CLAIM:

US Health Secretary RFK Jr claims hidden studies prove vaccines lead to autism.

FACT:

False. The referenced “study” is an abstract, not peer-reviewed, and follow-up research found no such link. Multiple scientific authorities, including the CDC, reject the claim.

The US Health Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr recently appeared on the The Tucker Carlson Show in which he claimed that vaccines lead to autism. Kennedy referenced few studies in the past. 

“CDC did that study in 1999. They brought in a team of scientists under a Belgian researcher named Thomas Verstraten. The data, they looked at children who had recieved the hepatitis vaccine within their first 30 days of life, and compared those children to children who had recieved a vaccine later or not at all. And they found an 11,135 % elevated risk of autism among the vaccinated children,” he says in the video (timestamp 9:17). 

“They kept the study secret, and they manipulated it through five different iterations to try and bury the link and we know how they did it. They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified the data and they did a lot of other tricks. And meanwhile, the external literature is showing, over a hundred studies that indicate that there is a link,” he added.

The major claim made by RFK Jr is that there is  a study undertaken by Thomas Verstraten in 1999, which showed hepatits vaccines increased the risk of autism in children.

What’s the fact?

First Check located this study, titled, “Increased risk of developmental neurologic impairment after high exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccine in first month of life,” but nowhere in this document is “11,135%” mentioned. 

Besides, it is not a ‘study’, rather an “abstract.” The difference is that a study is published after being peer-reviewed, whereas a proposal is for a study with a hypothesis and some data points. 

An abstract is the first step to a study, and usually researchers would continue to undertake a further extensive study once the abstract is approved. This is exactly the case with the abstract by Thomas Verstraten. First Check found that he has published a complete study in 2003 on the same topic which is available in the journal “Pediatrics,” titled, “Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases.” 

“In no analyses were significant increased risks found for autism or attention-deficit disorder,” the study states.”No consistent significant associations were found between TCVs (thimerosal-containing vaccines) and neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

Moreover, First Check has not been able to locate any of the “external studies,” RFK Jr has mentioned in his video. Instead, First Check located another study which debunks any such link.  

“Studies do not demonstrate a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ASD, and the pharmacokinetics of ethylmercury make such an association less likely,” the study concludes. “Epidemiologic studies that support a link demonstrated significant design flaws that invalidate their conclusions.”

Even the CDC states on its website: “There is no evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.”

Also read: FACT CHECK: Are COVID-19 vaccines behind the rise in heart attacks in Karnataka?