasive medical procedure", are in any way "intellectually sophisticated", instead they are resorting to 'ad hominem' smears and insults, because they have no reasonable or logical arguments left to defend their own actions and policies.

John Stone

One of the things we can keep on learning from the CDC is that in order to get their negative results they keep on having to cheat. It is not hard to document from presently available documents it is only hard to get the mainstream media and politicians to take any notice. Another thing we learn is that they keep on having to ignore what ordinary citizens tell them about the effects of their mandated products.

As we've seen NIMH boss Tom Insel gets confused when he tries to think what to do about it, but it is quite simple. You actively monitor and investigate adverse vaccine reactions and their sequelae, not necessarily as part of a study but just out normal ethical medical practice. And collect data.

A vaccinated vs unvaccinated study (testing for a range of health outcomes) may have its limitations but it is certainly potentially interesting and important.


Brian Parner: Just so we are on the same page.

A lie is an intentionally false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth.[1] Lies can be told for various reasons and with various amounts of success.

1.1 Bad faith
1.2 Barefaced lie
1.3 Big lie
1.4 Bluffing
1.5 Bullshit
1.6 Butler lie
1.7 Contextual lie
1.8 Economical with the truth
1.9 Emergency lie
1.10 Exaggeration
1.11 Fabrication
1.12 Fib
1.13 Half-truth
1.14 Haystack answer
1.15 Honest lie
1.16 Jocose lie
1.17 Lie-to-children
1.18 Lying by omission
1.19 Lying in trade
1.20 Minimisation
1.21 Misleading and dissembling
1.22 Noble lie
1.23 Pathological lie
1.24 Perjury
1.25 Polite lie
1.26 Puffery
1.27 Speaking with forked tongue
1.28 View from nowhere
1.29 Weasel word
1.30 White lie

Let us play 20 questions with them.

And we won't win.


@Brian Pamer: Well said. You have put your finger on the real issues.


Jenny Allen: Keep in mind what it means when intellectually sophisticated people mock and demean people who criticize the safety and efficacy of an invasive medical procedure.

It means two things.
1) It means that they have no good arguments.(Indeed, how CAN they argue with us when they know that we understand what they're really doing?)
2) It says a lot about their lack of humanity.

Don't let them raise your blood pressure. It's not worth it, and they're getting desperate anyway, knowing that they are losing the confidence of more people with every publicized vaccine reaction, even if they're only publicized on sites like this one.

If anything, they're all going to be wondering which among their ranks will turn whistleblower next.

Brian Pamer

Linda1, point well taken. I guess it is naive to think that however the question is posed, the survey will ever be done, or, if it is done, that the results won't be finagled until no difference is reported. You are completely correct, they are in the business of lying to us, and the potential liability if they ever stop is too high to imagine. After all, it is the Centers for Disease Control, not Prevention or Elimination...

But still there are battles to win in the hearts and minds of the general public and in the blogosphere, so I still think we would all benefit by raising the bar for ourselves and learn both accurate terminology and to recognize logical fallacies so that patronizing and condescending comments/arguments can be refuted with skill and finality.

It wouldn't hurt to get familiar with the scientific method either...once understood, it can provide insight into all areas of one's life. Those that claim "the science has shown there is no causal link" obviously have no conception of what science is, or they would know that science can only prove that things are a certain way under such and such conditions, never that something doesn't exist. Understanding the scientific method also clarifies with certainty that epidemiology is not science, it is statistics, and therefore questionable in any situation where the analysis is done by those that stand to gain from a particular outcome.


If the CDC was genuinely concerned about the exploding incidence of autism, they would be racing to study groups like Homefirst Medical Services.

And not employing armies of of academic prostitutes, to invent excuses for why they haven't.


Research is done all the time on healthier populations to find out why. Look at all the research that's been done on the French and Mediterraneans because they have a lower rate of heart disease, and in the Japanese to discover why they have a lower incidence of some cancers, as just a few examples. But when it comes to autism, those healthier populations, even those living within our own borders, are deemed so different that the results would be meaningless.

This is not the reasoning in the search for answers with any other disorder. It is so obviously just a lame excuse for doing nothing.


Yeah, but Barry, those Homefirst Medical Services families didn't partake of the rest of the health care system offerings the way others do - they tend to give birth at home, don't take a lot of other pharmaceuticals, they eat pure food, have less toxins in their homes, etc. So even if they do have a zero autism rate, it doesn't matter, they don't count because we can't admit that the way to prevent autism might be to do what they do.


Except for one commenter below, the real implications of Wharton's words were lost...

Now, what is Wharton's actually implying is this:
We can conduct a study that might find two groups with great differences in autism rates but we don't want to conduct this study, as the factors might not be clear enough (or something).

So, we have the autism epidemic, millions are affected in the US only, and the CDC doesn't want to conduct a study that might come up with a HUGE clue as to the factors behind this epidemic.

