The Alarming Presence of Anti-Autism Ableism in the Conservative Movement

Also, vaccines do no cause autism

While scrolling on Instagram a while back, I saw a post that made my blood boil. It is rare for me to react in such a manner when I view content online that differs from what I believe, given that I regularly expose myself to the thoughts and opinions of various people from backgrounds and worldviews different from my own and do not consider myself to be a temperamental person. However, it is not hard to find things on the internet that are harmful, discriminatory, and factually incorrect, like the post that made me realize this is a more significant issue than I ever thought.

The post in question was a screenshot of a tweet made by conservative author and speaker

Will Witt

on X on November 18, 2021.

Almost all of the Instagram comments made some reference to vaccines as being the cause of the increased diagnosis of autism. This is not accurate, as I will later provide evidence of. However, his question itself contains a grievous error. The fact is that statistics on the prevalence of autism in a particular population only report the number of people who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which is not equivalent to the total number of autistic people.

Such a question denies the existence of late-diagnosed autistic adults, a phenomenon that is becoming ever more common. Sure, only a few children in the 1980s were diagnosed autistic, but many more people who were children at that time have received an autism diagnosis within the last decade. Why were so many cases of autism missed in childhood? The answer is simple: autism research was still fairly new and had not yet developed to the extent it is now.

Take me, for example. Growing up, I always knew that there was something different about me. From struggling to form relationships and understanding sarcasm to developing obsessions that I constantly thought about, fidgeting frequently, disliking loud noises, flashing lights, and eye contact, I showed many signs of being autistic. Just because I was not diagnosed does not mean that I was not autistic.

I had no idea what autism was until my final year of high school when I randomly stumbled upon some autistic YouTubers and quickly noticed that their experiences closely mirrored my own. Like me, many autistic people went undiagnosed in childhood due to a lack of information about autism and the use of a survival tactic called “masking,” which refers to the process of hiding one’s autistic traits and copying the behaviours of other people to appear “normal.” We were always autistic, though we only found out later with increased awareness of the various ways autism presents itself.

Secondly, the numbers he used in the post are incorrect. It is difficult to find accurate statistics about the prevalence of autism diagnosis because it varies by location, gender, age, and ethnicity. Despite that, there were probably more diagnosed autistic children in the 1980s than the 2 in 10 000 or 1 in 5000 number that Will Witt used in his post.

His statement that 1 in 34 children have autism today is one that I believe originates from a misreading of a study. The most recent and reliable data comes from a study conducted by the CDC in the United States in 2020 that found that 1 in 36 eight-year-old children were autistic.¹ However, I think that the number Will used came from the 2016 study. It indicates that the number of autistic children was 1 in 34 boys, 1 in 145 girls, and 1 in 54 children overall.² Whether intentionally or not, he used the number of boys with autism and stated that it was the number of children with autism. Either Will is incapable of reading a study, he knowingly manipulated the data to delude his audience, or he heard the number from a faulty source and did not bother to verify its accuracy. This should be concerning. For all that conservatives talk about the importance of facts, some of them are quite willing to misrepresent them to better support their premade conclusions.

After I found Will’s tweet, I decided to use the keyword search feature on X to see if any other prominent online conservatives had similar sentiments about the rise in autism diagnosis. As it turns out, some do. Discovering this was honestly quite shocking to me because although I knew that some people believe in the vaccines/autism connection, I had assumed that they were all a bunch of backward idiots who also think that the earth is flat, dinosaurs never existed, aliens built the pyramids, and the moon landing was a hoax. Needless to say, this problem is more extensive than I had imagined.

Next, I saw this post from the Babylon Bee that seems to suggest that the increase in autism numbers is due to vaccinations, calling it an “autism epidemic.” First, there is no such thing as an “autism epidemic.” The Oxford Dictionary of English defines “epidemic” as “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.”³ Simply put, autism cannot be an epidemic because it is neither a disease nor infectious. Autism is a condition, a disorder, a disability, and is not spread by a virus or any microorganism.

