McCullough and Wakefield Team Up:

On October 27, 2025, Peter McCullough joined forces with Andrew Wakefield to publish a lengthy report (Link) reviving the claim that childhood vaccines are a primary risk factor for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For those who know their history, this shouldn’t be surprising.  McCullough, a cardiologist, gained notoriety opposing the mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic (Link, Link) and then later for his opposition to the childhood vaccine schedule, and Wakefield became infamous for publishing a now-retracted paper in The Lancet linking the MMR vaccine with childhood autism in 1998 (Link). Wakefield’s Lancet article was retracted in 2010 for fraud, undisclosed financial interests, ethical violations, and scientific misrepresentations (Link). Following the initial worldwide scare created by Wakefield, numerous rigorous scientific studies were conducted around the world to see if a link between childhood vaccines and autism could be detected. No such link was ever established, despite very large-scale studies involving millions of children followed over many years.

Yet, here we are again back at square one.  It seems only natural, if not inevitable, that McCullough and Wakefield would join forces to revive the link between vaccines and autism. In their report, their central claim is that vaccines, particularly those containing aluminum adjuvants or ethyl mercury, cause or contribute to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It asserts that over 100 studies support this idea and that only a handful find no link. 

The McCullough report claims that when a child gets too many vaccines, it can overwhelm their immune system. The report claims that this stress on the body, primarily affecting cellular organelles called mitochondria, produces “mitochondrial stress”, which in turn significantly increases the risk for autism. But science doesn’t back this up. There’s no evidence that the germs (called antigens) a baby’s body fights every day or that the small number of antigens in vaccines hurts the immune system in any way. In fact, the number of antigens in vaccines has gone down over the years, even while autism rates have gone up.

Of course, all of the authors of this report have pre-existing conflicts of interest and a well-known pre-established bias against vaccines:  Here are their backgrounds:

• Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH: The foundation’s leader, a cardiologist who became prominent during COVID-19 for spreading vaccine misinformation. He’s had his board certifications revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine for promoting COVID-19 vaccine misinformation;
• John S. Leake, MA: Vice President of the McCullough Foundation with no medical qualifications. In fact, he is a non-fiction author and writes true crime novels;
• Andrew Wakefield, MBBS: Yes, he’s back. The author of the fraudulent 1998 Lancet study that started the entire vaccine-autism myth. His medical license was revoked for research fraud;
• Nicolas Hulscher, MPH: The report’s primary epidemiologist, who joined the McCullough Foundation immediately after completing his MPH in 2024;
• Seven other foundation members and associates with previous publications examining vaccines as a “risk factor” for various diseases and adverse outcomes.
• The report also received funding from the Bia-Echo Foundation, founded by Nicole Shanahan, who served as RFK Jr.’s running mate in 2024 and shares his skepticism about vaccine safety. The foundation’s mission to turn ‘advocacy into actionable research’ is also noteworthy.
• This report was uploaded to Zenodo, which is an open repository where anyone can post documents without scientific scrutiny. It did not undergo rigorous peer review and is not a scientific journal with credibility. When you can’t get published in a legitimate journal or don’t want to field critiques from external scientists reviewing your work, you self-publish, self-promote, and call it “landmark research.”
• Despite these clear biases, the authors do not declare any conflicts of interest.

Response from the Medical Community:

Dr. Zachary Rubin:

“That figure alone [that over 100 studies support their conclusion] should raise eyebrows. The overwhelming body of peer-reviewed evidence from around the world—including meta-analyses covering millions of children—shows no causal relationship between any vaccine or vaccine ingredient and autism. The authors of this new report don’t reconcile that contradiction; instead, they dismiss every null finding as “biased” or “methodologically flawed” and elevate small, often non–peer-reviewed papers or case reports as proof of causation. This is cherry-picking, not science. What makes the report especially misleading is how it blends legitimate science with distorted interpretation. It correctly notes that autism is multifactorial, shaped by genetics, perinatal conditions, and environmental factors, but then uses that complexity to sneak in a presupposed conclusion: that vaccines are one of those environmental triggers. Correlation is presented as causation. Graphs showing the number of vaccine doses over time are plotted beside autism prevalence curves, suggesting a relationship without any statistical evidence of causality (Figure 2). This is a textbook example of a spurious correlation, the same flawed logic that could “prove” that organic food sales or smartphone ownership cause autism simply because they rose in parallel over the same decades.