This is the same as CDC not studying Amish, with the lame excuse that "they are different". Yes, they ARE different so let's study them intensively until we find out how exactly are they different and what are the implications on autism rates.

There's no need arguing about vax-unvax study techniques, re-Wharton. If CDC top official denies the need for a study she acknowledges might find big difference in autism rates between two groups - hell, she sure don't want to solve the autism "riddle". That simple.


"….. Of course, you could assert that you want a double-blind, prospective study - which would assign about 50,000 children into "vaccinated" & "placebo" groups, but then you would be purposely creating an 25,000 child group who are purposely unvaccinated - and they don't know it.


Or…. you could just look at a group like Homefirst Medical Services, who didn't turn their backs on parents who chose not to vaccinate their children. And who, over the course of a few decades, have generated more than 35,000 completely unvaccinated children, who have completely avoided autism.

That statement can not be made for ANY group of vaccinated children, no matter how many vaccines they recived.

And the beauty of this fact, is that Homefirst Medical Services never set out to produce it.
They just respected the wishes of parents who were skeptical of vaccines, and this fact just revealed itself.

That's zero cases of autism for more than 35.000 completely unvaccinated children. Yet according to the CDC, the incidence of autism among vaccinated children has reached 1 in 68.

So if the medical community is aware of this incidence, and are continuing to vaccinate anyway…. then it can only mean that for every 35,000 vaccinated children, they are purposely generating ~ 515 cases of autism.


If never-vaccinated kids turned out to be significantly healthier than vaccinated kids, that would be a pretty big clue, wouldn't it? After that first step, the role of broccoli in the robustness of the never-vaccinated could be investigated.

John Stone


We may also recall Lord Armstrong of Illminster, who as as Chief Secretary to the (UK) Cabinet was sent in 1986 to give evidence to an Australian court to prevent the publication of Peter Wright's book 'Spycatcher': Sir Robert, as he then was, admitted in court to being "economical with the truth". There you have the British extablishment unfurled in all its glory.


Brian Pamer,
The questions of MDs and PhDs have also been answered with lies.

If someone is determined to lie to you, it doesn't matter how you ask the question, as long as the question is understood. There is no doubt that they understand what is being asked of them and, except for CDC senior scientist William Thompson who said that he has been asked to lie by his CDC boss, they have demonstrated that they are determined to lie.

BoB Moffitt

@ Brian Pamer

"In this strange landscape we find ourselves in, it is only by asking for exactly what we want that we will get the answers we deserve."

I wholeheartedly agree .. but .. I suspect that is a lot harder to do than most imagine.

For example ..

Not that long ago .. a highly respected gentleman proved himself an expert on pharsing each and every word .. when .. under oath facing perjury charges for lying to investigators .. famously defended himself by challenging his accusers thusly:

"It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

Apparently .. in the "strange landscape we find ourselves in" .. we could not get a truthful answer to a simple question containing the word "is" .. which means .. we are in a whole world of trouble when the questions become far more complex.

Black Velvet Band

Hey Larry , I have an idea for you and leftbrain,rightfoot .

Why don't we take a sample of say 100 autistic brains which were donated to investigative science by their parents after the subjects natural death . Lets keep them in a freezer at one of the greatest academic establishments in the world perhaps .
Presumably the brains were to be used to search for a chemical cause of autism via dissection and biopsy etc.
But then maybe the freezer will fail despite all the back-up generators and failsafe plans and all the samples were destroyed before any meaningful work could be performed . This is not fiction Larry . This happened . Yes Larry .
Its almost like someone doesn't want to find the cure or cause of autism , but hey maybe its my over active imagination and my conspiracy theory leanings .

Black Velvet Band

Astounding news Angus Files .

Offits vaccine Rotateq contaminated by the Simian virus , the baboon virus M7 - he has known this all along I bet .

The man is a criminal now for sure .

Jenny Allan

@Brian Pamer
We are all only too familiar with 'semantics', aka 'spin doctoring'. It's become a whole new 'industry', spawning highly paid 'communications' experts and even entire departments. Our UK National Health Service spends a fortune on these people, who are mainly responsible for all those press releases and media biased programmes, often spreading misinformation and just plain lies, and of course I am only talking here about 'official' communications.

This AoA thread is actually one of the few which insists on 'standards'. 'Lawrence' and his ilk are very welcome, as long as they present their arguments politely. You will not find nasty profanity and hateful ad hominem comments here, although some of those pro vaccine, pro GMO, pro global warming blogs and social media sites are appallingly lax about what is allowed, much of which actually breaks UK laws prohibiting 'hateful' rhetoric, death threats, and incitement to violence.

