McCullough and Wakefield Team Up:

On October 27, 2025, Peter McCullough joined forces with Andrew Wakefield to self-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 Wakefield’s Lancet article was retracted in 2010 for fraud, undisclosed financial interests, ethical violations, and scientific misrepresentations (Link).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.

Too many vaccines:

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, particularly on subcellular organelles called mitochondria, produces “mitochondrial stress”, which in turn increases the risk for autism. However, the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence doesn’t back up this notion. There’s no evidence that the large number of antigens (from bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc) that an infant or child’s body is exposed to every day or the small number of antigens in vaccines hurt the immune system in any way, since the human immune system is designed to handle enormous numbers of antigens on a daily basis.

In fact, the number of antigens in vaccines has gone down over the years, even while autism rates have gone up. In the 1980s, for example, the exposure to vaccine antigens was much higher, at ~3000 (mainly because the old whole-cell pertussis vaccine alone contained ~3,000 antigens), than it is today.

Vaccine Doses Related to ASD?

So, while McCullough is correct in saying that there were fewer vaccine “shots” or “doses” a few decades ago (see illustration), this is really irrelevant to the actual degree of antigen exposure or to the claimed increase in ASD with the increase in vaccinations since the 1970s and 80s. After all, the entire vaccine schedule today, from birth to 18 years of age, exposes children to fewer than 165 antigens total (because modern vaccines tend to use purified proteins, toxoids, polysaccharides, and recombinant technologies, which require far fewer antigens to generate strong immunity). This is far less than a baby gets from crawling on the carpet. The typical child gets exposed to between 2,000 and 6,000 antigens per day (Link). A minor respiratory infection may expose a child to 4,000–10,000 antigens in a single event. Most children following the recommended schedule will receive about 30 shots protecting against about 20 diseases by the time they turn 18. This is all by design. A baby’s immune system is designed to handle even billions of antigens simultaneously.  Even if all vaccines were given at once, the immune system would use <0.1% of its theoretical capacity

This clearly supports the conclusion that antigen overload isn’t the problem. And even though “mitochondrial stress” is a popular phrase right now, experts from Science Feedback explain that there’s no proof that vaccines trigger autism, even in people with mitochondrial disorders. They explain that infections, not vaccines, are the real danger for these children. Vaccines actually protect them by preventing fevers and other problems that could lead to brain injury.

“Children have an enormous capacity to respond safely to challenges to the immune system from vaccines,” says Dr. Offit. “A baby’s body is bombarded with immunologic challenges—from bacteria in food to the dust they breathe. Compared to what they typically encounter and manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean.” (Link)

“Given that infants are colonized with trillions of bacteria, that each bacterium contains between 2,000 and 6,000
immunological components, and that infants are infected with numerous viruses, the challenge from the 150 immunological components in vaccines is minuscule compared to what infants manage every day. Indeed, a scraped knee is probably a greater immunological challenge than all childhood vaccines combined.” – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 2018

Summary Chart: Natural exposure far exceeds vaccine exposure

Low Autism Rates among the Amish:

The argument is also made that communities that have lower vaccination rates, like the Amish, also have lower rates of Autism Spectrum Disorder. It’s not like the Amish don’t vaccinate their children at all.  A 2011 study in Pediatrics, for example, found that only 14% of Amish people surveyed didn’t vaccinate their kids at all. (Link)  Still, several studies have suggested lower overall rates of ASD within Amish communities.

There are several possible reasons for this observation. For example, the Amish have a greater tendency to avoid mainstream medical care and therefore do not take as much advantage of diagnostic criteria or care for ASD. This probably affects the detection rate. After all, there have been studies in certain Amish communities that showed rather high rates of ASD. A 2011 study on autism in Amish children in Ohio, published in the Journal of Child Neurology, found a high rate of autism due to a high degree of genetic consanguinity within the community. The study identified a rate of approximately 27 cases per 1000 children (1 in 37).

