Autism: Is it caused by too many vaccines?

In a recirculated video, pediatrician Paul Thomas claims that unvaccinated children in his practice are healthier and less likely to have chronic conditions or developmental issues compared to vaccinated children and that his medical license was suspended after sharing this data.

Anti-vaxxers often claim that unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children in many ways. They often cite some studies to try to back up those claims. However, all these studies suffer from a lot of the same fallacies. Many are simple surveys.

Surveys are often victims of self-selection bias, or volunteer bias, in which participants can decide whether or not to participate in the study, along with recall bias and reporting bias.

One refrain you often hear from anti-vaxxers is “Follow the money.” So we did, and we found one study funded by two different anti-vaccine organizations (Generation Rescue, Inc., and the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute). This study was eventually retracted. Twice.

This interview is based on a paper that claims to have discovered an ‘off-switch’ for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. In it, Dr. McCullough says that one solution to “detox” against mRNA vaccines is to introduce small interfering RNA (siRNA), similar to mRNA along with ribonuclease targeting chimeras (RIBOTACs)

McCullough has made multiple claims, including in his paper below, that lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) can cause injury and harm. Yet in his new procedure, both siRNA and RIBOTACs use lipid nanoparticles to enter the cells to target mRNA. If using lipids to allow siRNA and RIBOTACs to enter our cells is seen as safe, we can also assume the mRNA from vaccination is safe.

McCullough thinks this procedure is necessary because of worries about how mRNA vaccines spread throughout the body.

His idea about “systemic biodistribution” comes from misconstrued data. A study in rats looked at lipid nanoparticles after mRNA vaccine injections and their distribution in organs over time. The data show that most of the nanoparticles stayed where they were injected, and some went to the liver. In the ovaries, the highest amount of nanoparticles found was very, very small (only about 0.095% after 48 hours). This amount might be even smaller in human ovaries because the dose used in the COVID vaccine is much less than what they used in the rat study.

Would this off-switch work? We doubt Dr. McCullough’s science very much, and it is unnecessary because while tiny amounts of mRNA may persist in the body, the vast majority usually degrades within days.