Just for laughs, Brian Deer was 'stalking' the AoA comment threads recently,(he calls it the "age of absurdity blog"), and found a comment by me he didn't like, which inspired him to comment on Matt Carey's, (aka Sullivan's), Left Brain/Right Brain blog. Carey's subject matter was a mathematical treatise, calculating how many $thousands or even $millions Dr Andrew Wakefield was going to have to pay to Deer and the BMJ after losing his recent court jurisdiction appeal. Most of the cash was calculated in lawyers' fees.

Someone on Carey's comment thread pointed out the Judges awarded only defenders COURT fees against AW, NOT their legal costs. This was the subject matter of my AoA comment, in response to 'legal eagle' Godfrey Wyl, who had also pointed out this inconvenient truth to AoA readers.

Deer called me a 'belching sow'. Sorry Brian - I am about to burp and oink again over my haggis and neeps. It's biological. Brian's verbal flatulence tends to concentrate on the 'other end' as evinced by his further comment where my brain was compared to a '40 watt cesspit pump'. That would be quite impressive actually Brian, and I'm delighted to see you taking an interest in environmental issues, including alternative sources of energy. Perhaps that little recent spat with 'Sewage Sludge Expert', (what Deer called him), eminent Microbiologist Dr David Lewis, has actually taught you something about biological sciences.

Anyway Brian, I'm glad I gave you a good belly laugh, which should sustain you whilst you count up the lawyers fees for all that Anti Slapp and other 'claptrap'. Have a nice day!!

Brian Pamer

The people who oppose this investigation into the differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated children are masters at semantics and terminology. We, parents who saw regression in one of our children closely following the administration of vaccines, are merely conversationalists. One tactic of the conversationalist, in seeking to be understood, is to mimic the vocabulary of those who stand as experts against us. This has led, in part, to the unfortunate situation documented in this article and to uncountable numbers of jeering and chiding commentary by those who claim to possess an understanding of science.

The medical establishment and governmental officials who have been hired to listen to us and then thwart our efforts to find answers have a tedious task: to endure our misuse of terminology and pretend to take us seriously, then distill our mistakes into arguments that ignore the meaning of our questions and focus solely on the technical errors. They patronize and condescend, call us uneducated and unscientific, and refuse to bring the slightest bit of common sense to the table.

For our part, we strive to make our arguments more impassioned, appealing to their humanity and compassion. They are having none of that. Often, when we try to point out the fallacies in their rebuttals, we merely end up proving that we are just as guilty as they are of failing to listen to the other side.

What we need to take away from their seemingly non sequitur responses is an understanding of the importance of terminology. Case in point: our oft-repeated requests for this "study" of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children. Although their answers seem evasive and strange, they are answering the question we have asked. The problem is, we are not asking the right question.

Look at the definition of the word "study:"
noun: study
the devotion of time and attention to acquiring knowledge on an academic subject, especially by means of books.
a detailed investigation and analysis of a subject or situation.
"a study of a sample of 5,000 children"
synonyms: investigation, inquiry, research, examination, analysis, review, survey
"a study of global warming"

To the conversationalist a synonym is as good a word as the term itself. In the highly specialized language of science and medicine, this can never be the case. Certainly, we want an investigation into the differences between these two groups. But an investigation follows the course of many steps, typically from the general to the ever-more specific. In this technical language, a "study" is what is referred to in the second definition of the word shown above. An investigation may eventually lead to a study, if the initial collection of data warrants it. You have to have some documented facts (aka field data) in order to make a hypothesis, and from the hypothesis you design the study, which will be very specific and seek to compare interesting co-factors derived from the significant correlations discovered in the field data.

Compare the definition of "study" to this, the definition of the word "survey:"
noun: survey; plural noun: surveys
a general view, examination, or description of someone or something.
"the author provides a survey of the relevant literature"
synonyms: study, review, consideration, overview; More
scrutiny, examination, inspection, appraisal
"a survey of the current literature"
synonyms: poll, review, investigation, inquiry, study, probe, questionnaire, census, research
"a survey of sexual behavior"
2. ...

We have been asking for the wrong thing for over a decade now, and these assholes (excuse my use of an overly technical term) have been laughing at us behind closed doors and sneering at us to our faces because we have not taken the time to decode the semantics of the dialogue we're attempting. Forget that "study" is a synonym for "survey." One thing that medical school graduates are acutely aware of is the nuances between conversationally similar terms. Those that fail to understand the distinctions are those that fail, that wash out of the program. We need to understand these semantics and use them to our advantage by correctly parsing the arguments presented to dissuade us, and call them out for the fallacies they are in their own terms.

Laurence's comments below are a prime example of this. (Not to pick on you Laurence, but you have left yourself open to analysis by the precise nature of your commentary...) He is correctly stating that a study of the kind we seek would be difficult, unethical, or meaningless, because the number of variables is too great to construct a proper study from appropriate cohorts. The part he (and others that ply a similar strategy) omits is that this situation is due to the lack of documented field data, where strong statistical correlations might provide a hypothesis around which a straightforward and ethical study could be constructed. But because they know our ignorance of the terminology is, well, terminal, they has a bit of fun at our expense by peppering their arguments with all kinds of logical fallacies that beggar any understanding of what we so plainly seek, and only hold water when viewed in the light of a very technical parsing of the language we employ.

