Examining Educational Decline: Spending vs. Student Outcomes

Dr. Gary Null gives a commentary on his article "It's Time for a Vaccination Reckoning"

Ask any federal health official—whether from the FDA, CDC, NIH, or National Cancer Institute—if vaccines contribute to neurological damage or autism, and their response will be unequivocal: No, there is no evidence of any association. In fact, they might find the very question offensive. After all, these agencies have access to unlimited resources, the brightest scientific minds, and cutting-edge research facilities at institutions like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford. If there were any credible link between vaccines and neurological harm, surely, they would have found it by now.

And yet, despite decades of investigation and countless opportunities, their stance remains unchanged: vaccines are safe and effective. Any claim to the contrary is dismissed as conspiracy theory and an assault on the very foundations of modern medicine. This has been the dominant narrative for the past forty years. Federal health officials and policymakers have long prioritized private pharmaceutical industry interests and upheld the belief that vaccination is the single most important tool for eradicating infectious diseases. Dissent is neither tolerated nor entertained. The agencies responsible for vaccine safety, such as HHS, FDA, NIAID and the CDC, are ruled by a rigid scientific orthodoxy that allows no room for alternative perspectives.

But now, for the first time in modern history, an outsider has entered the room. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services, is neither a scientist nor a physician. Unlike his predecessors, he has no allegiance to the status quo. His appointment signals a possible turning point to usher a new opportunity for a truly independent investigation into whether vaccines, either individually or collectively, contribute to neurological damage. If pursued earnestly, this could be one of the most consequential moments in American medical history.

The stakes could not be higher. Over the past few decades, childhood chronic illnesses have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. The rise in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), ADHD, autoimmune conditions, and other neurological and developmental disorders has been explained away as the result of better diagnostic tools or genetic predispositions. But are these explanations sufficient? What if something more fundamental has changed in children's health over the past 30 years? Federal health agencies continue to dismiss environmental factors, including vaccines, as a potential cause. But if we truly care about children’s well-being, it is time to ask the hard questions. And we must ask without fear, without bias, and without ideological blinders.

The dramatic increase in neurological disorders, including autism spectrum disorders that is now diagnosed in 1 in every 36 children, has often been attributed to improved definitions for ASD and diagnostic tools. However, a closer look at government statistics reveals alarming trends in children’s health that go far beyond better diagnostics. Since the early 1990s, there has been a staggering increase in several chronic conditions: ADHD rates have risen by 890 percent, autism diagnoses by 2,094 percent, bipolar disease in youth by 10,833 percent, and celiac disease by 1,011 percent. These numbers beg the question—what has fundamentally changed in our children’s health over the past three decades?

The media plays a crucial role in reinforcing the official vaccine narrative while systematically silencing dissenting voices. This lack of transparency allows federal health agencies like the CDC, NIAID, and HHS to evade accountability. Instead of safeguarding public health, these institutions have become politically and ideologically entangled with private pharmaceutical interests. Their close ties to the industry have led to the approval of insufficiently tested vaccines, the medicalization of normal childhood behaviors, and the delivery of subpar healthcare—all at a staggering cost of $5 trillion annually.

Medical authorities insist that vaccines, even when administered in multiple doses on a single day, are safe and do not cause chronic health problems. They claim that vaccine ingredients are either harmless or present in amounts too small to pose any risk. Any attempt to challenge these assertions is met with ridicule. Despite a sharp rise in childhood neurological disorders, there has been no significant push for reform or independent long-term safety studies on the effects of vaccines.

For decades, concerns about vaccine safety have not only come from parents and advocacy groups but also from government investigations. A three-year congressional investigation led by Rep. Dan Burton strongly criticized the CDC, FDA, and HHS for their failure to conduct proper vaccine safety studies. The committee found that federal agencies systematically downplayed risks, ignored growing evidence of vaccine-related neurological disorders, and relied on poorly designed epidemiological studies rather than clinical research. The report also exposed the failure of vaccine manufacturers to conduct adequate safety testing, highlighting decades of negligence. Despite these damning conclusions, little has changed, and concerns about vaccine safety remain unaddressed. While thimerosal has been largely removed from childhood vaccines, it remains in some flu shots and multi-dose vials, and broader concerns about vaccine ingredients and neurological damage continue to grow.

One of the most alarming revelations came from the secretive 2000 Simpsonwood meeting, where top CDC officials and vaccine industry representatives discussed an internal study linking thimerosal exposure to increased risks of tics, ADHD, speech delays, and developmental disorders. Instead of alerting the public, the attendees decided to suppress the findings and rework the data to obscure any association. This manipulation, later exposed by Robert Kennedy Jr. through a Freedom of Information Act request, exemplifies the CDC’s ongoing pattern of data suppression and scientific misconduct when vaccine safety is called into question. The congressional committee later confirmed that many participants in the vaccine debate “allowed their standards to be dictated by their desire to disprove an unpleasant theory.” Rather than conducting thorough biological studies to assess vaccine safety, federal agencies have deflected scrutiny by blaming autism and other neurological conditions on genetic factors, despite a lack of conclusive evidence supporting this theory.