Secondly, autism is nothing new. Autistic people have been around throughout human history and will continue to exist. The massive increase in diagnosis is just that — a massive increase in diagnosis. More people than ever before are finding out that they are autistic due in part to the prevalence of information on the internet and the ability for other autistic people to share their stories.

Thirdly, it is false to assert that scientists have no idea what causes autism. There is an abundance of evidence suggesting a genetic connection; autism has even been called “one of the most heritable of all neuropsychiatric disorders.”⁴ One way to test this theory is through studies that compare the probability of autism occurring in both identical twins (who share 100% of their DNA) and fraternal twins (who share 50% of their DNA). In cases where one twin is autistic, there is an 88% chance of the other twin being autistic if they are identical and a 31% chance if they are fraternal.⁵

In terms of the supposed vaccine connection, it is a complete fabrication that originated in a 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield.⁶ The study was conducted with a derisory sample size of 12 children who had received the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, nine of whom were autistic.⁷ It attempted to argue that the vaccine was the cause of gut inflammation, which produced an unidentified protein that affected the brain and resulted in autism. This is unsupported by the evidence, as I will present below.

A 1999 study looked at 498 cases of autism and determined that there was a steady rise over time that did not accelerate with the introduction of the MMR vaccine.⁸ There was another one performed in 2001 in California which does not support any association between MMR vaccines and autism, as the increase in MMR vaccination was found to have progressed at a much slower rate than that of autism diagnoses.⁹ One other study conducted in 2004 evaluated the research and concluded that “there is no relationship between MMR vaccination and the development of autism.”¹⁰

Following further studies that have debunked the MMR and autism connection countless times, much obloquy from highly qualified individuals arose. Ten of the authors of the paper retracted the interpretation of the paper in 2004.¹¹ The medical journal in which the 1998 paper was published, The Lancet, retracted it entirely in 2010 due to mounting evidence of Wakefield’s unethical and fraudulent actions.¹² Yet “Dr.” Wakefield remained obdurate and was even involved in the making of an anti-vaccine documentary in 2016, doubling down on his arguments for the association of autism with the MMR vaccine.

Proposing another theory for a link between autism and vaccines, a publication in 2001 argued that autism was caused by mercury poisoning from a substance called thimerosal (which contains mercury) used in some vaccines.¹³ Due to controversy sparked by the paper and a book edited by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. entitled Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury — a Known Neurotoxin — from Vaccines, thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccinations except Fluvirin, though autism rates have only increased since.¹⁴ If thimerosal was, in fact, a major cause of autism as some anti-vaxxers would have you believe, then why has the prevalence of autism not plummeted, as one would expect?

The truth is that the idea that vaccines cause autism is a duplicitous falsehood with no scientific evidence or basis in reality. Many studies have been performed that “show that there are no links between MMR vaccine and autism, and none between thimerosal and autism.”¹⁵ One thing that the Babylon Bee post got right is that scientists are 100% certain that vaccines do not cause autism, and there are many reasons why they all agree. Yet this pseudoscientific nonsense still gets repeated online by people with millions of followers.

Two such examples are some tweets from former Daily Wire host Candace Owens. Now, I do not like Candace Owens and find it hard to understand why she has not been discredited. From her horrible caricature of Protestantism to her stance on The Chosen’s pride flag controversy, her blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments, and her defence of literal sex trafficker and misogynist Andrew Tate, she has propagated numerous extremely problematic views. Given her credulous nature when it comes to conspiracies that oppose the woke left, I was not surprised to hear that she has bought into the one about autism and vaccines.

I will not address the point about allergies since that is not the topic of this post, and I have not looked into the research regarding that topic. Candace here says, “we’re given no answer for why severe autism rates keep climbing,” but there is a reason which has nothing to do with what she implied. The simple answer is that people have gotten better at recognizing autism, which contributes to a higher rate of diagnosis. Her point about “severe autism” being on the rise is also misleading. In the first few decades of autism research, most diagnosed autistic people had an intellectual disability and low IQ. However, that has been reversed in recent decades, and the number of intellectually disabled autistic people is now a minority in the autistic community. As an article states,

