One More Damned Time: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

The Trump campaign is all in on RFK Jr.'s debunked anti-vax crusade.

Yesterday, Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, revived the myth that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders (ASD). During an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins about what role Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might play in a future Trump administration, Lutnick took a strange detour into the bogus claims that childhood vaccinations cause autism:

I spent two and a half hours this week with Bobby Kennedy and it was the most extraordinary thing because, let's face it, we've all heard on the news all sorts of snarky comments about him. I said, "So tell me how's it going to go?" And he said, "Why don't you just listen to me?" And what he explained was that when he was born, we had three vaccines and autism was one in ten thousand. Now a baby is born with 76 vaccines because in 1986, they waived product liability for vaccines. And here's the best one, they started paying people at the [National Institutes of Health], right? They pay them a piece of the money from the vaccine companies. Wait a minute, let me finish. And so all of these vaccines came out without product liability. So what happened now is that autism is now 1 in 34. Amazing.

During a Fox News interview in 2023, Kennedy reiterated, "I do believe that autism comes from vaccines." Despite the claims by Kennedy, now being echoed by Lutnick, years of research have turned up no evidence that childhood vaccinations cause autism spectrum disorders. Of course, nearly any medical treatment will have some adverse side effects in some people. However, a 2021 comprehensive analysis of vaccine safety by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found "no new evidence of increased risk for key adverse events following administration of vaccines that are routinely recommended for adults, children, and pregnant women."

Lutnick is right that autism diagnoses have risen substantially. If not childhood vaccinations, what accounts for this increase? First, greater awareness means that many people with autism spectrum disorder who in the past would have been missed by clinicians are now being identified. However, a 2020 review article in Molecular Psychiatry reports that changes in diagnostic criteria "has been accompanied by a 20-fold increase in the reported prevalence of ASD over the last 30 years, reaching a current prevalence of more than 2% in the United States." This contributes to the likelihood of over-diagnosis and a shift toward autism diagnoses in place of other mental health conditions.

Piling on the anti-vaccine bandwagon, in his interview this week with podcaster Joe Rogan, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance said that he had gotten "red pilled on the whole vax thing" when he felt ill for two days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine shot. While his side effects were certainly no fun, research shows that such a strong reaction correlates with a robust immune response that produces greater quantities of longer-lasting protective antibodies.

What about Lutnick's point concerning waived liability? In his 1985 article, "Vaccines and Product Liability: A Case of Contagious Litigation" in the Cato Institute's Regulation magazine, University of Virginia law professor Edmund Kitch explained how the liability system was unable to properly balance the public benefits of vaccines against their private harms. The result of this imbalance was killing off vaccine innovation and production. So Congress a year later chose to change the liability system with respect to vaccines in 1986 with the adoption of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which provides compensation to people who are injured by certain vaccines.

And the benefits of vaccines are enormous. A 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention review finds that "among children born during 1994–2023, routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths, resulting in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion."

At his Madison Square Garden campaign rally, former President Donald Trump said he is going to let Kennedy "go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on the medicines."

Alarmingly, the Trump campaign appears to be all in on Kennedy's debunked anti-vax crusade.

Comments

[Don't look at me!]

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!

[Mother's Lament (garbage)]

Bailey is being dishonest. Kennedy never said the vaccine component itself gives autism. Instead he says in most cases they can do a lot of good.

What Kennedy says is the problem is the additives they sometime use to cause an immune response. Sometimes the denatured virus doesn’t have enough oomph to kickstart a response from the antibodies, so they add a little bit of something toxic to prompt the response.

One of those toxins is ethyl mercury. Concerns based on extrapolations of the effect of methylmercury caused ethyl mercury to be removed from U.S. childhood vaccines in 1999, but it remains in use in all multi-dose vaccines and flu shots.

Several studies indicate that methylmercury is linked to subtle developmental deficits in children exposed in utero such as loss of IQ points, and decreased performance in tests of language skills, memory function and attention deficits. Methylmercury exposure in adults has also been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease including heart attack. Some evidence also suggests that methylmercury can cause autoimmune effects in sensitive individuals.

This is where the concern that some vaccines containing ethyl mercury cause autism springs from. This is what Kennedy is talking about.

Despite these concerns about the relationship between methylmercury exposure and autism, there’s not much data to support such a link. Although there is no doubt that methylmercury is toxic in several respects, including through exposure of the developing fetus, there is still some controversy as to the levels of methylmercury in the diet that can result in adverse effects.

Researchers have argued that risk assessments of ethyl mercury based on methylmercury were overly conservative in light of observations that ethyl mercury is eliminated from the body and the brain significantly faster than methylmercury.

Did you see any of the above in Bailey’s smear piece?

No, of course you didn’t.

[Don't look at me!]

I blame video games.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

This is a bunch of horseshit. Vaccines NEVER contained methylmercury. Methylmercury is indeed toxic but it's also not in vaccines. What was in vaccines was thimerosal, an ETHYL-mercury derivative. The two are very different. Methylmercury persists in the body for over a month. Ethylmercury is cleared by the body in a matter of days.

Also, thimerosal was added to vaccines NOT as something deliberately toxic, but because it is a preservative.

Did you see any of the above in Bailey’s smear piece?

No, because it doesn't belong there.