Despite these tactical failures on our part, word is getting out that there is a problem here. Indeed, thanks to the fact that we are using the plainest language in our pleas and in that light the arguments we are answered with appear to be disingenuous at the very least, and also thanks to the persistence of the meme in social media, more and more of the "common people" are becoming aware of our plight and are seeing it, at least unconsciously, for what it is: a vast and plodding smoke screen by those that are in the best position to solve this mystery, and who steadfastly refuse to employ any common sense or compassion in answering our cries for help.

So I suggest that our numbers aspire to continue our efforts in a two-pronged attack: continue to produce memes in the common tongue to get our point across to those who might become the next victims of what we fear to be true, but also fight the battles we find presented to us from the oh-so-smart members of the medical establishment on their own terms: clean up our semantics, acquire and employ an understanding of the "scientific terminology" we are being rebutted with, and learn what the common fallacies of logic are and loudly point out their use by those who use them on us to demonstrate our hopeless ignorance.


Eileen Nicole Simon

Lawrence, did you have fun today? I also had the day off, and wanted to respond to this post, but this morning I went to my yoga class, which transferred at the end to the beach. Then I took my 2-mile meditation in motion walk along the beach as the tide came in, then ate lunch with my friends and our sea gull friends. It is interesting to watch and listen to sea gulls talk to each other, and I pointed out that this gift of the gulls is what is most impaired in autistic children...

My first reaction to seeing Anne’s post this morning was, no, haven’t we had enough epidemiology??? It really is high time for research on the brain to be the focus. Autism is a neurological disorder with distinct characteristics: language disorder, repetitive movements, and environmental obliviousness. What prevents maturation of the language areas? Is impairment within the basal ganglia responsible for movement disorder? Is environmental neglect a defect in the conscious state? Research on brain systems is what we need, not more epidemiology.

cia parker

I am aware of how scientific studies should be done: are you? You know that no parent would consent either to his or her child being vaxed or unvaxed randomly: why do you think it would be necessary? You've got a hundred vaxed children and a hundred unvaxed. Doctors examine them for a number of years and make a record of how many develop autism, seizure disorders, autoimmune diseases of all kinds. The doctors are unaware of their vaccine status, so they just make a record of what they observe and diagnose. At the end of the study, you count up the number of vaxed and unvaxed children with the different conditions and compare them. You say equivalent as to important confounders. Who will judge what important confounders are? It may turn out that Doritos have a secret ingredient that, when consumed by a child who has been vaxed within the previous three weeks, greatly increases his risk of autism, compared to the child who has never eaten Doritos. At this time let's just do the study, let's look at the Safe Minds study, and then I'm sure you and your colleagues will try to shoot down the results.

cia parker

The Math,
I'll go you one better. Families that don't vax don't need to go to the doctor every year for a well visit. Apart from my visits to the doctor for eight DPTs by 11, a bunch of polios both injected and oral, and two smallpox vaccinations, I went once for measles at six, once for an ear infection at eight and once when I had a high fever at eleven. That was all. Only the one for an ear infection may have been a good idea, or maybe not, I got a penicillin shot. But healthy children don't need to go to the doctor in the absence of symptoms of something a doctor could effectively treat. So not for viral diseases.

If parents get Romm's Vaccinations with advice on caring for children with the childhood diseases at home, they are unlikely to EVER need to go to the doctor for ANYTHING. We never even ever went to the ER for broken bones or severe wounds, which fortunately never happened to us. One of the most important take-home points in this discussion is that pediatricians will be put out of business once parents give up vaccines. NO well-child visits, and NO chronic diseases like asthma, allergies, GI disease, diabetes, few ear infections, no need for Ritalin. No wonder they're fighting so hard.

cia parker

You're right about needing to do the study fast, but first, the pro-vaccine camp will ALWAYS be able to point out some angle which they say taints the results of ANY study that could EVER possibly be done. Surely we have to just leave to their own devices those who believe that a child who ate broccoli (no, wait, pesticides are not a big concern with broccoli, let's make it grapes, which you should NEVER eat if conventionally grown, i.e., pesticide-treated. Anyone who thinks that a child who eats conventional, washed grapes is MUCH more likely to get autism than one who eats organic grapes should just be left to their own devices. Pesticides have been universally used since WWII: remember the son-in-law on Petticoat Junction who flew a plane that sprayed pesticides on crops in the late '60s? My mother NEVER in her entire life bought a single organic product, she ALWAYS chose based on price, which meant conventional. My brother and I reacted to the DPT with encephalitis and Asperger's, but since we were infants at the time of reaction, I think our fate was cast before we ever ate produce of any kind. No one else we knew or had ever heard of had autism, and I didn't realize we did until my daughter was four and I was researching it.