One key aspect of the heterogeneity of ASD symptomatology appears to be the heterogeneity in intelligence quotient (IQ) (2). For example, Fombone (3) reported of 20 epidemiological studies of ASD, published from 1966 to 2001 and deduced that the median percentage of individuals with ASD and cognitive impairment (IQ < 70) ranged from 40 to 100% (mean 70%). This indication is also in line with statements in the current German and British ASD diagnostic guidelines (4, 5). In the early 2000s another large epidemiological study reported that an IQ < 70 was observed in only 50% of children with ASD (6), while a more recent epidemiological study (7) reported a further decline toward an amount of 31% of children with ASD, that were classified in the range of cognitive impairment (IQ < 70). The latter study further reported that 25% of children with ASD were in the borderline range (IQ 71–85), and 44% had IQ scores in the average to above average range (IQ ≥ 85).¹⁶

The reasoning behind this is that autistic people with a low IQ are more noticeably different from neurotypical people than those with a high level of intelligence. As such, they tend to get diagnosed at younger ages because parents, teachers, and other caretakers quickly notice that the child is developmentally delayed. There is not much of a rise in “severe autism,” as Candace blindly asserts, instead, more autistic people with lower support needs are getting diagnosed than ever before. This is not a bad thing, and there is no reason why anyone should feel scared of or threatened by the rise in autism diagnoses.

She also has another post about autism and vaccines from less than a year ago in which she seemingly claims that vaccines are unnecessary and perhaps even harmful to a child’s overall health and development. Unfortunately for her, Candace has shown that she is unable to understand basic numerical data. The chart records that there were 601 tetanus cases in 1948 alone, not that it is the total number of tetanus cases before vaccines were introduced, as Candace seems to believe. Furthermore, tetanus is a serious medical issue for which there is no cure and can result in death, though getting vaccinated against it greatly reduces the risk of contracting it.

It is also odd that Candace specifically chose the tetanus vaccine to link with autism, as I am not aware of such an association being made by anyone else. The most common vaccine that people claim causes autism is the MMR vaccine, something that originated from the fraudulent Wakefield study. To her credit, she does get the 1 in 36 number right, though the reading comprehension skills of both her and Will are atrocious.

To be honest, I am not even sure how to go about debunking this post when Candace did not provide any evidence of a correlation between autism and vaccines. I do find it somewhat offensive to describe the increase in autism numbers as “insanity.” As an autistic person myself, I do not believe that there is anything wrong with being autistic, nor does it make me some sort of deficient human. Just because I struggle with social skills, coordination, forgetfulness, changes in routine, and sensory overstimulation does not make my life any less worth living than anyone else’s. Autism is not a scary, evil force out to turn your children into subhuman monsters, and it is not something that can be prevented. If you are so terrified of having an autistic child that you take to the internet to spread autism myths and misinformation regarding the disorder, then perhaps you should not have children at all.

After this, I discovered an X post linking vaccines and autism from none other than former U.S. president Donald Trump. It is ten years old at this point, but I am not aware of him retracting this statement, so it is likely that he still holds such views. For the record, I am not a Trump fan or a Trump hater, but I think that he has numerous problematic beliefs, including this one. I struggle to understand why someone who is so obviously a narcissist has acquired such a large following of rabid supporters in the realm of politics, but I suppose humans are strange creatures and will often gravitate toward charismatic figures who make grandiose promises of prosperity and rewards in this life or the next.

His claim here is that there are “many such cases” of children who develop signs of autism after receiving vaccinations. This is simply false, as several parents of autistic children have noted that autism symptoms began presenting themselves before the child had ever gotten vaccinated. Also, just because there are instances where autism symptoms begin to show shortly after vaccination, it does not mean that the vaccine given has anything to do with autism symptoms. Another problem with his tweet is that it implies that being healthy and being autistic are mutually exclusive to each other. The thing is, autism is a neurodevelopmental disability and not an illness, disease, or sickness. Autistic people can be just as healthy, physically and mentally, as allistic people. We do not need medical treatments or medication to live a healthy and meaningful life, just societal acceptance, support, and understanding.