[Mother's Lament (garbage)]

I DIDN’T SAY VACCINES CONTAINED METHYLMERCURY YOU FANTASTICALLY DISHONEST FUCK!!!

I said “Concerns based on extrapolations of the effect of methylmercury caused ethyl mercury to be removed from U.S. childhood vaccines in 1999″. Read harder, you fucking retard.

“Also, thimerosal was added to vaccines NOT as something deliberately toxic, but because it is a preservative.”

Thimerosal is used as a preservative AND as a irritant to provoke an immune response. Believe it or not some things have multiple uses.
For example Thiomersal is also used in patch testing for people who have dermatitis, conjunctivitis, and other potentially allergic reactions.

You are just so appallingly ignorant, Nazi. I don't know which is greater, your habitual dishonesty or your pig ignorant sermonizing.

[DesigNate]

The smug condescension

[Mother's Lament (garbage)]

You can't have a sense of shame when you're a paid shill like Jeff. He gets shown up by dozens of people every day, yet he always comes right back to do it all over again.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

I DIDN’T SAY VACCINES CONTAINED METHYLMERCURY

THEN MENTIONING THE TOXICITY OF METHYLMERCURY IS TOTALLY IRRELEVANT!!!! You don't have the foggiest fucking clue what you are talking about but you search for 2 seconds on Wikipedia and think that you know more than actual chemists and biologists about vaccines and Thimerosal. It's fucking amazing.

Methylmercury is not in vaccines. Methylmercury is more toxic than ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is more easily metabolized into degradation products which are then excreted so it has a far smaller chance of crossing the blood brain barrier and doing anything bad neurologically. Nobody is trying to poison you with mercury.

It was removed from vaccines out of an abundance of caution. The toxicity of methylmercury represents a very high upper limit to what ethylmercury COULD do, but nobody in their right minds believes that ethylmercury is just as toxic as methylmercury or even approaching it.

Thimerosal is used as a preservative AND as a irritant to provoke an immune response.

This is flat out untrue. There is zero evidence that thimerosal was added to vaccines as an intentional toxin. Zero. You are just making shit up.

This is what you do, you lie and gaslight and you do so in such a brazen manner, it is shocking.

You do realize that sometimes, other people do know more than you about a particular topic, right? And maybe chemistry and biology is one of those topics?

[mad.casual]

This is where the concern that some vaccines containing ethyl mercury cause autism springs from.

Partially. If you're a fan or student of nuclear science, you know the names Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin in reference to the demon core.

Analogously, if you're a fan or student of inorganic or metallo-organic chemistry, you know the name Karen Wetterhahn and dimethyl mercury.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

DIMETHYL MERCURY isn't in vaccines either.

Jesus H. Christ, you people will grasp at any tenuous straw that you can think of to push your tribal narratives, won't you?

[Mother's Lament (garbage)]

Fuck off you piece of shit.

You couldn't even read my fucking post correctly, let alone comprehend that some compounds have multiple uses. And now you're fucking misreading what mad.casual just wrote.

Are you doing this on purpose? It's long been one of your favorite tricks to reword what someone wrote and then argue against that.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

And this is why you are such a liar.

How did Karen Wetterhahn die? What was she exposed to? That's right, it was dimethylmercury. Which is not methylmercury, which is not ethylmercury, which is not thimerosal, which is not in vaccines. Both of you are just throwing shit against the wall about various mercury compounds doing bad things in a profoundly ignorant manner.

[mad.casual]

It’s really just sad how hard they work to misinterpret and misconstrue plainly factual statements and shout “Irrelevant!” as though they were actual wizards rather than a performative social oddity like Vermin Supreme. Like none of us can remember them shrieking and whining about forcing people to wear masks and stand 6 ft. apart to avoid COVID, shitting on their own ‘individualist’ retardation in the process.

I played with inorganic mercury as a teen. I have mercury fillings. It's not some demon-haunted liquid. But it's generally known not to be safe. It’s historical fact with proven mechanisms, that hatters and people who worked with mercury developed neurological disorders. Virtually every medical professional on Earth will tell you to be careful about the amount of mercury you’ll consume eating fish. You don’t need mercury to function, even without thimerosal and autism there are valid reasons to be apprehensive about both the FDA and organic mercury compounds. Even if you don’t think they’re as deadly and dangerous as COVID.

If he’s true to the form since COVID, even if they were putting botulinum toxin and novachuck in the vaccines, he’d tell you it’s fine in order to justify mandates of whatever nth booster he’s up to.

[Public Entelectual]

Idiocy is quantitative. A dose of thiomersal preserved vaccine contains about 10 micrograms of mercury. A silver amalgam tooth filling contains roughly 100,000.

If you've got fillings , but don't grind your teeth, or drink acidic soft drinks, they still release mercury into your body at a rate of 1 to 27 micrograms per day for as long as you live or your teeth last.

So let's suppose you get all 76 out of 76 vaccines. That's a lifetime dose of 760 micrograms of mercury

Your filled teeth can release more than that in a month, and the same was true back when the diagnosed autism rate was one in ten thousand rather than the one in 34 as RFK Jr. claims today.

What are the Reasonable odds on a 294-fold increase in autism arising from a .001 increase in mercury exposure per decade?