Surely there's enough evidence of all kinds to indict vaccines as the cause of autism. Lawrence is a purist only so he can denigrate any study that will ever be done, without being able to explain why he thinks the "safety" studies on vaccines that have been done mean anything, manipulated as they were in every case by the pharma companies that paid for the studies. Sure, let's do the studies, but it's not really necessary. Wow, what a headache to try to find populations numbering tens of thousands equivalent not only in the number, type, and timing of vaccines received, but equivalent down to the last microgram of preservatives, pesticides, artificial coloring, and fructose ever consumed? Maybe that's a job you should look into, Lawrence, now that I'm sure you're looking for a way to get out of your contract before the deluge.

Angus Files

The Proffit says..its all good for you..we believe him don't we...WINK!

BREAKING NEWS: Millions of Children Infected with 'Vaccine Safety Experts' Rotateq Vaccine: Dr. Paul Offit



Birgit Calhoun

Sandy! Thank you for your comments!


Vaccines are entirely a criminal matter now .


Better hurry up with the vaccinated versus unvaccinated study before the demographics start obviously favoring the educated and well off. Poor people have to buy their food at the local convenience store; rich people have the option of Whole Foods. Poor people might not have the leisure time to thoroughly research supplements and buy the purer brands of vitamin D or cod liver oil...and so on. I can see how at some point socio-economic status will begin to shade the results and unfortunately this is what might happen in 5-10 years time with the vaccine debate. Those who have the means will opt out even if it means faking vaccine records or putting money under the table because they will know beyond a shadow of doubt that vaccines are causing an epidemic of allergies (including the deadly peanut allergy), an epidemic of autoimmune disorders, and an epidemic of autism. And maybe if kids get the measles it might even prevent cancer. So... the rich have the advantage and that will be statistically significant. They will opt for healthy, unvaccinated kids.

On the other hand, we know that young African American males are more vulnerable to MMR triggered autism and the inherent racism in denying this information is beyond belief. Shouldn't someone be out there informing people who have a known vulnerability. It's so much like the bowel disease in autism that can't be treated because it might give credit to those who have found bowel disease in autism... so let them suffer, the vaccine program is too important. Too important to prevent peanut allergies, autoimmune disease, autism in the vulnerable...they know the genetic vulnerability now, do nothing. Amazing isn't it? Recently I have read that this virus going around seems to be selectively making the vaccinated more sick...again, they know. Seems like the unvaccinated aren't getting the mumps in the college mumps epidemic, and the unvaccinated don't seem as vulnerable to whooping cough B strain...again, they know. At what point is ignorance no longer an excuse?


I bet the reason why insurance companies tolerate vaccination and its fall-out is that they are on Pharma's lengthy kickback list.


Its all over Larry !

No more (faked) studies buddy boy .

The CDC will lie no more .

Its all over

Time to face the music .

Vaccines are a crime against humanity (worse than ZyklonB)

Sandy MacInnis

I'm glad there is a discussion of epidemiological methods here. However I wish everyone would be respectful, please.

I have some comments on some of the points raised both in the article and in the comments.

1. Who says a retrospective cohort study such as the one suggested by Leslie Manookian requires 50,000 unvaccinated kids? Did Dr. Wharton do a sample size calculation to reach a given level of statistical power? If so, what level of power? If for example we assume 1% of all subjects have autism, 50,000 in the unexposed group would be expected to have 500 unexposed with autism. That's probably many more than are needed.

2. In such studies you want to try to keep the exposed and unexposed populations similar in the ways that are relevant, but that does not mean they are exact in every way. What we want is a sample that is representative of the population, and either avoid or account for significant confounders. Confounders can be controlled for in various ways. Excluding subjects can cause bias. Sub-group stratification is one way to control, but it can cause issues. A typical approach is to control for confounders directly in regression analysis.

3. For a factor to be considered a confounder it is necessary, but not sufficient, for it to meet these three tests: It's an extraneous risk factor for the outcome; it is associated with the exposure; and it is not affected by either the exposure or the outcome. Eating non-organic food may not meet any of these. Is Dr. Wharton saying that non-organic food is an established risk factor for autism? That would be interesting all by itself. Do we know that eating non-organic food is associated with vaccination status? If so, what would that imply? (Intentionally rhetorical.) Do we know that eating non-organic food is not affected by either vaccination status or autism status? Don't some parents start to feed their families organic food after they learn they have a child with autism, e.g. in an effort to help?
A valid confounder is not just any factor that has an effect on a regression analysis.

4. Improper handling of confounders is a major cause of bias in studies. The problems cut both ways - adjusting for something when you shouldn't, and not when you should. It's hard to be sure, and it's a topic of research.

