Evers, DHS Launch War on Scientific Debate

Best Friends Forever: Democracy and the Scientific Method

The digital ink was hardly dry on the website over at the federal Centers for Disease Control last month when forward-soldiering bureaucracies and their political allies mobilized to shoot down the latest “threat to democracy.”

That threat was a change in the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) website page on “Autism and Vaccines.” As of November 19, the page no longer proclaimed that vaccines do not cause autism. It kept the claim as a headline, but it was less than absolute. Tagged with an asterisk, the page indicated that the assertion was not evidence-based.

That set the blue bureaucracies to howling. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law legislation allowing the state to diverge from federal guidance on immunizations if state health authorities think it’s necessary.

Here in Wisconsin, as MacIver recently reported, Department of Health Services secretary-designee Kirsten Johnson took to Instagram to express her concern. Much to her dismay, Johnson said the CDC was spreading disinformation:

Parents and members of the autism community deserve accurate, credible information, Johnson wrote:

Governor Tony Evers followed up on X, accusing federal health officials of lying, an accusation he never leveled against the CDC when it was spreading obviously false information about Covid’s risks and mRNA safety trials.

“Unbelievable, and frankly, dangerous,” Evers posted. “Safe, effective vaccines save lives, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”

Actually, at the very least, it was Johnson who was lying, first of all by saying the new CDC website linked vaccines and autism. The website did no such thing; it merely said that such a link could not be verifiably debunked with any scientific certainty and so deserved further study. So Johnson attacked the CDC for a claim the CDC never made.

The truth is, the stiffening resistance of blue-state public-health bureaucracies to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the CDC is not really about vaccines, autism, or even public health. Those are merely partisan props as bureaucracies in progressive-controlled states attempt to engage in “vertical disintegration,” that is, to escape from the bureaucratic infrastructure in which they were suckled and coddled from above by federal bureaucracies for decades.

Suddenly, the nanny-state parents are telling the state agencies to get with a new program, which is what used to be known as rigorous scientific inquiry, and, in effect, to go out and get a job because all their unethical ties to Big Pharma and the medical establishment are being exposed.

Naturally, state public health agencies don’t want to be weaned, and so the pushback. What we are essentially watching unfold in the updates to the autism information—there wasn’t even any guidance involved—is something larger and far more fundamental: a struggle over whether science itself will remain an open process of inquiry or be permanently converted into an instrument of political power.

Simply put, what we all saw play out last month was not an attempt by a federal agency to promote any particular theory of autistic causation, but to open the doors of inquiry so the best minds in the nation might come to the table, and, using the scientific method, determine the true cause or causes of what is an out-of-control epidemic.

But, as their statements attested to, blue bureaucrats and their political partners aren’t interested in open scientific inquiry; they are interested in protecting those special interests who insist vaccines can’t and don’t play a role, and anyone who says they do is a liar. Not that they know what does play a determinative role, mind you, they just know it can’t possibly be the products they sell for billions of dollars in profits, which in turn has caused billions of dollars in vaccine injuries.

The thing is, the hallmark of the democratic process is debate and deliberation, as it is with its bestie companion, the scientific method, but that principle now stands directly opposed to an administrative model that certifies only one version of truth, which both process and method must always validate. When state health agencies such as DHS move to disingenuously discredit federal agencies that are now reopening scientific inquiry, they reveal something deeply unsettling. They reveal that their concern is not public health but control.

The recent change to the CDC’s autism webpage shattered a years-long absolutism. The CDC did not declare that vaccines cause autism, but it did something that poses a far more dangerous threat to bureaucratic power. It admitted uncertainty: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

That single sentence blew up decades of rigid orthodoxy in less than a day. Within hours, state bureaucracies across the country, including Wisconsin’s DHS, declared war—not on misinformation, but on the very notion of open scientific debate.

Why Bureaucrats Panicked

For decades, the phrase “vaccines do not cause autism” has been treated not as a hypothesis, but as a divine rule of science, unchallengeable by any mere mortal. It has been repeated with religious fervor, enforced with moral condemnation, and protected from examination by an interlocking network of government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, corporate media, and professional associations.

Now the new regime at CDC—a coterie of scientists who understand that central to the work of science is the relentless challenge of current consensus so that it may be credibly carried forward or discarded—admits something the old regime spent years denying, namely, the foundation for absolute certainty never existed, and never will.

The revised CDC page explains that autism is likely multi-factorial, that plausible biologic mechanisms exist, and that key aspects of infant vaccination schedules—timing, dosage, adjuvants, and cumulative exposures—have never been properly ruled out as contributors. It acknowledges that the explosion of the childhood vaccination schedule tracks the upsurge of autism prevalence.

It reasonably posits that aluminum adjuvants deserve further investigation. It recognizes that vulnerable subgroups of children may face risks that population-level studies mask. The webpage points out that correlation after correlation suggests a potential role of vaccination in the rise of autism, but, crucially, Johnson’s assertion notwithstanding, it never asserts the role exists:

That’s it. That’s all the CDC is saying. It does not link vaccines to autism. It asserts nothing about causation but merely removes what had actually been previously asserted because it lacks substantial evidence. How convenient that the only asserted negative causation in the entire body of autism research was the one pharmaceutical companies used to evade any scrutiny whatsoever.