[chemjeff radical individualist]

With a little searching, you can see what ML did. He deceptively copy-pasted from Wikipedia from two different sources.

So when he wrote:

Concerns based on extrapolations of the effect of methylmercury caused ethyl mercury to be removed from U.S. childhood vaccines in 1999, but it remains in use in all multi-dose vaccines and flu shots.

Several studies indicate that methylmercury is linked to subtle developmental deficits in children exposed in utero such as loss of IQ points, and decreased performance in tests of language skills, memory function and attention deficits. Methylmercury exposure in adults has also been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease including heart attack. Some evidence also suggests that methylmercury can cause autoimmune effects in sensitive individuals.

in the first paragraph, he lifted that directly from the page for thimerosal, but he dishonestly omitted the rest of the wikipedia paragraph which explained that thimerosal was actually not as bad as people thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal

Concerns based on extrapolations from methylmercury caused thiomersal to be removed from U.S. childhood vaccines, starting in 1999. Later it was reported that ethylmercury is eliminated from the body and the brain significantly faster than methylmercury, so the late-1990s risk assessments turned out to be overly conservative.[27] Though inorganic mercury metabolized from ethylmercury has a much longer half-life in the brain, at least 120 days, it appears to be much less toxic than the inorganic mercury produced from mercury vapor, for reasons not yet understood.[27]

That second paragraph above, he lifted it directly from the Wikipedia page for methylmercury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylmercury

He dishonestly linked the two together, giving the false impression that there was some connection between methylmercury and the additive in vaccines. There isn't. There was never any methylmercury in vaccines. ML is as usual a gaslighting lying piece of shit.

[Don't look at me!]

So it is video games.

[DesigNate]

He did no such thing.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

There is no reason to talk about the toxicity of METHYL mercury in a discussion about vaccines, if not to dishonestly do a bait and switch with ETHYL mercury.

[DesigNate]

I see your reading comprehension equals your ability to make a decent analogy.

To whit:

Paragraph 1 - defends Kennedy

Paragraph 2 - explains what Kennedy was actually talking about (the additives in vaccines that help trigger the immune response)

Paragraph 3 - names one of those components, ethyl mercury, and explains that concerns about a different type of mercury, methylmurcury, caused them to “be removed from U.S. childhood vaccines in 1999”. The “them” in that sentence is obviously referring to the ethyl mercury as that is the one that was called out as a component of vaccines (presumably prior to 1999).

Paragraph 4 - Gives some history on why people thought what they did about methylmercury.

Paragraph 6 & 7 literally says there’s not much data to support a link between methylmercury and autism and that “ risk assessments of ethyl mercury based on methylmercury were overly conservative”.

But don’t let that last part get in the way of your hate boner for people here.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Jeffy logic: A bear who has eaten a lot of fish is transported in the trunk of a car and then gets out mauls a kid who survives but is then diagnosed with autism. RFKJR kills the bear because he hates science.

[Mother's Lament (garbage)]

He dishonestly linked the two together, giving the false impression that there was some connection between methylmercury and the additive in vaccines.

I DID NOT SAY THAT THERE WAS A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO, YOU FUCKING DIPSHIT!

You deliberately twisted what I said.

I quite clearly said that the reason given for why Thiomersal was removed from children's vaccines was based on extrapolations of the effect of methylmercury.

In fact you fucking quoted what I said in your own post right now and you still couldn't read it correctly. I hope you don't get fifty-cents for such a half assed job.

This is why everyone hates you, shill.

[SQRLSY]

Food contains carbon, and so does carbon monoxide! See something in common there? Carbon is POISONOUS! THIS is why people needlessly die of food poisoning!!! And food isn't even necessary anyway! It's all a big-foods and agribusiness cuntspiracy, and ALL of the Kool Kids and RIGHT People are WITH me on this one!

Food being "medically necessary", HA!!! Breatharians know better!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Fuck you. You are a liar and a propagandist pushing false fears about vaccines because you just have to try to score some political point and defend your tribe. It is because of people like you that many kids now are suffering from eminently preventable illnesses like measles, because immoral cretins like yourself push lies.

I quite clearly said that the reason given for why Thiomersal was removed from children’s vaccines was based on extrapolations of the effect of methylmercury.

And then you posted a whole bunch of shit about how methylmercury is so incredibly toxic. Yes methylmercury is toxic. But THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE THAT ETHYLMERCURY IS EVEN ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING AS TOXIC AS METHYLMERCURY. If you had done more than 2 seconds of searching on Wikipedia you might have discovered this for yourself. But no, you just stopped there thinking you had scored a gotcha moment against Ron Bailey, Big Pharma, libruls, the globalist elites, etc., that you rushed to tell everyone how terrible Thimerosal is. You're a disgusting garbage human being.

[Don't look at me!]

No widespread poisoning.

[Public Entelectual]

THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE THAT ETHYLMERCURY IS EVEN ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING AS TOXIC AS METHYLMERCURY.

Bullshit. all toxic heavy metal alkyls are very toxic indeed

Remember tetraethyl lead?

[SQRLSY]

THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE THAT CARBON-CONTAINING SO-CALLED “FOOD” IS EVEN ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING AS TOXIC AS CARBON MONOXIDE.

Bullshit. All toxic carbon-containing cumpounds are very toxic indeed.