In my case, there was no moment when I suddenly did not feel good and changed for the worse. For as long as I can remember, I have exhibited autistic traits, behaviours, and ways of thinking. This is because autism develops before birth and is lifelong — meaning that autistic people have always been and will always be autistic whether some politicians like it or not. Therefore, this anti-vaccine conspiracy sounds positively cretinous to me and anyone else who has experienced firsthand what it is like to be autistic.

Speaking of prominent American politicians, a major proponent of the nonsensical claim that vaccines cause autism is (as I previously alluded to) U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Though he is not a conservative, his views have proved to be extremely influential in the anti-vaccine movement and are frequently cited by conservatives who have even stated that they respect and admire him for his courage to speak up about things the media does not report on. Given this, I have decided to include a tweet from him in this post, as his problematic ideology has seemingly only spread among conservatives since COVID-19 lockdowns.

The post contains a link to a page on the website of the Children’s Health Defense, an organization of which he is the chairman.¹⁷ Clearly, he has “a dog in this fight” or whatever the idiom is given the fact that he is a part of this anti-vaccine activist group and has become a sort of icon in the world of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. This article begins by stating, “A peer-reviewed study published this month in the Journal of Translational Science found children who were fully or partially vaccinated were diagnosed with autism, severe allergies, gastrointestinal disorders, asthma, recurring ear infections and ADD/ADHD more often than children who were completely unvaccinated.”

Since it helpfully provided a link to the study referenced, I decided to investigate. The research process of the study was based entirely on a survey sent to parents to self-report the vaccination status and diagnosed conditions/disorders of their children. As this paragraph says,

Parents who completed the survey rated their children’s vaccination status as “no vaccines,” “partially vaccinated” or “vaccines up-to-date.” Parents then selected from the following health conditions/disorders that their child either had or had not been diagnosed with: severe allergy (requiring prescription epi-pen), autism, chronic gastrointestinal issues (recurrent or chronic constipation or diarrhea), asthma (moderate to severe), ADD/ADHD (requiring medication), and chronic ear infections (3 or more per 12 months). Seizures (requiring medication) and type 1 diabetes were considered for assessment, but there were insufficient numbers of cases to complete a statistical analysis. Additionally, parents were asked about the type of birth (vaginal or cesarean), if the child was exclusively breastfed for a 6 month duration or longer, and current education status of the child (public/private school or home educated).¹⁸

Such an approach to conducting scientific research is problematic, as it relies on the memory and honesty of the parents involved, making it probable that inaccuracies exist. The information relevant to this post is contained within two charts that report the prevalence of various conditions in children organized by vaccination status.

To prevent this post from turning into one of excessive length, I will only look at the numbers of autism reported above. These tables indicate that the rate of autism is 7 out of 136 or 5% in fully vaccinated children, 34 out of 484 or 7% in partially vaccinated children, and 9 out of 945 or 1% in unvaccinated children.¹⁹ Is it not odd that a study claiming that vaccines lead to an increase in cases of autism shows a higher rate of autism cases among partially vaccinated children than fully vaccinated children?

As for the percentage of autistic children being higher in those who have received a vaccine or vaccines than those who did not, this can be explained in a way that does not imply a connection between vaccines and autism. It is conceivable that parents who vaccinate their children are more likely to get their child assessed for autism. Many parents who choose not to get their children vaccinated do so out of fear that vaccines are harmful and can cause disorders such as autism. If one believes that vaccines are the sole or primary cause of ASD and has chosen not to vaccinate their children as a result, they will probably not consider the possibility that their child could be autistic unless the signs of autism are very pronounced. This means that there is a good chance that many unvaccinated autistic children go undiagnosed because of the lies that their parents have bought into believing that one cannot be autistic if they have not been vaccinated.

Further, the study itself shows that there are cases of autism in unvaccinated children at a rate of just under 1%. Even if one is to take all the data the study presents at face value, unvaccinated children can still have autism, as the nine cases attest to.

I must also point out the obvious; the “study” lists one of the authors as Brian S. Hooker, who is on the CHD board of directors. If this seems sketchy, that is because it is.