For anyone with the determination to dig in and learn a lot about this, I would suggest reading Modern Epidemiology, 3rd ed, Rothman Greenland and Lash - an excellent reference book. It's probably too much for most people to wade through, but even the first few chapters can be very useful, and you can look up almost anything.

Bad penny

Well I am sure there are 50,000 families like mine oldest vaccine injured younger child in vaccinated healthy. Both eat the same foods live close to a highway and had the same old mom with the same old sperm so.... I am sure there are families like mine. It is so obvious they know what the unaltered study would prove the US SUPREME COURT RULLING vaccines are unavoidably UNSAFE!


the Studies were faked & fraudulent in Denmark Larry , and the lead author (possibly the most honest man in vaccines & immunology) Poul Thoresen ran off with $2m of the CDC's cash
How funny is that ?

Then the CDC's own studies were faked and are fraudulent in 2004 as admitted by the lead author William Thompson

Julie Gerberding , the head of the CDC vaccine division and now the head of Muck's vaccine division has admitted vaccines cause autism (which makes her a criminal and mass murderer by the way.

So you now want more studies on this ? Larry please
Do you feel the intensity Larry boy -
All that is holding this holocaust together now is the 100% global state censorship because other than that its all over
We the parents have won , & science has once again been used for pure evil means (& not for the first time).

Work will not set anyone free (Auschwitz reply)
Vaccines of Mass Destruction

The Math - Unvax'ed kids more profitable for Insurance Cos.

Math for anyone who's interested:

Family A - 2 kids fully vax'ed from birth to 18
Vaccine costs: $5000 ($2500/kid)
24 well child Dr. visits per child for vaccine administration: $4560 ($2280/kid, 95/visit)
Total Vax related expenses: $9560

Family B - 2 kids no vaccines from birth to 18
Vaccine costs: $0
14 well child Dr. visits per child (est. 10 fewer visits due to non vaccination): $2660 ($1330/kid, $95/visit)
Total Vax related expenses: $0
Overlapping expenses for well child checks: $2660

Bottom Line: 2-child families that do not vaccinate give insurance companies conservatively $7000 to put toward expenses of cancer patients and other patients with chronic health conditions. 3-child non-vax families contribute more than $10,000 to insurance companies bottom lines.

People should embrace the unvaccinated! The money they don't spend on vaccines and healthcare can go toward those who really need it - those with cancer and chronic health issues whose families are going broke with out of pocket expenses.

Source for vaccine schedule and costs: CDC website


So we don't want to know if unvaccinated children who are raised on organic foods and aren't exposed to pesticides in and around the home are healthier than vaccinated children who eat whatever and may or not be exposed to pesticides? Wouldn't that be useful information? Then we'd just have to eat organic and forgo the pesticides and vaccines. Can't have that though. Three mega industries would be hurt. Better to hurt the children.

Oh, and Lawrence, regarding matching populations: The CDC doesn't seem to mind applying Danish vaccine safety studies to Americans, two populations that don't even begin to match.

Jeannette Bishop

They are already arguing against the results of the study beforehand essentially, like they know or strongly fear what it will be. We know enough of the quality of research they are willing to put out there in defense of the practice of vaccination to know that they don't care about robust methods. They are not worried that the study will falsely show that vaccines are better than they are, even though that is what the bias of most researchers would lean towards--we all want a panacea against disease, and I don't know who wants to find out that we have been doing something possibly extremely stupid for decades. They are not worried that such a study will show vaccines only slightly harmful, falsely understating it. They already in some measure acknowledge there is risk. They are arguing against an outcome that will show vaccines cause a lot of harm.

And they are already telling us the reasons they would then pull out to try to dismiss such results, showing they will have no desire to then perform studies with more robust methods to "really validate" the results, showing that they don't really care to get the truth on paper.

Clearly, those taking this position do not respect the right of informed consent, and with the abysmal health of our highly vaccinated today, it's hard to argue for them that they are just patronizingly afraid that respecting informed consent might make things worse, for all of us.


So, yes - studies are being done. In fact, at least one of these studies is being done by SafeMinds....

Why don't we wait for the results & see what happens?

@Ms. Parker - perhaps you really should research how studies are done, so that you can intelligently comment, unlike just repeating a variety of "might-be's"

cia parker


There's no need to do the double blind study you suggest. Dr. Sears said what is just common sense: that the only group that would need to be blinded would be the doctors, who would not know if the children they examined were vaxed or unvaxed, but would just make their diagnoses in the generally accepted way. What difference would it make whether or not the parents were unaware of their own child's status? It's magical thinking, to think that a parent's beliefs about a child's disease protection or lack thereof would make any difference in the child's actual physical development and diseases.

The vax/unvax study could ethically be done, and should be supported by the likes of Offit and company.