Remember “food poisoning”? Food is EVIL, people! Inedia is The Truth and The Way!

PS… eating food is NOT a sure-fire, infallible preventer of DEATH!!! Let’s give UP on food! Food isn’t “medically necessary”, because the “breatharians” said so! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia … Move OVER, stupid doctors, with your bullshit, superfluous “food” therapies!!! We WISE Breatharians SNEER in your general direction!

[SQRLSY]

Soylent Green is PEOPLE, people!!!!

Shit's snot even ORGANIC, damn-shit-all!!!!

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Do you really just think that all mercury compounds are the same?

[Public Entelectual]

I believe all atoms are created equal , imercury included.

Given the human body's capacity to corrode, ingest and metabolically incorporate all but the noblest metals and most stainless of superalloys , how the hell can you know what will our enzymes and those of our intestinal biome will do given mercury in solution ?

Nobody predicted algal generation of methylymercury . It was tragically discovered. It also took centuries to synthesize arsenic compounds of low enough toxicity to be used in therapeutics.
So when billions of people walk around with amalgam implants for centuries , while "autism" flatlines, vaxxers make me laugh.

[CLM1227]

I don’t think he deliberately did anything.

I just think he’s too stupid to understand that you were pointing out the reason people were concerned about the vaccines and brain function is because they were extrapolating findings about one kind of mercury and thinking all kinds of mercury had the same effect on the brain.

Extrapolating findings about one kind of mercury to be true about another kind of mercury isn’t an unintelligent thing when dealing with something going into your body, but upon further testing, what was true about one type did not actually turn out to be true about the other type.

This is what I got from your original comment. But it requires a certain level of intelligence and reading comprehension that is apparently beyond Chemjeff.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

This is where the concern that some vaccines containing ethyl mercury cause autism springs from.

So to review, the concern comes from ignorant people led by agenda-driven demagogues who deliberately lie to the masses about the differences between various organomercury compounds.

[MWAocdoc]

“they add a little bit of something toxic to prompt the response.”

Pure bullshit! Methyl mercury was a preservative, not an immune booster. In fact, organic and inorganic mercury are immune toxins and inorganic mercury may cause immune dysfunction such as autoimmune diseases. There has never been a study that showed that the tiny amounts of organic mercury used as a preservative in the tiny amounts of solution used to immunize children ever accumulated in the CNS to become detectable. And even if tiny amounts of organic mercury could cause autism, one would expect the prevalence of autism to drop after they stopped using methyl mercury as a preservative. But of course it hasn’t because autism has NOTHING WHATEVER to do with childhood immunization!

[Bruce]

I don’t see the explanation of what DOES cause the rise in autism here.
If you attended public elementary and middle schools in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, and you teach in them or have children in them now, as I do, the increased numbers of children with Autism, Tourettes, attention deficit disorder, and many behavioral problems is super obvious.
Something is causing it.
I also don’t see any evidence here for the BENEFITS of super early administration of 76 vaccines. If letting children gets mumps and measles the old fashioned way as we did resulted in lower rates of autism, would that not offset whatever harm is caused by having actually had the mumps?
In the middle ages Rabbis had no understanding of the biology of hemophilia and yet they ruled that when a family had had two close male relatives die for bleeding after circumcision, they could forgo circumcising their sons and still be Jews. Can’t we have a more cautious policy of allowing some vaccines to be given only after the child is older, even if we do not have all the molecular biology worked out?

[MWAocdoc]

"Something is causing it."

Were you teaching in 1920? If you're a teacher as you say, you should have at least a passing familiarity with statistics. Epidemiologists use strict criteria for comparison groups to determine the "something" you so cavalierly dismiss. What is your comparison group for the allegation of rising rates of autism? In fact, public school districts are the "cause" of rising rates of autism. Psychologists and Psychiatrists try to classify behavioral abnormalities (as they should) in order to better understand human behavior. It would be hard to assess an increase in the prevalence of autism from a time before scientists announced the new diagnosis. The logistic factors alone would make identifying a comparison group almost impossible. Add to that the Federal regulations requiring public school districts to give special treatment and benefits to autistic children and - voila! - a rise in the number of parents who want special treatment for their children in school. Surprise, surprise, surprise!

[Public Entelectual]

Does that make you a 'premature anti-vaxxist'?

[CLM1227]

I’m starting to suspect some of it is parenting deficiencies. Not all of it, but certainly some of it.

I’m no fan of the infant vaccination schedule… too many and too fast… and I’m not certain there’s any science behind it beyond parents being more on top of new human beings than they are the older models so we don’t take them in as regularly for maintenance.

There may be a there there for autism and other behavioral disorders, but I don’t think we have an accurate rate of occurrence in order to isolate true incidence and study it.

[Dillinger]

>>If not childhood vaccinations, what accounts for this increase?

100% off sale on Virtue Signals

[TJJ2000]

^THIS [phone].

[Public Entelectual]

Allowing children who test positive for amphetamines to attend public schools , while jailing crazed adults who do so on suspicion of being methheads.

[tracerv]

One more damn time: Masks did absolutely nothing to help during covid.

[Minadin]

Now do testing.

[SQRLSY]

Citation please! Also, if or when you have major surgery, will you be OK with your NON-masked surgeon sneezing on your inner body parts?