There is a conflict of interest presented at the end that discloses this fact, which reads,

Dr. Hooker is a paid scientific advisor and serves on the advisory board for Focus for Health (formerly Focus Autism). He also serves on the Board of Trustees for Children’s Health Defense (formerly World Mercury Project) and is a paid independent contractor of Children’s Health Defense as well. Dr. Hooker is the father of a 23 year old male who has been diagnosed with autism and developmental delays. Mr. Miller has written and lectured on vaccine safety and was a paid consultant to Physicians for Informed Consent.²⁰

Wait a second. He “is a paid independent contractor of Children’s Health Defense,” an organization that was founded on the entire premise that vaccines are harmful and consistently spreads misinformation regarding autism and vaccines. When someone begins their research with a conclusion that they are trying to prove because they have a tremendous stake in the matter and where the results could have massive implications on their reputation, support, and finances, I am quite hesitant to accept such findings as true.

The truth is that multitudinous studies have been conducted demonstrating that there is no connection between vaccines and autism, a fact that even the conclusion of this study acknowledges, saying, “These particular analyses, and results, appear to be unique in the medical literature.”²¹ If your study comes back with a result that is “unique in the medical literature,” despite the topic having been excessively researched, perhaps there is a problem with your study.

Almost a year ago, RFK had this to say about autism:

So, according to ableist anti-vaxxers, autism is “far more devastating than COVID.” I have no interest in promoting any agenda about the danger or lack of regarding COVID, and will not do so. However, whichever view one takes, it is a sickness that has negative effects and has resulted in death in particular cases. Autism, on the other hand, is not a sickness and does not kill people. Autistic people have a lower expected lifespan than the average person, but autism itself is not a cause of death.

Furthermore, autism is not a negative thing. I cannot for the life of me understand why anti-vaccine, anti-science loudmouths continue to spread vitriolic falsehoods about autism unless it is for the sake of popularity or because they have become so entrenched in their views that no one can change them. Autistic people have so much to offer with our unique perspectives and ways of thinking. Claiming that autism is “devastating” only serves to coddle the minds of parents with autistic children who complain endlessly about how hard their lives are.

This honestly makes me very sad. I love being autistic because it is the way God made me, and I would not change it for anything in the world. Yes, autism is a disability, but being disabled is not a bad thing! Parroting this sort of hate is quite frankly disgusting and does absolutely nothing to help autistic people — only the opposite.

Yet there is hope. In my searches on X, I came across some tweets from two well-known conservatives that were so encouraging to see. This first post is from Allie Beth Stuckey and one with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Giving money to autism organizations does not do all that much to improve the lives of the average autistic person. Most autistic people (myself included) struggle to make friends and form meaningful relationships with others. It can be incredibly hard for those of us who also have social anxiety that results from consistently being told that we are inconsiderate and rude in social situations. The truth is, I do not know how to make friends and am held back by a fear of unintentionally hurting other people through my words and actions. Simply being patient with us and trying to understand things from our perspective goes a long way.

Another very popular conservative political commentator who has stood up for autistic people and debunked absurd claims is Ben Shapiro, who I have great respect for. He had this to say about the intellectual ability of those who believe vaccines cause autism:

Later, he posted a link to a short article that exposes some of the problems with Wakefield’s paper and why the alleged autism/vaccine connection is nonexistent.

But my favourite one has to be this tweet in which he points out that the same logic used to claim that the increase in vaccinations has caused the increase in autism can be used to say that eating less gluten causes autism. Those who say, “there’s more vaccines now and more autism, so they must be related,” do not realize that such an argument can be used for any other factor that has increased or decreased in recent decades.

As an autistic conservative myself, it is troubling to see conservatives who spread ableism online. I worry that conservatives who post such things could be causing disabled people to become increasingly left-leaning and that they are sabotaging the movement by turning autistic people against conservativism. It is my genuine wish that all the people who have engaged in hurtful and discriminatory misinformation regarding autism take back their comments and realize that complaining about the rise in diagnoses of ASD does not help anyone.

Although I used some harshly worded statements, I do not intend this post to be an attack on any of the people whose tweets I cited. It was my goal to interact with the information and arguments they presented and explain why that is not the case. If we want to change culture for the better, conservatives need to do better in calling out lies so that we can strive to pursue truth together.

