Here is the full statement by current CDC Senior Scientist on Vaccine-Autism questions: Dr. William Thompson. Stay tuned to this website for an update on the story, soon.
I regret that my [CDC] coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
My primary job duties while working in the immunization safety branch from 2000 to 2006 were to lead or colead three major vaccine safety studies. The MADDSP MMR-Autism Cases
Control Study was being carried out in response to the Wakefield Lancet study that suggested an association between the MMR vaccine and an autism-like health outcome.
There were several major concerns among scientists and consumer advocates outside the CDC in the fall of 2000 regarding the execution of the Verstraeten study.
One of the important goals that was determined upfront in the spring of 2001 before any of these studies started was to have all three protocols vetted outside the CDC prior to the start of the analyses so that consumer advocates could not claim that we were presenting analyses that suited our own goals and biases.
We hypothesized that if we found statistically significant effects at either 18- or 36-month thresholds, we would conclude that vaccinating children early with MMR vaccine could lead to autism-like characteristics or features.
We all met and finalized the study protocol and analysis plan. The goal was to not deviate from the analysis plan to avoid the debacle that occurred with the Verstraeten Thimerosal study published in Pediatrics in 2003.
At the September 5 meeting, we discussed in detail how to code race for both the sample and the birth certificate sample. At the bottom of table 7, it also shows that for the
nonbirth certificate sample, the adjusted race effect statistical significance was huge.
All the authors and I met and decided sometime between August and September 2002 not to report any race effects for the paper. Sometime soon after the meeting, where we decided to exclude reporting any race effects, the coauthors scheduled a meeting to destroy documents related to the study.
The remaining four coauthors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room and reviewed and went through all the hard copy documents that we had thought we should discard and put them in a huge garbage can.
However, because I assumed it was illegal and would violate both FOIA and DOJ requests, I kept hard copies of all documents in my office, and I retained all associated computer files.
I believe we intentionally withheld controversial findings from the final draft of the Pediatrics paper.
--CDC Senior Scientist Dr. William Thompson, 2014
- No known investigative or disciplinary action was ever taken by Inspector Generals, law enforcement authorities, scientific authorities, Pediatrics journal or CDC.
- Congress, to which the pharmaceutical industry is a top donor, declined to hold hearings.
- Dr. Thompson is still a CDC senior scientist.
- CDC refused to allow him to testify in court or do media interviews.
For more information and context, see the info below: Dr. Thompson's statement released through his attorney CDC response (AUDIO) CDC interview responding to Dr. Thompson Another top govt. pro-vaccine medical expert testifies vaccines cause autism, after all Dr. Zimmerman affidavit claiming govt. knew vaccines can cause autism, but covered it u
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