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/577207-miami-private-school-orders-vaccinated-students-to-stay-at-home-for-30
Miami private school orders vaccinated students to stay at home for 30 days as ‘precautionary measure’
Medical science supports this with ZERO support, period! Ideological idiocy and tribalism at work, NOT science or data! Tribal signaling has taken over!
Tribology… the study of friction, wear, lubrication, and the design of bearings; the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion.
When “tribal signaling” replaces tribology at the auto repair shop, you WILL be required, by Governor Rabbit’s Government Almighty, to accept auto repair cranky-crank-techs who believe in salt water for your crankcase!!!

Governor Rabbit has assumed Vast Powers, and will NOT allow doctors to have fired, those who don’t “feel like” being bothered to believe in the germ theory of disease! Ideology is more important to them than preventing the spread of disease? Governor Rabbit says that the doctors may NOT fire them! My doctors ARE capable of using modern medicine, but The Superior One, Governor Rabbit, gets in the WAY!
PS… eating food is NOT a sure-fire, infallible preventer of DEATH!!! Let’s give UP on food! Food isn’t “medically necessary”, because the “breatharians” said so! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia … Move OVER, stupid doctors, with your bullshit, superfluous “food” therapies!!! We WISE Breatharians SNEER in your general direction!

Well yeah, we shouldn’t be scaring the crap out of kids. And businesses (with the exception of health-care places) shouldn’t be scaring the be-jesus out of us either, about Covid.
But THEY, businesses, and NOT the government, should be making the decisions! So we don’t have firm “science” about masks? No VAST databases and double-blind studies? Well, we’ve not done that with sneeze-guards at the salad bar either! I would LIKE to be able to freely choose to eat at salad bars with sneeze-guards, and not have the Governor double-guessing on me, and minding my business! If OTHER people want to eat at salad bars WITHOUT sneeze guards, they, too, should be free!
What gets “lost in the sauce” here is people (who are IDEOLOGICALLY motivated) want to “debate the science” about vaccines and masks, and mandates, and what they REALLY want to do, is “capture” government policies… NOT really giving us individual FREEDOM. And Trumps, and Governors, and Emperor-Wannabees tap into that , and make slaves out of us, using our own power-hungers!
I want to choose salad bars with sneeze guards, and hospitals with vaccinated staffs, for my wife, while her immune system is down. Others should be free to choose otherwise. But what I see all around me, is people GROWING Government Almighty, under the illusion that THEY, not others, will be The Chosen Pussy Grabbers!

(And I really don’t care how many studies have found what, about sneeze guards at the salad bars. I don’t want too much mucus from strangers, on my salad, is all).

[JohnZ]

Neither did lockdowns or six foot social distancing.

[SQRLSY]

Neither did sneeze guards at the salad bar! THAT is why cultural-warrior state governors are TOTALLY justified when they outlaw sneeze guards at the salad bar!

[Social Justice is neither]

Not true, the lockdown did wonders to expand State control.

[SQRLSY]

And so will womb cuntrol ass well! Your wombs are belong to US, cumrades!

[MWAocdoc]

“One more damn time: Mask MANDATES did absolutely nothing to help during covid.”

There! I fixed it for you!

Masks help a little bit by reducing somewhat the number of infectious particles that reach a part of your body where they can infect you. Masks also help a little bit by reducing the number of infectious particles you put out into the breathing space of others. No one ever said that masks don't help. Keep erecting straw men to totally undermine your last shred of credibility.

[Don't look at me!]

More testing needed!

[JFree]

what accounts for this increase?

Pick four of the following and add one:

1. Boomers as grandparents
2. Soccer moms
3. GMO soy
4. Climate change
5. A delayed response to you know who invading Poland
6. The Interwebs
7. Before childhood vaccines, autistic kids were the only one who died of childhood diseases.

[Eeyore]

Inadequate access to tampons in boy’s restrooms.
Consumption of avocado toast during pregnancy.
Not being aborted.

[SQRLSY]

8. WAAAAY too many Drag Queen Spermy Daniels Hours in Pubic Libraries!

[JasonT20]

Pick four of the following and add one:

Or, we could look at exposure to who knows how many 'forever chemicals', microplastics, ultraprocessed foods, and other things that either didn't exist or existed in much lower quantities in previous generations.

Those options are worth studying, but if they don't show up as a cause of autism, it is acceptable to say, "I don't know what can explain the increased diagnoses of autism in children." Sometimes, our best scientific efforts don't give us an answer. Admitting that we don't have an answer supported by evidence is far better than trying to pin it on something just so we can feel better.

[Saint Sebastian]

Let's just twist that around a little bit, to make just as much sense:

> And he said, "Why don't you just listen to me?" And what he
> explained was that when he was born, we had national debt of
> $271B and autism was one in ten thousand. Now a baby is born
> with 76 vaccines because in 1986, they moved product liability
> to a government fund for vaccines and passed social security
> and immigration reform. And here's the best one, they stopped
> any sense of fiscal responsibility and continued to increase the
> debt burden on the newborn children. Wait a minute, let me
> finish. And now the national debt is $33,167B and climbing. So
> what happened now is that autism is now 1 in 34. Amazing.