Think about it. After so many decades of research, why is it that one factor and one factor only was definitively eliminated as a cause, or even as playing a role alongside other factors? It strains credulity, no, it defeats it.

The CDC website takes pains to caution that correlation does not prove causation but simply merits further study, as does the fact that one-in-two parents of children with autism believe vaccines played a role in their child’s autism, often pointing to the vaccines their child received in the first six months of life.

Naturally, the very idea that the CDC would countenance such a possibility sent the blue bureaucracies and their progressive ilk into a fit of rage. After all, as Johnson had pointed out, there were all those beautiful studies “proving” just the opposite—“high-quality studies around the world continue to conclude that there is no link between vaccines and autism.”

Yeah, those studies. They are out there for sure. Whether they are high quality is the question. Not to mention there’s also a raft of studies out there showing a link to autism. So Johnson’s statement begs the question: Who, exactly, is lying?

Living the lie

As I have previously reported, a large body of peer-reviewed work has uncovered multiple potential environmental pathways leading to autism spectrum disorder: mercury preservatives, aluminum adjuvants, immune overload from overdosing, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the effects of cumulative exposure to toxins such as pesticides. Much of this work finds not just temporal associations but conspicuous physiological and neurological correlations.

There are, in fact, as many peer-reviewed studies showing a correlation between vaccines and autism as there are showing none at all.

Indeed, the University of Northern Iowa’s posting, “Autism Relevant Vaccine Dangers in Scientific Literature,” lists more than 30 studies and papers showing a correlational link. Admittedly, that’s pretty dated. A newer study in 2020, “Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders,” also suggests an association between vaccines and autism.

In this study, the number of vaccines received and vaccination status early in life are associated with different acute and chronic conditions. The study found that vaccination before 1 year of age was associated with increased odds of developmental delays, asthma, and ear infections.

And then there is a new 2025 meta-study, or review of a large body of existing studies, that establishes a clear association. Indeed, the McCullough Foundation study reported that, according to the authors, an examination of more than 300 studies covering every known potential risk factor, from genetic to environmental and vaccine-related, identified 107 studies linking vaccines or their components to autism and neurodevelopmental disorders.

“Of 136 studies examining childhood vaccines or their excipients, 29 found neutral risks or no association, while 107 inferred a possible link between immunization or vaccine components and ASD or other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), based on findings spanning epidemiologic, clinical, mechanistic, neuropathologic, and case-report evidence of developmental regression,” the report stated. 

“Twelve studies comparing routinely immunized versus completely unvaccinated children or young adults consistently demonstrated superior overall health outcomes among the unvaccinated, including significantly lower risks of chronic medical problems and neuropsychiatric disorders such as ASD.”

In the report, the authors, led by Nicolas Hulscher and John Leake, concluded that the totality of evidence supports a multifactorial model of ASD “in which genetic predisposition, neuroimmune biology, environmental toxicants, perinatal stressors, and iatrogenic exposures converge to produce the phenotype of a post-encephalitic state.”

For us laypeople, that includes vaccination.

“Combination and early-timed routine childhood vaccination constitutes the most significant modifiable risk factor for ASD, supported by convergent mechanistic, clinical, and epidemiologic findings, and characterized by intensified use, the clustering of multiple doses during critical neurodevelopmental windows, and the lack of research on the cumulative safety of the full pediatric schedule,” the researchers wrote.

Critics of the vaccine-autism link charge that many of these studies are flawed. In fact and unsurprisingly, they say all of them are flawed. They also tout a study released this year, a large Danish study that followed more than 1.2 million children for almost a quarter-century and found no link between aluminum in vaccines and autoimmune or neurodevelopmental disorders.

But just as studies on the other side have critics, so too does this one, as well as others that show no link. Never mind the inherent conflicts of interest in most of them—this study was conducted by researchers associated with Statens Serum Institut, effectively a government-owned vaccine company that is heavily funded by Big Pharma (including $260 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation)—there are design flaws. Writing in an op-ed, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., laid out significant issues with the study, contending that the population was so manipulated and winnowed that there could be no finding other than “no harm.”

“The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children—2.8 percent of the study population—whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels,” Kennedy wrote. “These choices suggest an intention to exclude the children at highest risk of harm. The authors, without explanation, deemed these high exposures implausible, even though those implausibly high exposures are routine for American children who follow the recommended immunization schedule.”

So the competing studies fight on a battleground of contention and suspicion. In addition, and to be clear, none of the studies on either side proves direct causation or lack of causation. Each side accuses the other of committing serious methodological errors or of hopelessly tainting the studies with pharmaceutical or other special-interest conflicts.

But doesn’t that make the point? The vaccine-autism link has been ferociously alleged and counter-alleged for almost 30 years, and there is nothing close to a consensus. Tens of thousands of parents and doctors, not to mention peer-reviewed scientists, are convinced that vaccines play a role as triggers or in association with other factors, based on their own experiences, medical examinations, and scientific research. A consensus only exists, they insist, because the medical establishment and corporate media only report the studies favorable to Big Pharma, virtually never mention the unfavorable studies, and fawn over the “experts.”