How are such human studies usually done? When they do studies on the effects of mammography, hormone replacement therapy, or the need for yearly blood tests to detect prostate cancer, using large groups of subjects, do they even try to make sure that all the tens of thousands of subjects are exactly the same in every possibly relevant cofounder? It would obviously be impossible to do. Is that a reason not to do the studies? Obviously not.

Louis Conte


Wharton blames broccoli.

Well, just the very "different" people who eat the organic stuff.

This is absolute nonsense. I would use other adjectives - there are hundreds - but I don't use those words in public settings.


"That's why there are a number of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies that are under way..."

Where Larry ? in Denmark ? Iceland maybe ? in fact any pariah state where the dubious results cannot be challenged in a court of law .You are a ridiculous person arent you .

And this holocaust is 20+ years old now .
When do we expect your study to yield these results ? 2095

MIT (the finest University in the World they say - nbr1):
And she says Autism will be at 50% of all US kids in just 11 years Larry .


Oops - let me clarify...

There are a number of studies underway that include comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals - and the design of those studies should be done in such a way to eliminate variables that could effect the overall results outside of the factors you are studying.

As to the 2004 study - the reasons to not using the information from certain participants were plainly stated.


@Birgit - did I say that it was "impossible?" Of course I didn't - what I said, specifically, what that a study could not be performed the way that you wanted it, because you aren't taking into account variable factors that could lead to inaccurate results.


I know exactly what I'm talking about, perhaps you should do a bit more research yourself.

Birgit Calhoun

Lawrence! Your argument about confounding factors should be made about all the studies that have called vaccines safe. It's ridiculous to pick the vaccinated versus unvaccinated study as having too many confounding factors. Was being black too much of a confounding factor in the 2004 study? Is that why the group of black children was ignored? How about the Danish study? Poul Thorsen (the wanted man) started it with one cohort and ended up with a totally different cohort in the end. Get your facts before you make dumb comments. At least don't pretend you know something about the scientific method.


Can't you ask if they eat organic produce? If you ask me if my family eats organic broccoli, I know the answer (though I can never remember how to spell it).

I believe the CDC is conducting a broad autism study now called SEED which includes a parent questionnaire. Supposedly the study will include some environmental factors.


@Maurine - if my other posts make it through, you'll see exactly what I it possible to equate different populations?

Of course it is - as long as your study parameters take into account variability & uses known means to eliminate those variables as a factor for what you are checking for - hence the reason why you see a lot of subgroup analysis (and why there is also population matching for subgroups as well).

There is actually a Science to all of this - which you don't seem to understand very well, if at all.


@Gerry - and the populations are never "exactly equal" but you need to know what the differences are & account for them (or eliminate them) to make sure that the factor you are checking for (to see whether or not vaccines are a contributing factor to a) autism diagnosis b) neurological issues in general c) health status) is the only major variable.

If you compared two populations and there were significant differences - say in pesticide exposure or age of the parents or number of siblings or even histories of disease or neurological dysfunction in the families, then how could you tell that vaccines had anything to do with either positive or negative results?

That's why Researchers try to eliminate variability.

Make sense?


@Gerry - yes, that is how these studies work. You take two populations and attempt to eliminate as many variables as possible (so you can tell what attribute is having an effect) - in this case, you want to make sure vaccination status is the only major difference...not lifestyle, not age, not exposure to other factors, etc.

It would be like trying to compare, say the Amish vs. a mainstream population, because of the massive number of genetic issues and diseases that plague Amish children...regardless of their vaccination status.

It is also the reason why, even after conducting a basic study, re-evaluations are sometimes needed to account for variables that were discovered during the actual research phase. So, you set up your initial set of variables & how you are going to account for them in the study design, but if you discover new ones during the course of the investigation, then you need to take steps to either mitigate those variables or perhaps even eliminate study participants that fall outside of the range or increase variability to the point where the results are invalid or not representative of the population at large.

Does any of this sound familiar? It has nothing to do with trying to change or manipulate results - it is just good Science to make the results are real, accurate and reflect what was being studied at the time. And certainly, if you end up finding that you can't confirm certain information for certain individuals in a study, it would be better to exclude them, as it adds uncertainty or unknown variables that you cannot account for.

See, these is a method to all of this - one that is designed for accuracy - but you seem to think that we should pursue studies that aren't designed for accuracy or taking variables into account, but instead are simply one-dimensional to give you the results you expect....but Science doesn't work that way.

If you actually educated yourself on how studies are designed, either retrospective or perspective, on large or small populations, you would be much better equipped to understand why results are presented the way they are, why they are checked, why certain changes are made (or not made).

It isn't about a conspiracy, but if you don't have the education to understand basic scientific method, I can see where it would be confusing.

Maurine Meleck

No studies ever done with 2 different populations can be equated. That is just an absurd argument, Lawrence.