[TJJ2000]

Maybe MORE 'Gun' (Gov-Guns) poking will fix it??? /s

[AT]

OK, so I'm not disagreeing with the overall argument. However, I do think RFK is spot-friggin'-on right here:

They pay them a piece of the money from the vaccine companies. Wait a minute, let me finish. And so all of these vaccines came out without product liability.

RFK's mistake is that correlation isn't causation - but that DOESN'T mean he's wrong about the hand-in-glove relationship between the State and Big-Pharma, nor does it mean he's wrong that the waiver of products liability being wholly objectionable.

The result of this imbalance was killing off vaccine innovation and production.

And then the pendulum swung the other way, and the State suddenly decided that everyone needed a COVID vaccine with 96 boosters and pay no attention to the otherwise perfectly healthy people suddenly dropping from myocarditis because that's just a thing that normally happens all the time. Reasonably likely causation was dismissed out of hand as correlation and damn it don't you go investigating any further.

This is the problem with Politicized Science, incidentally.

This never stops being relevant: https://mennodeboer.com/2021/06/14/michael-crichton-why-politicized-science-is-dangerous/

"Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice - terms that have no agreed definition - are employed in the service of a new crisis."

"A social problem masquerading as a scientific one."

[CLM1227]

Myocarditis clearly had a cause… it was climate change. Don’t you know your junk science? C’mon man!

[Eeyore]

Yet there are hundreds of parents that have reported direct causal evidence that they do cause autism. Kid is normal, gets administered a vaccine or two, within several days the kid is permanently fucked.

Direct evidence isn't science. Underpowered statistical analysis is science.

[JohnZ]

But,but Pfizer's CEO , a goat and pig doctor says everything is hunkey dorey.

[SIV]

I'm old enough to remember when "autism" meant someone was a particular variety of retard, or in rare instances, an idiot savant.

Now it includes a bunch of functional adults paying $ thousands to get a diagnosis so they can get a disability accommodation to make their jobs easier and more pleasant

[MollyGodiva]

BS. Adult autism is real, with a diagnostic criteria, and absolutely sucks to have. There are also not really any accommodations that jobs can give for adult autism.

Autism understanding and diagnostic for decades was based on boys. Over the last decade or so, there has been a greater understanding of autism in adults and girls/women, which is not the same as how it appears in boys. The rise of autism diagnosis is based on a greater understanding of autism and thus detecting it more.

[NoVaNick]

Back in the day, lots of aspies and high functioning autistic people were merely considered weird or eccentric and were accepted, or not, as such. Nowadays, any kid with odd interests or who doesn’t easily fit in can be labeled autistic, which makes it hard for them to ever move past the diagnosis.

[MollyGodiva]

Accepted? You mean rejected, made fun of, sad and lonely. Autism diagnosis allows for therapy that is effective, and an understanding of what they are going thought. For example CBT is not effective for autistic people, but DBT is. And those who don't have sensory issues don't understand those who do.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"Accepted? You mean rejected, made fun of, sad and lonely..."

TDS-addled lefty shit-pile is triggered!

[JohnZ]

Indeed, adult autism is real example: Sect. of Defense Loyd Autism

[Vesicant]

One more damned time: Vaccines do not prevent infection. They prime your body to respond effectively to an infection. Getting infected is not proof that vaccines don't work. Fighting off the infection is proof that they do.

[Don't look at me!]

That’s not how it used to be sold.

[JFree]

This. The most effective vaccine in history (smallpox) had a 95% efficacy rate – meaning 5% didn’t even develop antibodies. And a five year effective lifespan. Once they developed the ring vaccination strategy – aggressively trace infected contacts and then vaccinate them as well as all your other contacts (v mass vaccination) – then they were able to wipe out the disease even though almost everyone vaccinated became infected (but with the head start of having antibodies primed before the virus infected lymph glands - which takes longer than respiratory viruses).

The CDC certainly didn’t live up to its supposed ‘best in the world public health agency’. It sucked basically. But all the lies from anti-vaxxers ensured nothing would have worked in the US. Fortunately – it’s mostly the liars and the gullible who died from covid once the vax became available.

[damikesc]

No other vaccine had such consistently high re-infection rates as this one. They had to redefine "vaccine" to make this one even qualify.

Do not pretend actually functional vaccines with this bullshit.

And, remember, the "you won't get the COVID" was the fucking selling point from the fuckers who developed it.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I assume you're speaking in generalizations here with respect to how vaccination is sold to the public. I think one needs additional data to make any credible claim as to what caused a body to fight off an infection, or risks falling for a post hoc fallacy.

[CLM1227]

Inoculations were not considered the same thing as vaccination.

Inoculations were a very tiny and weakened live virus being introduced to build an immune response against a stable virus or bacterium. It would lead to getting mildly sick and recovering. However, it was dangerous and while it was better than nothing, people were still getting seriously ill and suffering morbidities from the process.

Vaccinations were to reduce the morbidities by preventing the illness completely by helping the immune system build the response to the dead germ instead, hence the need for preservatives and attenuators… because dead things don’t tend to induce immune responses in the body and they aren’t shelf-stable. Vaccines were supposed to reduce the getting sick part…

Until COVID, when they needed to cover their butts because they picked the most changeable part of COVID (the spike protein) to vaccinate against a highly changeable virus. So they changed the definition of a vaccine.

