Source: Children’s Health Defense

My parents, Bob and Suzanne Wright, founded Autism Speaks after my son was injured by vaccines and regressed into autism. And yet today, Autism Speaks continues to deny the harm vaccines cause to millions of children.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its website to state that there is no evidence supporting the blanket claim that vaccines do not cause autism, Autism Speaks chose to stay closed-minded.

The organization responded to the CDC’s bold messaging shift with this statement: “We want to reiterate our long-standing perspective that vaccines do not cause autism.”

That statement shows that, by default, Autism Speaks continues to protect those who may be responsible for harming millions of children each year when they stated.

That’s interesting. Because Autism Speaks would not exist if my son, Christian, had not experienced a catastrophic adverse vaccine reaction that caused his severe autistic regression.

Shortly after it was founded, Autism Speaks leaders asked me not to discuss Christian’s adverse vaccine reactions. I refused. They expelled me from the organization.

Autism Speaks remains deeply committed to the flawed “autism is genetic, except for fat, old moms” paradigm. In 2005, I objected to their focused investment in what I saw as a dead-end area of genetic research, using Fragile X Syndrome as a model for many multimillion-dollar clinical treatment studies.

In response, Autism Speaks leadership told me that in 20 years, their genetic research “would reveal direct pathways to clinical treatment.” Well, it’s been 20 years, and we have virtually no new knowledge that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a genetic condition.

Autism Speaks’ “search for the autism genes” yielded little success. The organization identified countless de novo variants, many of which are also found in the non-ASD population. Autism Speaks’ efforts to categorize the ASD population through dozens of multi-million-dollar brain imaging projects have similarly failed.

What happened to my son after he got multiple vaccines in one visit

The horror of Christian’s regression prompted my parents to act and establish Autism Speaks.

Before turning 2, Christian had a vocabulary of 100 words, could point, show affection and even engage in pretend play.

After his 6- and 12-month vaccinations, Christian was cognitively fine. However, he developed severe fevers and an increased susceptibility to recurring infections: eye infections, ear infections, Strep, Staph. His immune system was clearly weakening.

Then came the Tdap, Hib, Hep B and flu vaccines. My pediatrician assured me it was “totally safe” to give those vaccines all at once.

But after he received them, Christian developed a 12-hour high fever and nonstop shrieking — not just screaming.

It got worse. He soon lost his entire vocabulary and stopped recognizing most of his family. Instead of speaking or playing, my son wanted only to bang his head all day and scream. He also lost his ability to chew and had to be fed baby food for nearly a year.

Shortly afterward, Christian had a mini-stroke and began drooling nonstop. Half of his face drooped. He later contracted pneumonia, cockasaxievirus, and developed a dangerous case of cellulitis in both eyes, and more …

My parents firmly believed that vaccines or over-vaccination triggered their grandson’s autism. However, at that time, medical professionals and geneticists assured them that Christian simply had a “rare genetic disorder we have yet to identify.”

My husband and I took Christian to about six hospitals for genetic testing, but they found nothing. My family has a history of numerous cancers, but there’s no autism in our family history. Christian did not and does not have a genetic behavioral disorder.

‘Studying autism in isolation from all environmental factors is pointless’

Successive heads of science at Autism Speaks assured my parents that the genetic and FX projects were “innovative” and had a good chance of success. I shared my concerns with them — including Geri Dawson, Ph.D., and Rob Ring, Ph.D. — that these projects would fail.

Studying autism in isolation from all environmental factors is pointless. Autism is a multi-factorial disorder, like alcoholism. It is not like Huntington’s disease, an irreversible genetic condition present at conception.

Unlike the science leadership at Autism Speaks, parents of children with regressive autism have been able to predict, with 100% accuracy, the outcome of 10 years of brain and gene autism research: failure.

Now, much like the National Institutes of Health, instead of accepting that painful reality, arrogance and pride have led Autism Speaks to cling desperately to its absurd stance: “We don’t know what is causing autism, but it’s definitely NOT vaccines!”

After many stakeholder complaints, Autism Speaks tried to fund research into potential environmental triggers. A compassionate board member raised $1 million for a study comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated homeschoolers.

However, Ring, the then-head of the group’s science team, invested that money in what he considered more promising environmental science triggers. Do you want to guess what they were? Fat Mom, old Mom, and old Dad were their chosen environmental factors to study.

This approach also failed badly. The “fat mom, old mom” theory explains maybe only 2%-3% of autism cases at most.

$50 million later — still failure

The Autism Speaks “autism is genetic” camp has truly had its “at bat,” so to speak. For the past 20 years, the organization has had free rein to invest $50 million into brain and gene causation research.

The outcome has been total failure.

One would hope that such an extensive and lengthy history of failure would lead scientists to develop some humility and reevaluate their positions.

Instead, Autism Speaks has doubled down on science. It refuses to fund independent vaccine safety research. It ignores the significant conflicts of interest and scientific criticisms related to the widely cited statement that “vaccines are always safe!”

Tragically, Autism Speaks will never listen to families or admit that vaccines or over-vaccination can and do trigger a percentage of autism cases.

Meanwhile, the group’s scientists should be held accountable for overseeing two decades of failure.