Today’s CDC childhood immunization schedule recommends over 27 vaccines by the age of two, with some visits involving up to six shots at once. Parents are expected to trust that these vaccines are rigorously tested and proven safe. However, a review of hundreds of toxicology and immunology studies fails to reveal a gold standard of long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials proving vaccine safety. There is also no comprehensive epidemiological study comparing the long-term health outcomes of fully vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. Without this research, public health officials rely on inconclusive data, which is shaped more by policy than by science.

Humans possess unique biochemical makeups that make them more or less susceptible to toxins. While one child may experience minor effects from environmental toxins, another may develop autoimmune disorders, learning disabilities, or neurological impairments. Vaccine safety cannot be proven simply by stating that not every vaccinated child has autism. Given the dramatic rise in autoimmune diseases, food allergies, encephalitis, and conditions like Crohn’s disease, it is imperative to investigate environmental toxins' role in childhood health. Independent research suggests that ingredients in vaccines, even in small amounts, may contribute to these illnesses, particularly as the number of required vaccines continues to grow.

Ironically, the U.S. government's own Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has awarded settlements to families whose children developed autism-like symptoms following vaccination. High-profile cases such as Hannah Poling, who developed ASD after receiving nine vaccines in one day, Ryan Mojabi, whose vaccines caused severe brain inflammation, and Bailey Banks, who suffered vaccine-induced brain inflammation leading to developmental delays, demonstrate that vaccine injury can, in some cases, result in autism spectrum disorders. A broader analysis of VICP cases revealed that 83 children with autism were compensated for vaccine-related brain injuries, primarily involving encephalopathy or seizure disorders with developmental regression. These cases contradict federal health agencies' claims that no connection between vaccines and autism has ever been recognized.

The National Library of Medicine lists over 3,000 studies on aluminum’s toxicity to human biochemistry. Its dangers have been known for over a century. Early FDA director Dr. Harvey Wiley resigned in protest over aluminum’s commercial use in food canning as early as 1912. Today, aluminum compounds, such as aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate, are found in many vaccines, including hepatitis A and B, DTP, Hib, Pneumococcus, and the HPV vaccine (Gardasil).

In the 1980s, a fully vaccinated child would have received 1,250 mcg of aluminum by adulthood. Today, that number has risen to over 4,900 mcg, a nearly fourfold increase. Aluminum exposure is further compounded by its presence in municipal drinking water due to aluminum sulfate used in purification. A 1997 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that premature infants receiving aluminum-containing intravenous feeding solutions developed learning problems at a significantly higher rate than those who received aluminum-free solutions.

Dr. James Lyons-Weiler at the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge has criticized vaccine aluminum levels, pointing out that dosage guidelines are based on immune response rather than body weight safety. Alarmingly, aluminum exposure standards for children are based on dietary intake studies in rodents rather than human infants. He notes that on Day 1 of life, newborns receive 17 times more aluminum than would be permitted if doses were adjusted per body weight.

Despite these findings, federal agencies continue to dismiss concerns over aluminum toxicity in vaccines. The refusal to conduct comprehensive long-term safety studies, coupled with regulatory agencies' deep entanglement with the pharmaceutical industry, has led to a public health crisis. The growing prevalence of neurological and autoimmune disorders in children demands urgent, unbiased investigation into environmental and vaccine-related factors. Until federal health agencies commit to transparency and rigorous scientific inquiry, parents will be left to navigate vaccine safety decisions without the full picture of potential risks.

Christopher Exley at Keele University analyzed brain tissue from children and teenagers diagnosed with ASD and found consistently high aluminum levels, among the highest recorded in human brain tissue. The aluminum was concentrated in inflammatory non-neuronal cells across various brain regions, supporting its role in ASD neuropathology. In a systematic review of 59 studies, Exley found significant associations between aluminum, cadmium, mercury, and ASD, further underscoring aluminum’s neurotoxic impact. His research strongly advocates for reducing vaccine-derived aluminum exposure in pregnant women and children to help mitigate the rise in autism.

Despite the CDC's consistent denials, researchers at Imperial College London found a significant correlation between rising ASD rates and increased vaccination. Their 2017 study in Metabolic Brain Disease showed that a 1% increase in vaccination rates correlated with 680 additional ASD cases, raising urgent concerns over vaccine components as environmental triggers.

CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson provided thousands of pages of internal research revealing a cover-up of vaccine-autism links. His documents proved the CDC had prior knowledge that African American boys under 36 months had a significantly higher autism risk following the MMR vaccine and that neurological tics—indicators of brain disturbances—were linked to thimerosal-containing vaccines like the flu shot. Yet, instead of acknowledging this risk, federal agencies buried, in fact shredded, the findings, ensuring that vaccine safety concerns were dismissed as conspiracy theories rather than investigated as public health imperatives.

The official denial of a vaccine-autism connection has become entrenched dogma, unsupported by a single gold-standard study definitively disproving such a link. Meanwhile, the health of American children continues to decline, ranking among the worst in the developed world. Neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD are at crisis levels, yet federal agencies remain unwilling to conduct the comprehensive safety studies that could expose the full impact of mass vaccination on childhood health.

Now, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, a long-overdue reckoning may finally be at hand. Unlike his predecessors, Kennedy is an advocate for transparency and accountability. If pursued earnestly, Kennedy’s leadership could potentially reshape public health policies and exposing the truth about vaccines’ role in the rise of neurological disorders, including autism. The question now is: Will the truth finally be allowed to come to light?