It used to be being around someone shedding dead viral matter post illness was an effective way of building an immune system to the entirety of a virus. COVID changed that thinking, too… suddenly, we needed to become bubble boys and girls because health and functional immune systems were to fragile for COVID dead viral matter.

I don’t trust any science that came out of the COVID years. Only stuff prior to that. We had much better immunology science that the CDC shit all over for political reasons.

[NoVaNick]

While I think vaccines are generally safe, I will share a personal story about my oldest brother. He received a smallpox vaccine when he was about a year old in 1962 and developed encephalitis, which was well documented and one of the reasons they discontinued the vaccine by the early 1970s. He started to develop autistic like behaviors and by age 8, had lost his ability to speak.
The Covid vaccine is well documented to cause myocarditis in some young men and teens.
Sure, there are other factors at work like genetics, but to claim vaccines are completely safe, as the prog science establishment wants us to believe, and to dismiss anyone who speaks out against this is Stalinist.

[JFree]

Smallpox vaccine had 50 or so very serious side-effects per million shots

[mad.casual]

Hey Ron,

How is the fake gluten-related, non-Celiac sensitivity treating you? Well I hope.

I don’t happen to believe in the vaccines cause autism mechanisms. I even happen to have some obnoxious family branches in your neck of the woods that I avoid because of their Kennedy-esque beliefs on the topic. That said, the conspiracy theories/conspicuously aligned interest are still notable and worth opposing. Especially given rate at which insane conspiracy theories have been catching up the last few years.

Speaking of which, did you hear? US Government admits, OK, fluoride in the drinking water may be making some people retarded. I can remember that one being contested back to when I was a kid. Back before the food pyramid.

Anyway, it would be great if you actually were a scientist or a principled libertarian or anything besides an “old tech, political niche Op Ed contributor”. You know, someone who could recognize that part and parcel to democracy is people holding differing ideas and still finding common, anti-government or pro-self-ownership, ground. But I guess science reporting has gotten tough since the internet came along and didn’t require selectively techno-optimistic hacks like yourself to gatekeep for them. So, I guess you’re stuck kind of having to cherry pick your own facts and selectively choosing which mandates you’ll remain silent for and which people you’ll oppose before they even have the ability to make or repeal mandate like any other shiftless, non-scientific, mindless, propagandist hack would.

Anyway, best of luck with the non-Celiac’s insensitivity, watch out for the Zika, and fuck you very much for advocating for vaccine mandates before it was cool for Presidents to push for vaccine mandates!

Your biggest conspiracy “This shit doesn’t add up and it’s obvious” theorist reader,
mad.casual

[Public Entelectual]

THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE THAT ETHYLMERCURY IS EVEN ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING AS TOXIC AS METHYLMERCURY.

Bullshit. all toxic heavy metal alkyls are very toxic indeed

Remember tetraethyl lead?

[Nobartium]

Thus spake the Big Pharma whore!

SCIENCE!

[Lawrence]

Says a blind devotee of Big Pharma. Kennedy's toenails know more about vaccines than Ron Bailey. So strange to see alleged libertarians think they can make ignorant pronouncements like these - being, in effect, shills for the utterly corrupt pharmaceutical corporations. Why do you think having certain political beliefs qualifies you to make ignorant pronouncements like these? Libertarianism is a POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, not a gateway to general philosophy, medicine, history, or any other subject.

[JohnZ]

One of the problems is that pig Pharma can ruthlessly advertise on every channel thus making it impossible for news channels to report anything adverse concerning their vaxxes.
In fact Phizer owns CNN, PMSNBC, CBS,NBC, ABC and Fox. They own them. They control what they can say.
They own them.
and they own you.
This needs to stop.
Phuck Pfizer and their little goat and pig doctor, Bourla as well.

[Public Entelectual]

How do RFK's toenail prognostications compare to the weather predicting bunion of Bullwinkle Moose ?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Are we back to "Shut the fuck up and take the jab!"?

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Here is a very long article on investigating the effect of thimerosal on the body, including the brain and ADHD.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223724/

I don't expect any of you to read it, because it doesn't come from RFK. But you can't say you weren't told about it.

[Nobartium]

Stop wasting your breath.

Science can never be a substitute for moral decisions.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Don't you think your moral decisions should be well-grounded in, say, objective reality?

[Don't look at me!]

Like the real danger of bears in trunks?

[JohnZ]

Or like the real danger the next war will wipe out humanity within a few weeks.
Or the moral imperative to develop atomic weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological warfare, and the moral equivalent of mass murder.

[Nobartium]

No.

Morals are transcendental to our existence.

At no point does our lives require them.

[CLM1227]

Objective reality can’t solely be defined by technocrats who have undisclosed biases.

It would be foolish to trust experts unconditionally and always rule out actual lived experience or information gained through wisdom.

Reality is more complex than what can be determined in a controlled laboratory and there’s a lot of assuming a politically captured institution is always going to be honest about the findings.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Baily, can you point me to the double blind study that compares the currently manufactured vaccines against a placebo group?

[JeremyR]

There's a pretty big parallel between autism and transgenderism. It's a fad, people want to think they are special and for some reason, think that' makes them special.

I do also think it's an excuse to be rude, or not have to be polite.