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Thank you so much for reading this post. I apologize for the length, (over 5000 words including footnotes 😬) but I do think that this information is incredibly important and I legitimately enjoyed the research involved in putting this together, despite the discouraging content. If you found this post interesting and would like to learn more about the autism/vaccine myth, here are some resources I recommend.

Videos from khanacademymedical: Vaccines and the Autism Myth Part 1, Part 2

Video from autistic YouTuber Olivia Hops: Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

Book by a vaccine scientist and father of an autistic daughter: Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism

Article by the same author: “The ‘Why Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism’ Papers”

Wikipedia page: Lancet MMR autism fraud

1. Maenner MJ, Warren Z, Williams AR, et al. “Prevalence and Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years — Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2020.” MMWR Surveill Summ 2023;72(No. SS-2):1–14. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss7202a1.

2. Maenner MJ, Shaw KA, Baio J, et al. “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years — Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2016.” MMWR Surveill Summ 2020;69(No. SS-4):1–12. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss6904a1.

3. Oxford Dictionary of English, 2019, s.v. “epidemic.”

4. Castelbaum, L., Sylvester, C.M., Zhang, Y. et al. “On the Nature of Monozygotic Twin Concordance and Discordance for Autistic Trait Severity: A Quantitative Analysis.” Behav Genet 50, 263–272 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-019-09987-2.

5. Rosenberg RE, Law JK, Yenokyan G, McGready J, Kaufmann WE, Law PA. “Characteristics and Concordance of Autism Spectrum Disorders Among 277 Twin Pairs.” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2009;163(10):907–914. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.98.

6. Hotez, Peter J. Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, 57.

7. Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, Linnell J, Casson DM, Malik M, et al. “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.” Lancet 1998;351:637–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0.

8. Klein KC, Diehl EB. “Relationship Between MMR Vaccine and Autism. Annals of Pharmacotherapy.” 2004;38(7-8):1297-1300. doi:10.1345/aph.1D293.

9. Dales L, Hammer SJ, Smith NJ. “Time trends in autism and in MMR immunization coverage in California.” JAMA. 2001 Mar 7;285(9):1183-5. doi: 10.1001/jama.285.9.1183. PMID: 11231748.

10. Taylor B, Miller E, Farrington CP, Petropoulos MC, Favot-Mayaud I, Li J, Waight PA. “Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association.” Lancet. 1999 Jun 12;353(9169):2026-9. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(99)01239-8. PMID: 10376617.

11. Murch SH, Anthony A, Casson DH, Malik M, Berelowitz M, Dhillon AP, Thomson MA, Valentine A, Davies SE, Walker-Smith JA. “Retraction of an interpretation.” Lancet. 2004 Mar 6;363(9411):750. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)15715-2. Erratum for: Lancet. 1998 Feb 28;351(9103):637-41. PMID: 15016483.

12. Eggertson L. “Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines.” CMAJ. 2010 Mar 9;182(4):E199-200. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.109-3179. Epub 2010 Feb 8. PMID: 20142376; PMCID: PMC2831678.

13. Bernard S, Enayati A, Redwood L, Roger H, Binstock T. “Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning.” Med Hypotheses. 2001 Apr;56(4):462-71. doi: 10.1054/mehy.2000.1281. PMID: 11339848.

14. Hotez, Vaccines Not Cause Autism, 62.

15. Ibid., 108.

16. Wolff N, Stroth S, Kamp-Becker I, Roepke S, Roessner V. “Autism Spectrum Disorder and IQ - A Complex Interplay.” Front Psychiatry. 2022 Apr 18;13:856084. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.856084. PMID: 35509885; PMCID: PMC9058071.

17. "Board of Directors". Children's Health Defense. Archived from the original on April 16, 2019. Retrieved February 17, 2024.

18. Brian S. Hooker and Neil Z. Miller (2021) “Health effects in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children with covariates for breastfeeding status and type of birth.” JTranslSci 7: DOI: 10.15761/JTS.1000459.

19. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest integer for the sake of simplicity.

20. Hooker, “Vaccinated versus unvaccinated children.”

21. Ibid.