The authors claim to have “comprehensively examined” the literature but fail to describe any reproducible method for how studies were identified, screened, or evaluated for quality. There’s no mention of pre-registration, bias assessment, or peer review. The inclusion of “gray literature,” conference abstracts, and preprints, sources that bypass scientific scrutiny, further undermines credibility. Meanwhile, high-quality epidemiologic studies from Denmark, Sweden, Japan, and the United States are brushed aside because they don’t fit the narrative. The result is a document that reads more like a legal brief for the anti-vaccine movement than a scientific analysis.

Zachary Rubin, The McCullough Foundation’s Autism Report Isn’t Science — It’s Propaganda, Do Not Be Fooled, October 28, 2025 (Dr. Zachary Rubin is a double board-certified pediatrician specializing in allergy and immunology)

Review of the 300 References:

We manually reviewed every single one of the 308 references — checking the authors and the journals where they were published. When we highlighted all the problematic sources (those written by known anti-vaccine advocates, retracted papers, and preprints, blogs, and other non-peer-reviewed sources masquerading as journals), the pattern was striking: starting at citation 193 onward, the list is essentially a sea of red flags.

Here’s what we discovered:

The Same Names, Over and Over

When we catalogued the authors cited, we noticed that the same small group of anti-vaccine advocates appeared repeatedly.

• • Papers by Mark and David Geier (Mark’s medical license was revoked in multiple states for unethical autism “treatments”)
  • Studies by Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic (several retracted for manipulation)
  • Brian Hooker and Andrew Wakefield’s analyses (repeatedly debunked and/or retracted)
  • The McCullough Foundation authors citing their own previous work

This circular citation creates an illusion of widespread scientific support. They cite their own papers to validate their claims, then use those claims as evidence in new papers. It’s academic three-card Monte — the same bad data shuffled around to look like multiple independent sources. Instead of fairly examining all relevant research and before deriving conclusions, the authors only focused on studies that agreed with their narrative. This is an extreme case of selection bias, where any study that doesn’t fit their narrative is written off as having “serious methodological flaws”. (Link)

The Journal Problem:

We also examined where these 308 references were published. Many appeared in:

• • Predatory journals without a peer review process
  • Pay-to-publish outlets where anyone can be published if they hand over enough $$$
  • Journals with editorial boards stacked with anti-vaccine activists
  • Non-indexed journals with no scientific credibility

Nearly 1 in 4 references come from retracted papers, predatory journals, or the same small group of authors citing each other repeatedly. That’s a real problem. (Link)

They even included papers from the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (a publication known for promoting HIV denialism and other medical misinformation) and the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research–both of which are not indexed in PubMed because they do not meet basic scientific standards. In the conclusion, the report claims that of 136 vaccine studies they reviewed, 107 (79%) show a link to autism. Achieving this shocking percentage required some creative accounting:

What They Counted as “Evidence”:

• • Retracted papers, including Wakefield’s original fraud
  • Animal studies using doses hundreds of times higher than human vaccines
  • Test tube experiments that can’t be directly extrapolated as human evidence
  • Online parent surveys with self-selected participants and unverifiable data
  • The same data published multiple times by the same authors in different journals
  • Law reviews

For example, a “study” from TheControlGroup.org (citation 291 in the report) is based on mail-in reports, phone calls, and interviews with self-selected participants. The author, Joy Garner, openly admits she’s “neither a PhD, nor a statistician” but rather “a tech inventor (hardware/video games) and patent-holder with an above-average IQ.” That is certainly not high-quality evidence (or evidence, at all).

