Study linking vaccination to chronic disease was buried, attorney testifies
A major study that found a strong link between vaccination and chronic diseases was buried out of fear of backlash, attorney Aaron Siri testified on Tuesday.
Siri, a medical freedom lawyer with the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), revealed details of the study in testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
In 2017, ICAN approached Dr. Marcus Zervos to conduct a study that would finally resolve the debate over vaccine safety. Dr. Zervos is the head of infectious disease at Henry Ford Health, the co-director of the Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases at Wayne State University, and a principal investigator in vaccine trials.
Zervos agreed to conduct the study. He assembled a team that spent two years researching data provided by Henry Ford Health. They looked at the electronic medical records of 18,468 vaccinated and unvaccinated children for 10 years after birth.
When the study was finished in early 2020, Zervos showed Siri the results: by age 10, 57% of vaccinated children suffered from at least one chronic disease. By contrast, only 17% of unvaccinated children had any chronic illness. Specifically, vaccinated kids suffered 329% more asthma, 203% more atopic disease, 496% more autoimmune disease, and 453% more neurodevelopmental disorders—including 228% more developmental delays and 347% more speech disorders. All findings were statistically significant.
Among the unvaccinated, there were no cases of brain dysfunction, ADHD, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, or tics.
The study was never published because neither Dr. Zervos nor Dr. Lois Lamerato, an epidemiologist and prominent figure at Henry Ford Health who was on the research team, wanted to submit it..
“Unfortunately, while Dr. Zervos and Dr. Lamerato affirmed the study was well designed, executed, and worthy of publication, they would not submit it for publication because, among other reasons, Dr. Lamerato said she did not want to make doctors uncomfortable, and Dr. Zervos said he did not want to lose his job at Henry Ford,” Siri told senators on Tuesday.
“This is a real-world example of how the science around vaccines gets corrupted — how only studies that confirm the belief that vaccines are safe get published. Everything else gets shoved in a drawer.”
Those who publish get punished
The Henry Ford study closely matches one conducted by Dr. Paul Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul's Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health—from Pregnancy Through Your Child's Teen Years.”
In 2019, the Oregon Medical Board (OMB) demanded that Dr. Thomas justify his approach to vaccination, and he responded by publishing a peer-reviewed study. The study looked at every patient born in his practice, roughly 3,700 of whom had received vaccinations and over 500 who had received none. By tracking the office visits of those children over 10 years, Dr. Thomas discovered the vaccinated children weren’t getting sick, but illnesses and chronic conditions skyrocketed among vaccinated kids. Children who had received even some shots returned to the office with anemia, eczema, behavioral issues, eye disorders, ADHD, infections, and allergies.
Within five days of the study’s publication, the OMB called an emergency meeting where they decided to revoke Dr. Thomas’ license for being a “threat to public health” and an “immediate danger to the public.” To justify their decision, they created a rule requiring physicians to encourage their patients to vaccinate. The rule violates Oregon state laws that prohibit the state from interfering in an individual’s medical decisions and affirm the right of parents to refuse to vaccinate their children.
The revocation of Dr. Thomas’ license also cost him his licenses in Washington and Hawaii, along with his practice and his marriage. This witch hunt was so malicious that it became the subject of a book called “The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board,” written by Jeremy Hammond with a foreword by current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