Joycelyn M. Lee, et. al., Autism Spectrum Disorders in Amish and Non-Amish Children. Journal of Child Neurology. 2011;26(6):696–701. (see also: Link)

So far, however, it seems as though in certain Amish communities, the rate of ASD may actually be less compared to the national average (1 in 271 vs. 1 in 31). Note, however, that this range is comparable to other non-Amish US communities. For example, the prevalence of autism among 8-year-olds in 2022 was 1 in 31 overall, but ranged from 1 in 103 in a community in Texas to 1 in 19 in California. Several studies have shown significantly lower rates of ASD among Hispanics in Texas compared to non-Hispanic caucasians (Link). In fact, in the U.S., recorded rates can vary 5-fold (or more) between different states or communities. Such variability likely reflects differences in regional genetic characteristics, dietary norms, environmental hazards, access to care, screening, and awareness. In any case, none of these rate variabilities have been associated with vaccination rates, which is the key point. (Link, Link, Link).

Pre-existing Conflicts of Interest:

In addition, note that 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”.

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

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
  • Misuse of passive surveillance data (e.g., VAERS) — VAERS and similar systems collect raw reports of events after vaccination, but cannot establish causation; treating VAERS counts as evidence of causality is a well-known error
  • Ecological and correlation errors — e.g., correlating aggregate vaccination rates with aggregate autism rates without accounting for detection/diagnostic changes and confounders (this can produce spurious associations)
  • 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. Still, there are good vaccines studies comparing the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated.
    • A study published in the February 2014 issue of the journal Autism found “the rates of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis did not differ between immunized and non-immunized younger sib groups.” (Link)
    • A retrospective cohort study that assessed MMR vaccination status and psychiatric diagnoses among 537,303 children born in Denmark between 1991 and 1998. The study provides evidence against a causal relation between MMR vaccination and autism. Their data demonstrated a similar risk of autism in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, a lack of temporal clustering of autism cases after immunization, and that neither autistic disorder nor ASD were linked to MMR vaccination. (Link)
    • A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism (2002, by Kreesten Madsen et al.). This study compared ~ 537,303 Danish children; ~ 82% had received the MMR vaccine, ~ 18% were unvaccinated. There was no increased risk of autism or ASD in the vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations (Relative Risk [RR] = 0.92 for autistic disorder; RR = 0.83 for other ASDs) after adjustment.
    • Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study (2019, by Anders Hviid et al.). This study included 657,461 children born from 1999–2010 in Denmark, among whom some had not received MMR. Reported an adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.85–1.02) comparing MMR-vaccinated vs MMR-unvaccinated, i.e. no statistically significant increase in autism after vaccination.
    • See also: 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 

 

 

 

 

Loss of the CDC:

Of course, now that the CDC has been gutted by RFK Jr. (also notoriously opposed to childhood vaccines 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.

Response from the Medical Community:

Susan Kressly:

“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)

Allison Singer:

“The facts don’t change because the administration does”, said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation. At this point, it’s not about doing more studies; it’s about being willing to accept what the existing study data clearly show. You can’t just ignore data because it doesn’t confirm your beliefs, but that’s what the administration is doing.”

“The CDC has always been a trustworthy source of scientifically-backed information but it appears this is no longer the case”, added Singer. “Spreading this misinformation will needlessly cause fear in parents of young children who may not be aware of the mountains of data exonerating vaccines as a cause of autism and who may withhold vaccines in response to this misinformation, putting their children at risk to contract and potentially die from vaccine-preventable diseases.” (Link)

Sean O’Leary:

Sean T. O’Leary, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, called the latest move to put misinformation on the trusted CDC website “madness” and “a tragic moment for this country” and said he does not blame the career CDC scientists.

“For many decades, we (could) rely on CDC to provide the American public with the best available science,” Dr. O’Leary said. “Now our government is using it as an apparatus to spread falsehoods and lies.” (Link)

:Independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 studies involving over 5.6 million people to conclude that there is no link between vaccines and autism.” (Link)

Paul Offit:

“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)

The 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)

 

Video Clips:

Dr. Noc:

Dr. Rossome:

Dr. Mona:

See also Dr. Mona’s original post on Instagram: Link

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