With that said, I'm sure doctors over diagnose it. "Are you awkward?" then you are autistic. Or transgender.

At least with autism, they don't mutilate kids.

[Eeyore]

Maybe true with some spectrum disorder diagnosis.

When you see someone all the way at the end of the spectrum you know it's real. They can't fake that level of disfunction.

[Bruce]

Hey libertarians!
It's ok.
You can inject newborn babies with thousands of potions and let Biden bite off their toes as well and they will be fine.
Autism is caused by their parents smoking pot, which is why rates of autism are increasing.
Just outlaw pot and you can pincushion those babes all you want.

[JohnZ]

Was Joetato given an anti rabies shot ?

[Wizzle Bizzle]

I'm having trouble distinguishing which parts of your screed are sarcastic and which, if any, aren't. But that doesn't mean I wasn't amused.

[Bipedal Humanoid]

Well that escalated quickly.

[JohnZ]

He's right. However, what was passed off as a vaccine against the Convid scare was not a vaccine but a kill shot. many people died almost immediately after the kill shot. Children, who by the way did not need it were injected and paid the price. Young fit athletes die on the playing field .
Sterility, miscarriage, pericarditis, other afflictions became common among those who allowed themselves to be injected with that toxic, deadly poison
.
Phizer and Moderna need to be sued into the ground. The CEO of Phizer, a goat and pig doctor belongs in prison for mass murder.
This is all part of the globalist reset plan.

[MollyGodiva]

Article about not lying about vaccines: JohnZ, "I am going to post stupid lies about vaccines."
I just can not imagine anyone being so dumb as to believe that crap you wrote.
I can imagine someone so partisan that they don't care.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

“…I just can not imagine anyone being so dumb as to believe that crap you wrote…”

We can: You.

[JohnZ]

I can't believe anybody being so dumb as to believe everything the main stream media says either...or the government for that matter.

[MollyGodiva]

I can also read medical journal articles, and unlike MAGAs I don't need them translated to the comprehension level of a 3rd grader.

[Moderation4ever]

The medical journals are clear that vaccines have help stop the Covid pandemic and that pre-vaccine action such as distancing and masked slowed the spread. But as you noted they are more difficult to read that some conspiracy site.

[NoVaNick]

myocarditis is a real side effect of covid vaccine. Do a pubmed search and you’ll find many publications on this, or will your scienceism not allow you to?

[mad.casual]

Again, I don't know that I agree with every assertion you made. I do know that the CEO of Audi was tried and convicted for a far lesser deception that killed or even harmed no one.

[Daddyhill]

While we're at it, let's get the fluoride and chlorine out of our drinking water. The purity of our precious bodily fluids is at stake, so who cares if our children have to put up with dental caries and dysentery? Whatever doesn't kill them will make them tougher, right?

[Public Entelectual]

I don't hear crickets, but look at those rickets !

[Eeyore]

One More Damned Time: The COVID vaccines don't fucking work.

[Moderation4ever]

They do and you are an idiot to think they don't. The simple fact that we no longer have a pandemic is evidence.

[CLM1227]

Oh boy. The reason there no longer is a pandemic is because the serious cases have better protocols that don’t kill them and the rest of us get to go back to normal because it was never that serious for 98% of the population and we aren’t lumping COVID and Flu anymore.

[Moderation4ever]

You seem to have a serious case of amnesia. Let me suggest you sit down and read a copy of,

Riding the Lightning: A Year in the Life of a New York City Paramedic
Book by Anthony Almojera

[Wizzle Bizzle]

Bro. I am largely pro-vaccine. But that is the stupidest shit anybody has ever said.

"The simple fact that we no longer have the Black Plague is evidence." How is this statement any less retarded?

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Hahaha haha! Oh, wait, are you serious?

[MT-Man]

You really think without vaccines there would be a forever pandemic. Lol you have to be a parody account.

[Moderation4ever]

I have noted before in comments that the Salk Polio virus was significant enough that my grandmother noted when she and her children got that vaccination in her journal. I have also learned that my uncle was exposed to polio as a child and that there were many nervous days for my grandmother watching to see if my uncle would contract polio. People live without the fear of childhood diseases today because of vaccines. I hope people don't have to see their child sick and maybe even dying to start again appreciating vaccines.

[Sam Grove]

Now I have come across several individuals claiming that there is no evidence for the existence of viruses. I urged one to search 'electron microscopy and viruses' for evidence.

[Fist of Etiquette]

While his side effects were certainly no fun, research shows...

If only public health hadn't shot its own credibility in the foot during the pandemic's summer of protests/riots and then with the messaging on mRNA efficacy then maybe a lot more people would believe this.

As it stands I have no idea what to believe and, as far as I can tell, everyone who does seems to be working almost solely on a level of faith I no longer possess.

[5Arete22]

To the degree that a vaccine approaches 100% effectiveness, the moral case for promoting that vaccine to anti-vaxxers is lessened because fewer people who are vaccinated are not protected and have to rely on herd immunity. Therefore, to the degree that a vaccine approaches 100% effectiveness, antivaccination beliefs become a form of voluntary eugenics, particularly as they affect children who have yet to reproduce, because the decision not to vaccinate usually comes from the parents, and most parents raise children who carry the parents' genes.