How a pro-vaccine doctor reopened debate about link to autism
How a pro-vaccine doctor reopened debate about link to autism
BY SHARYL ATTKISSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/13/19 09:00 AM EST
A world-renowned pro-vaccine medical expert is the newest voice adding to the body of evidence suggesting that vaccines can cause autism in certain susceptible children.
Pediatric neurologist Dr. Andrew Zimmerman originally served as the expert medical witness for the government, which defends vaccines in federal vaccine court. He had testified that vaccines do not cause autism in specific patients.
Dr. Zimmerman now has signed a bombshell sworn affidavit. He says that, during a group of 5,000 vaccine-autism cases being heard in court on June 15, 2007, he took aside the Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers he worked for defending vaccines and told them he’d discovered “exceptions in which vaccinations could cause autism.”
“I explained that in a subset of children, vaccine-induced fever and immune stimulation did cause regressive brain disease with features of autism spectrum disorder,” Dr. Zimmerman now states. He said his opinion was based on “scientific advances” as well as his own experience with patients.
For the government and vaccine industry’s own pro-vaccine expert to have this scientific opinion stood to change everything about the vaccine-autism debate — if people were to find out.
But they didn’t.
Dr. Zimmerman goes on to say...