 

How They Dismissed Contradictory Evidence:

They do cite major studies — including the recent Danish aluminum study that followed 1.2 million children. But these major studies are dismissed, and here’s how:

• • The same old “no true unvaccinated” argument: They claim these studies are invalid because they don’t have “genuinely unvaccinated control groups.” With clear evidence that vaccines save lives, withholding vaccines from children merely to create an “uncontaminated control group” would violate clinical equipoise and is extremely unethical. Even so, such studies have been done comparing vaccinated children with the children of parents who refused to let them get vaccinated:
    • Analyzing data from over 650,000 children in Denmark, this 2019 large-scale study found no link between MMR vaccines and autism. The risk of autism was not higher in vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children, even among those with a sibling history of autism or other risk factors. (Link)
    • Another 2002 study from Denmark, in a cohort of over 537,000 children born in Denmark between 1991 and 1998, found no link between MMR vaccination and autism. The risk of autism in vaccinated children was the same as in unvaccinated children. (Link)
    • Another UK study from 1999 found no difference in age at diagnosis between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and no increase in autism onset in the months or years following vaccination. (Link)
    • The 2006 Japanese study examined whether the MMR vaccine was linked to autistic regression in Japan, where the vaccine was only used between 1989 and 1993. Among 904 children with autism, researchers found no difference in regression rates between those who received MMR and those who did not. (Link)
  • Statistical nitpicking: They claim that studies that did not find an association with autism used “overadjusted statistical models,” “registry misclassification,” and “ecological confounding”. By claiming that models were “overadjusted”, the authors are insinuating that they have better subject-matter knowledge regarding a causal relationship than other researchers who have examined this relationship before them. In this vague claim, they fail to make explicit the variables they think are overadjustments and do not provide any additional “expert evidence” to back their claims. Though some degree of misclassification is inevitable in any registry-based study, errors large enough to completely erase an association are extremely rare. Ultimately, these are manufactured and technical reasons to dismiss studies that don’t support their conclusions.
  • The double standard of verification: They complain that “only a few case-control studies verified vaccination through medical records,” while simultaneously including unverified parent surveys and blog posts to support their conclusions.

As a clear example of their dismissal of reputable evidence, let’s take the Danish aluminum study from earlier this year. This study of 1.2 million children found no link between aluminum in vaccines and 50 different conditions, including autism. Rather than acknowledge this as massive contradictory evidence, they simply dismiss it as having methodological flaws. (Link)

They also attempt to discredit vaccine research from Denmark by highlighting Poul Thorsen, a researcher who was arrested for embezzling CDC grant money. Financial fraud is serious, but it doesn’t invalidate the dozens of other studies conducted using Denmark’s comprehensive health registry system. In fact, this is guilt by association: they are dismissing an entire nation’s research infrastructure because of one person’s financial crimes over a decade ago. The hypocrisy here is staggering: they criticize Thorsen’s financial misconduct while including Andrew Wakefield as a co-author–the same Wakefield who was paid by lawyers suing vaccine manufacturers, who manipulated data, and who planned to profit from the MMR vaccine scare he created.

Jess Steier, Anti-Vaccine Mad Libs: The McCullough Foundation’s “Landmark” Report (Same recycled claims, shiny new packaging), Medium, November 4, 2025 

Examples of Large-Scale Studies:

 

 

 

Loss of the CDC:

Of course, now that the CDC has been gutted of mainstream scientists by the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (also notoriously opposed to childhood vaccines for decades and well-known for promoting their supposed link with ASD), the new CDC just updated its website in line with the McCullough/Wakefield report, to include a statement linking childhood vaccines with autism. The CDC’s website now says a link between vaccines and autism cannot be ruled out (Link). That’s a reversal from the CDC’s longstanding stance that there is no link.

And, RFK Jr. said that he “personally directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cast aside its long-held position that vaccines do not cause autism” during an interview with the New York Times. The move marks an unusual instance of a Health Secretary unilaterally establishing public health guidance, undermining a long-held consensus from mainstream researchers and doctors, and coming in an area where Kennedy has shown significant interest for decades. (Link)

Previously, changes have only occurred in consultation with subject matter experts at the agency’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The CDC sources told CBS News that political appointees at HHS devised the change and instructed an employee inside the office of acting CDC Director Jim O’Neil to make it. Of course, RFK Jr. later said in an interview with The New York Times that he personally ordered the change. (Link)

Not surprisingly, this change corresponded to the release of the report published by Peter McCullough and Andrew Wakefield, and McCullough takes full credit for the change in the CDC’s position (Link).

