Lack of Well-Designed Statistical Research

Do vaccines cause autism? The question is far from answered. Dr. Bernadine Healy is a former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest U.S. federal agency responsible for conducting and supporting medical research. Dr. Healy stated in a CBS interview in 2008:

"there is a completely expressed concern -- that they don't want to pursue a hypothesis [vaccine=autism] because that hypothesis could be damaging to the public health community at large by scaring people. First of all, I think the public's smarter than that. The public values vaccines. But more importantly, I don't think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you're afraid of what it might show... the more you delve into it, if you look at the basic science, if you look at the research that's been done in animals, if you also look at some of these individual cases, and if you look at the evidence that there is no link, what I come away with is the question [whether vaccines contribute to autism] has not been answered."

Some public health officials refer to statistical studies that supposedly prove that vaccines do not cause autism, but the facts are that these studies have analyzed only one vaccine (MMR) of the 11 distinct vaccines given to American children (many given multiple times) and that there has never been a peer-reviewed study published on autism rates in vaccinated versus unvaccinated groups. The website www.fourteenstudies.org does a good job of describing how the referenced statistical studies do not address the central question as to whether vaccines cause autism. Another website, www.putchildrenfirst.org, provides a detailed history and analysis of the five studies done through 2004 and contains links to critical analysis of those studies (including critical analyses authored by SafeMinds).