Terrific video by the Greater Good and great piece from Annie. Thanks, A


Sandy Gottstein

Here's what happened (and didn't) when I raised the question in a Congressional hearing, and the same excuses were given:
Thank You, Congressman Shays

And for anyone interested, here is more on my ongoing efforts to get properly designed and conducted never-vaccinated studies:

Gerry Gillung

Lawrence-Really? Do they do that with all studies....make sure that both populations are exactly equal? For example, in the study in question about timing of the MMR, did they also check things like the age of the parents, or if the father was older, by how much, or the educational status of the parents, or what part of the country did the parents come from, or were they smokers, or did some of them eat an organic diet, or did they breastfeed their babies and for how long, etc., etc.?
I'm not an expert on these things, but couldn't all of these things be considered confounders? It seems that you folks who don't want to do a vaxed vs unvaxed study are trying to apply more rigorous standards to such a study than is usually the case, but correct me if I am wrong.


@Greg - what about the study? I am eagerly awaiting the results from all of these studies & they'll be released when they are released - as I have no control over the the process.

@Danchi - I would love to see the actual citations that "unvaccinated" children are healthier or have fewer doctor's visits or are less expensive for insurance companies...and phone or internet surveys don't count.


Yes, it was known that cigarettes were harmful, but just like with vaccines today that are known to be harmful and marketed anyway, the government and media did all they could to keep the public in the dark. Just as the public now is being bombarded with ads to vaccinate, back then the public was bombarded with ads to smoke. It really is the same behavior, different product, history repeating itself. When my father was a prisoner of war in WWII, he would periodically get a box from the Red Cross that contained a tin of powdered milk, a chocolate bar and a pack of cigarettes. I've seen on youtube in the past a doctor on some talk show in the 1940's or 50's advising pregnant women to smoke, saying that smoking is good during pregnancy because, after all, who wants to have a big baby? Unfortunately, I couldn't find that particular video, but found these (note the Flintstone cartoon Winston ad aimed at little kids):


Net net....families that do not vaccinate their kids are more profitable to insurance companies than families that do.

Also factor in this equation the insurance companies saves on that bonus that they give to Doctors or Medical Practices that demonstrate a 100% vaccination rate. This could be one of the reason Doctors "fire" patients that don't comply with the CDC schedule. Even if they lose patients-they can still maintain that 100% level of compliance and get that bonus.



As I asked in another thread, what about that vaxx/unvaxx study from the NIH that Insel mentioned earlier? I understood it was to be released in July 2014.


Unvaccinated kids = More profits for Insurance Cos.

Insurance companies already have this data, and they're not exactly sure what to do with it besides keep a lid on it. After all their business partners (MD's hospitals and pharma companies) rely on sick and unhealthy people to survive.

But it's true that insurance companies know that families with unvaccinated children contribute in a positive way to their bottom line.

Vax and non-vax families pay the same monthly premiums but spend less on services. Foregoing the expense of vaccines alone saves insurance companies over $10K per child from birth through adolescence.

On top of that unvax'ed kids have fewer prescriptions, fewer doctor visits - only well checks and accidental injuries.


Think about it.


@Bob - except that even from the very beginning, there was good evidence that smoking was harmful - and from the mainstream, even. Multiple upon multiple studies, by the likes of the CDC and NIH showed that smoking was bad - and it was the government that ultimately sued and won against the Tobacco companies, forcing them to pay billions of dollars in damages.

And Dr. Wharton has an excellent point - to do a true study of a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated population, you need to account for all of the various co-founders and she is correct, that you just can't randomly select 50,000 people without attempting to determine whether or not the two populations are equivalent, because if they aren't, the results won't be valid.


Not only is that unethical, but it places a huge risk to not only those families (and the children specifically), but to the public at large - since if there was an outbreak, those same children could act as handy reservoirs of disease, and we wouldn't know it.

There are a number of studies underway to answer the question, however, including one by let's way and see the results, since they are all using different methodologies.

BoB Moffitt

Dr Wharton:


If by "intuitive" .. Dr. Wharton means "common sense" .. I wholeheartedly agree.

Dr Wharton:


This is the exact argument the tobacco industry used for decades to deny any link between "cigarettes and cancer. It was so successful for such a long time .. the Urban dictionary now defines the deceptive practice as "tobacco science":

"Science" done on behalf of an interest defending it's cash cow from overwhelming credible science tht shows it is harmful or detrimental to public benefit in some way."

As I remember it .. for decades .. the tobacco industry denied the overwhelming evidence that heavy smoking contributed to public health problems .. cancer being just one of many more .. which was evidenced by the extraordinarily high numbers of smokers who were diagnosed for these maladies.

As I remember it .. attempts to link the high rate of cancer among cigarette smokers had kind of an "intuitive appeal" (common sense) to the general public .. but .. the tobacco industry knew admission of such a high risk would devastate their industry.

Hence .. tobacco science was born.

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