 

Response from the Medical Community:

Susan J. Kressly, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to promote false information suggesting vaccines cause autism,” said Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement. “Since 1998, independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people. The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism. Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.” (Link)

Autism Science Foundation:

“The new statement shows a lack of understanding of the term ‘evidence,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement the organization provided to NPR, adding, “No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines.” (Link)

The Autism Science Foundation said in a statement it was “appalled” by the change to the CDC’s website, and highlighted the decades of research into the topic. Alison Singer, the co-founder and president of the ASF, said that while researchers “can’t do a scientific study to show that something does not cause something else,” there is a “mountain of studies that we have exonerating vaccines as a cause of autism. I think the question of whether vaccines cause autism is one that science can answer, and science has answered it,” Singer said in Thursday’s news briefing. (Link)

Sean O’Leary, Head of the Infections Diseases Committee, American Academy of Pediatrics:

Dr. Sean O’Leary told reporters in a briefing on Thursday that the CDC’s website update was perpetuating a lie.

“This is madness. Vaccines do not cause autism, and unfortunately, we can no longer trust health-related information coming from our government… We are at a very dangerous moment for the health of America’s children… We have been dealing with these falsehoods for many years. They are not new. We have been promoting the science, and we’re going to continue to do that, as are the other professional societies. The problem is now these falsehoods are coming from our federal government.” (Link, Link)

Mandy Cohen, Former CDC Director:

“There is overwhelming evidence that vaccines do not cause autism,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, a former CDC director. “This change to CDC language undermines the agency’s scientific integrity, damaging its credibility on vaccines and other health recommendations. Most concerning, it risks endangering children by driving down vaccination rates and leaving kids vulnerable to preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough.” (Link)

Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia:

“It’s a statement that’s confusing by design”, said Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “These are the usual anti-vaccine tropes, misrepresentation of studies, false equivalence,” he says. “They might as well say chicken nuggets might cause autism because you can’t prove that either.” (Link)

For years, RFK Jr. had been paid by his organization, Children’s Health Defense, to convince the public and the media that vaccines cause autism. During his confirmation hearing, he used three strategies typical of personal-injury lawyers paid to represent a position.

Strategy #1: Deny the existence of studies that don’t support your position. Senator William Cassidy (R, LA) asked RFK Jr. to reassure parents that vaccines don’t cause autism. “If the data is there,” said Kennedy, “I will absolutely do that.” Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) was surprised by RFK Jr.’s answer, pointing out that “dozens of studies done all over the world make it very clear that vaccines do not cause autism.” Still, Kennedy refused to acknowledge them.

Strategy #2: Promote any study that supports your position, no matter how poorly done. Toward the end of the hearing, RFK Jr. offered a “high-quality” study that he believed proved his point that vaccines caused autism. The study, which included 9-year-old children enrolled in the Medicaid program in Florida, was critically flawed:

1. 1. 1. 1. It was published on a WordPress Blog, not in a medical or scientific journal.
         2. It was “peer-reviewed” by Peter McCullough, a well-known anti-vaccine activist.
         3. Both study authors had previously published studies on vaccines that were retracted.
         4. The study was funded by the National Vaccine Information Center, an anti-vaccine group.
         5. The authors failed to determine whether their “unvaccinated” children had been vaccinated outside of the Medicaid system, such as through the Vaccine for Children’s Program.
         6. The authors ignored confounding factors such as healthcare-seeking behavior. Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children might also visit the doctor less frequently, causing the diagnosis of autism to be missed.
         7. The authors didn’t determine whether the diagnosis of autism was made before or after the first vaccine was given.

These methodological flaws rendered the paper meaningless, begging the question why RFK Jr. chose it to counter the dozens of other studies that had been well-controlled, peer-reviewed, and published in excellent journals.

Strategy #3: Say that anyone who disagrees with you is a shill for Big Pharma.

Paul Offit, The RFK Jr. Playbook, Beyond the Noise, February 6, 2025

Note also that the current CDC acknowledges in a footnote on its main webpage on autism and vaccines that it still carries a header reading “Vaccines do not cause autism*” and says it hasn’t “been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.” (Link)

See also: https://www.autismspeaks.org/do-vaccines-cause-autism

 

Video Clips:

Dr. Noc:

Dr. Rossome:

 

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Dr. Sean Pitman is a pathologist, with subspecialties in anatomic, clinical, and hematopathology, currently working in N. California.