Studies were dismissed not because they were disproven but because they threatened narrative stability. And so scientific journals became political battlegrounds, while the media acted not as a watchdog but as an enforcer of orthodoxy.

At a recent hearing, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, in a hearing on the corruption of science and addressing those who dismiss any association, asked aloud (and I paraphrase), What do you tell parents—thousands and thousands of them—who had a perfectly healthy child who, suddenly after vaccination, regressed verbally and physically and quickly developed autism spectrum disorder?

What do you tell them, indeed? Not to believe what they see with their own eyes?

The answer to that question is precisely why a broader, deeper, and more transparent research has always been necessary. It’s why vigorous inquiry is needed. It is precisely the reason to challenge the consensus, because challenging the consensus is the only way to head toward an a priori truth.

That is what the CDC is trying to do with autism, and that is exactly what Evers and Kirsten Johnson are trying to shut down. They are not going to war with any particular narrative; they are going to war with inquiry itself, which, the last time I checked, is the only way to test any hypothesis.

The Revolving Door of Trust

Bureaucratic motivation is rarely divorced from bureaucratic necessity. The conflicts of interest embedded in the federal health system are not cosmetic or performative. They are structural and consequential, serving the states’ interests in stifling debate.

No other public sector is as rife with the smell of tainted money as public health.

From 2004 to 2020, approximately 8 percent of CDC appointees entered from the private health-care and pharmaceutical sector, and about 54 percent later left government service for private-sector industry positions, many in pharmaceutical and related companies.

They don’t call it a revolving door for nothing. For example, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb moved quickly onto Pfizer’s board of directors. Former FDA chief Stephen Hahn joined the venture firm behind Moderna. Patrizia Cavazzoni, who oversaw drug approvals at the FDA, transitioned straight into Pfizer’s executive leadership.

In particular, Gottlieb, a physician, is often quoted in the corporate media, dismissing the link between vaccines and autism. His ties to Big Pharma are almost never mentioned, and neither are his substantial investments in vaccine-capable firms.

These are not isolated examples, and they speak to the mammoth size of the bureaucratic-corporate public health establishment. This power axis helps explain why state agencies that marched in perfect alignment with federal narratives for decades did not constitute an authentic display of independent scientific consensus. They were merely the downstream effects of vertically integrated bureaucratic power.

It certainly can’t go unnoticed that, for decades, Wisconsin’s DHS marched in lockstep with the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). In fact, ACIP vaccine recommendations became woven into more than 600 statutes and regulations nationwide—school mandates, insurance requirements, public health rules, pharmacist authority—and Wisconsin was a willing puppy in the pack.

Then Kennedy dropped a nuclear bomb and vaporized the committee earlier this year, firing all 17 ACIP members for conflicts of interest.

Blue states erupted. California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Massachusetts immediately pledged to ignore federal restructuring and cling to the old orthodoxy. Maine stripped ACIP references from its statutes. More than 20 blue states began constructing alternative advisory pipelines overnight.

Suddenly, the skyscraper of vertical integration began to tilt, and the bureaucrats evacuated. This is what vertical disintegration is—not the collapse of bureaucratic power but its desperate re-routing. State agencies that once claimed that federal guidance was sacrosanct now insist they are the true arbiters of public health. But they still are not operating independently. They are rapidly substituting federal authority with nonprofit authority, professional-association authority, and pharmaceutical-funded “expert consensus.”

In Wisconsin, the Department of Health Services now openly presents itself as a counterweight to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. On vaccines, on Covid policy, on public messaging, Wisconsin DHS rejects federal transparency and embraces categorical certainty.

At the end of the day, this is so much larger than vaccination and autism, as important to the future of the country as that is. It boils down to a single question: Is the true role of a scientific government agency to endorse a political agenda in the name of science, or to fairly present the science—and all the science—as it exists and no matter where it might head?

Kennedy and the Trump administration are attempting to do the latter; Evers and the DHS are desperately pushing the former.

The true conflict is not vaccines versus skeptics. It is bureaucratic power versus democratic inquiry. Wisconsin DHS does not merely disagree with the CDC’s revised language. It rejects the very idea that debate itself is legitimate. If the Evers-Johnson view of the world prevails across the governance landscape, all is lost, and totalitarianism is the fate we suffer.

That is not out of the question, which makes this small act of posturing all the more important. It’s important because this is how they think and act. During Covid, we must remember that dissent was criminalized. Doctors were canceled. Emergency-use vaccines were imposed on children. Whole economies were crushed under the authority of a “settled science” that is no longer settled but unraveling piece by piece.

The same institutions and politicians now condemning the CDC for reopening inquiry are the very institutions and politicians that demanded absolute compliance just a few years ago. Now they demand acquiescence to the settled science of their minds.

This is not a coincidence. It is a consistency. By itself, consistency is neither good nor bad. It is the intent behind it that makes all the difference. Ignoring the political motivations in this case is a mistake, for the route from silencing skepticism to the homestead of bondage and barbed wire is a very familiar one.